This particular version of the song was recorded in the mid-seventies. Garcia’s voice sounded sweeter and more alive than I’ve ever heard it. This was a very special recording.
Fifteen years ago today a man that had made a profound impression on my life and life-style passed away. Jerry Garcia was, at the time of his death, one of the most famous people on the face of the earth, cursed with that bastard usurper of life, fame.
This brought the tears. I found my eyes welling up as I listened to Jerry singing sweet harmonies with Donna Godchaux. I knew I missed Jerry terribly, but this reaction really surprised me.
Jerry started his music career as a happy hippy that would have laughed like hell at the term “music career”. He was a banjo/guitar teacher at an early age – Jerry was never one to keep his knowledge selfishly. From what I’ve heard over the years he never minded showing someone a lick or teaching a song, if he had time.
It has been said that Jerry was the most recorded guitarist in history , according to fellow Bay Area guitar player Henry Kaiser, "With more than 2,200 Grateful Dead concerts, and 1,000 Jerry Garcia Band concerts captured on tape — as well as numerous studio sessions — there are about 15,000 hours of his guitar work preserved for the ages."
I saw the Grateful Dead live for the first time in New Haven, CT in 1975.
Like most people I was familiar with the Dead’s music only from what I would hear on the radio, which was never much. I liked what I heard, and owned one Dead recording. The “Skeletons From The Closet” recording contained most of their “commercially successful” songs, most of these could be heard on the radio once in a blue moon. I was astonished when I found out this collection of songs was probably the worst overall representation of the Dead’s music issued to date.
I didn’t really start listening to the Grateful Dead seriously (very serious) until 1985. I was living in a very “modest” room in a huge house rented by several guys my age. One of my roommates was into going to all the Dead shows he could possibly see and still keep his job.
This is when I started to be schooled on the Grateful Dead. He told me tales of three hour concerts where virtually everyone in the audience would stand and dance the entire show. He told me all about the “scene”. Travel, friends, music, drugs - good drugs! You didn’t have to talk me into it. I have always been a huge advocate of “Sex, Drugs and Rock-n-Roll”.
My roommate also lent me a great live recording containing choice selections from the Dead’s live shows. This was an actual CD issued by the band, not a bootleg tape. I honestly listened to the disc as much as I could stand, sometimes not being able to sit through an extended jam or drum solo. This, I was assured, would change as soon as I experienced a few live shows.
Boy Howdy! Oh, he was right.
I discovered a “treasure trove” of music that I had never heard before. Incredible music, blending every music style imaginable with lyrics that portrayed a history of Americana.
Jerry Garcia and his extended musical family resurrected old American folk songs, sea shanties, and traditional songs that had no real writing credit other than “Traditional”. This is an integral part of Jerry Garcia’s contribution to music that is often times sorely overlooked.
Here I was, a guitar player for 25 years that was just sick to death of new music. But here I had stumbled upon endless hours of music that was just what I had been searching for. Honest songs emanating from the hearts and minds of musicians not hampered by commercial music business bullshit. And they had a great fucking guitar player!
These songs that were previously recorded on the early Dead albums had now been honed to perfection after years of touring and hundreds of live performances. Listening to them on the old albums was not the best introduction to their music as the early albums could not capture the incredible magic that happened at the live shows. By the early nineties, however, the Grateful Dead were on a plane of their own when it came down to sheer talent.
So, in order to get the real Grateful Dead experience you had to go to the shows. Lots of them. This was usually a scary proposition for the uninitiated. But what was so scary, Cops? Was it the crowds? People were nervous around the hardcore “Deadheads” and I personally don’t blame them one bit.
The deadheads were originally some of the sweetest, most generous, gentle, hippies I had ever met. They were friendly to strangers, they were happy to meet new people, very welcoming, they made you feel right at home.
I was a corporate non-tycoon at the time and had a very short military looking haircut. This usually would be the cause of immediate distrust within a tight knit group of anyone involved with the “counterculture”. In other words I didn’t look “cool”, I looked like a narc. At first this didn’t matter at all as long as you acted okay, actually as long as you didn’t act at all.
They respected honesty of character. There were people that looked like Tommy Chong that were narcs and people that looked like me (that weren’t narcs goddamnit!). I was an experienced musician searching for, well, searching for treasure, and having found it, went to all the shows I could. Even though I had short hair the ‘heads (at first) were very accepting. We enjoyed some great times with people we had just met, literally mere hours before.
Unfortunately we caught the tail end of the good times.
Fame had finally caught up with the Grateful Dead.
Like what happened in San Francisco with the Haight-Ashbury scene decades before, huge numbers of lazy dirtbags (ooooh, sorry) were drawn into the Deadhead's way of life. They could easily take advantage of the giving nature of the hard working, self sufficent Deadheads. The term "self sufficient" used to be in the very definition (the fucking core) of what makes a "Deadhead a Deadhead". It was a major source of pride for a group of individuals that didn't get much respect.
The Scene in the parking lots was getting a dangerous buzz about it. Hordes of con-men were roaming the parking lots selling fake tickets, fake mushrooms and running all kinds of grifts. I finally stopped bringing a guitar with me to the shows. We once moved the car to a different space because we were pretty sure a "fan" was planning on ripping off my guitar. He sure as hell didn't know the first thing about the band, or the guitar. Paranoia was rearing its ugly head. This kind of thing started happening all the time, to the point where we just were not having fun anymore.
The feds were busting people for selling LSD, Garcia had relapsed badly into heroin addiction, and the last tour was plagued with small riots and mass injuries. When lightning struck at one of the last shows the “Tour From Hell” was aptly named.
And just like the end of the "Summer of Love" the good times were coming to an end and there was a hard rain fallin'.
So, good drugs, good people, good music, good drugs, what was not to like? But as a wise man once said “Nothing good lasts forever”. And of course this couldn’t be truer when describing Jerry Garcia.
Sometime while on break after this disastrous tour, Garcia decided to throw in the towel and get some help. The night he checked into a rehab facility he died in his sleep, August 9th, 1995.
I actually felt a kinship with Jerry Garcia. I know that sounds like the worst kind of obsessed fan bullshit. Not to mention it’s embarrassingly pretentious, and not just a little akin to something a douchbag would utter.
But fuck it, I did.
I felt so grateful to have been turned on to so much incredible music at a time when I was just so fucking disillusioned about the new crap that was coming out. To be suddenly presented with hours upon hours of pure genius was a gift. And to be able to see this great musician perform close to one hundred shows filled me with enough memories to last not only a lifetime but an eternity.
I really fucking liked Jerry Garcia is what I’m trying to say here. There’s nothing like seeing Jerry Garcia live anymore. No Grateful Dead, no Jerry Garcia Band, no more Jerry at all.
He’s gone, and he ain’t never coming back.
Rest in peace, my friend.
Selah.
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