6/19/68 has long been a wild, tantalizing glimpse of what the Dead were up to in mid-’68, when the tapes weren’t rolling, setlists could be thrown to the wind, and free jams could go in any direction…
http://www.archive.org/details/gd68-06-19.sbd.cotsman.4511.sbeok.shnf
Except that our tape isn’t from 6/19/68 at all. It’s from the famous ‘lost’ 2/19/69 show…just a week before the Live/Dead run.
An article in Rolling Stone describes the 2/19/69 Celestial Synapse event – it’s helpfully reprinted in the “Fillmore West 1969” booklet, and is also on this page:
http://obie1.homesite.net/deadcd/articlesrs.htm
“Fifteen hundred invitations were sent out for the February 19 event, and though there was no other announcement, probably double that number attended. Everyone was treated to the best vibrations and some of the best music the Fillmore West had seen in some time.
After a stirring oboe and bagpipe introduction by the Golden Toad, Don Hamrick of Frontiers of Science spoke for a few minutes in a gentle rural accent, addressing the crowd as "the Goodly Company." "It is our hope," he said, "that this evening there will be an opening and a free interchange, so that something new may emerge. Let the barriers fall, let there be a merging."
"I haven't seen anything like this in years -- it's like one of the old Ken Kesey Acid Tests," said Bob Thomas, piper of the Toad and, like the Dead, veteran of many an Acid Test, "-- only it's less hectic and confused. It's fucking amazing." People were handing each other flowers, joints, funny incomprehensible little picket signs four inches high.
Invitations had gone out to people in music and a broad range of psychedelic tribes -- from Rancho Olompali and other communes to the Hells Angels. Many Frontiers of Science people and other communards could be seen embracing each other, greeting strangers, dancing and celebrating.”
There’s a review from one audience member on dead.net, possibly genuine:
“I heard about this show from my Hells Angels friends and got in with them for free. It was one of the shows were everyone was just smiling, dancing, feeling, and I must have passed out 100 hits of Bear's acid. People were sharing joints, passing out flowers, burning incense, just flowing together. There were bag pipes, naked dancers, and the Dead played for hours.”
The Dead were the main musical event this night. After the show’s introduction, the article continues, “Then the Grateful Dead began a set that ran for four hours or so with scarcely an interruption. The Dead played continuously, a flowing improvisatory set of new material… Three light shows were playing, at no charge to the sponsors. The Grateful Dead and Bill Graham donated their services for free.”
This certainly sounds like our set – “a flowing improvisatory set of new material.” Unfortunately, our tape is only two hours! So apparently half the show is still missing – presumably they played at least a Dark Star.
Our tape cuts in near the start of Lovelight. (No way to tell how long they’d been playing already.) The recording is grungy, with a troubled mix – the notes for the show indicate “a ragged condition at first. The sound system has technical difficulties, with an intermittent buzz during portions of Lovelight from a bad electrical connection. The vocals are very low in the mix, and difficulties with the sound system might explain a lack of singing during the second set.” (My guess is it’s just the poor tapemix, and the audience could hear the vocals in the house okay.)
The Rolling Stone article mentions recording difficulties: “Originally the concert was to be recorded for inclusion on the next Dead album, but last-minute difficulties in setting up the recording equipment scotched that.” (This would have referred to the 16-track machine, but it helps explain why our cassette recording gets off to a poor, and possibly much-delayed start.) Usually Bear’s recordings are better, but it’s likely he was in a celestial condition that night…
Stylistically alone, we could place this Lovelight in early ’69 – if you compare, say, the 6/14/68 and 2/21/69 Lovelights, this night’s Lovelight is clearly from ’69 in style.
This is a long, loose Lovelight - there’s a long drum interlude that winds up with the “yakety yakety ya” chant, which excites the audience no end. As the band returns, one of them shouts, “Hey Pigpen, where are you? Get the fuck over here!”
Lovelight continues into yet another drums interlude, with the audience screaming in ecstasy, and the band falls loosely into a rough Not Fade Away. Weir raucously belts out the song by himself (he’d do it the same way when they resurrected the song in December ’69). It’s not quite the first performance (they’d done it back in ’66, more Rolling Stones-style), but it still sounds spontaneous and exciting. Then they segue back into Lovelight - mostly more Pig rapping over drumtaps.
Interestingly, someone else (not in the band) is singing along gospel-style with Pigpen as they finish the song. The crowd cheers madly, the extra singer applauds, “Bring ‘em on down!” and Weir responds, “Hooray for you guys!”
Then someone says, “Hey, let’s turn it off for a while,” and there are some conversations onstage as the band takes a little break.
The article explains what happens next: “Toward two in the morning there were a number of stoned occurrences. People began taking off their clothes. Don McCoy of Olompali got up on the stage stark naked, against a tableau of Bill Graham restraining the rent-a-cops from pulling him down.”
And indeed, he appears on our tape with a little speech. “Thank you baby – that was a beautiful introduction – my name is Don McCoy… What are you doing with all those clothes on, baby? I thought we were going to be naked up here! Now wait, this looks like the long arm of the law – black power – excuse me, sir, but I’m just doing my thing.” (Here the crowd cheers, as security retreats in bafflement.)
I don’t hear any instructions, but the crowd suddenly starts a long chant, a mass sustained “omm.” (Don McCoy keeps on talking through the chant, “Welcome brothers and sisters – this is heaven – meet my sister Eve – he’s after her already…” and so on.)
The Celestial Synapse was organized by a group called the Frontiers of Science, a rather mystical organization of the type that blossomed in the sixties. According to Rolling Stone, their philosophy “has to do with the crystal at the center of the living Earth, which is affected by human vibrations and which may either change shape (a creative change) or change size (a destructive change, since it would cause earthquakes). The idea is to send down good vibrations to change the shape of that crystal, and the Celestial Synapse may very well have done just that. ‘Synapse’ is the term used…for a mass meeting of minds, parallel to the linking-up of brain cells that makes thought possible.”
Now this kind of ‘science’ was catnip for the Dead, especially Garcia and Lesh, so it’s no wonder they donated their services for free to this event! It seems the goal of the audience chant was to meld minds and send good vibrations into the earth (though its success was unreported…)
In a more immediate sense, though, Don Hamrick’s plan for the evening was very close to the concept of an ideal Dead show: “It is our hope that this evening there will be an opening and a free interchange, so that something new may emerge. Let the barriers fall, let there be a merging.” And that spirit of the Acid Test does come across on tape.
As the omm continues, someone gets on the drums and takes up a beat. More of the audience gathers onstage – one particularly blasted soul “sings” into a mike. In fact, two people sing the “scooby dooby da” ditty near the end, the second one probably a young kid. (At this point, with the steady humming, the drumbeat, and the intermittent ‘Revolution 9’-style child’s chant, it is probably the most authentically psychedelic moment ever captured on a Dead tape.)
Someone else gets on the drums too and tries to sing Lovelight again – “I’m a drummer – let your lovelight shine on me now, brother, dig it!” The audience cheers him on, and the long trance ends. Someone tries to get him offstage, as he protests – “Are you my brother or what?” “You’re high, man, that’s all.”
The people on stage start spontaneously clapping in time and cheering as they keep the beat going. After a while, one of the bandmembers speaks up: “Hey, we can’t get on if you can’t get off!”
Then Bill Graham can be heard saying, “Jonathan, can we get the band, then we’ll get the people off. Just get them up here now, it’ll be fine.”
(When the band comes back, someone says, “Thank you Jesus!”)
The Dead, having calmed down, return with an unknown third guitar player. (He’s speculated to be Gary Duncan or John Cipollina of Quicksilver. Some have said Jorma Kaukonen & Jack Casady play here – but they were scheduled to play at the Matrix on Feb 19. So their presence at the Celestial Synapse is doubtful – unless they canceled their own show, or left early to be there!)
Fifty minutes of non-stop, flowing improvisations follow, very much like one of the Hartbeats shows. A heavy, morose jam starts between Weir and the mystery guitarist. The rest of the band joins one by one - the organ comes in, finally audible (the mix has improved from the start of the tape). I’m not sure, though, whether Constanten, Pigpen, or another guest is on organ – it doesn’t sound very TC-ish to me.
Lesh takes the jam into the Main Ten – a dark, bluesy version. This flows into a series of Garcia-led jams, which sputter out and then start up again, Garcia gradually taking over. (After a while, the third guitarist seems to retreat to the background.) Though deadlists calls this a ‘Dark Star jam’, it’s definitely not.
As the band heats up, Garcia starts an Other One jam, which they perform without words, exploring a series of different rhythms, almost like a musical juggling act between Garcia and Lesh. This is probably the musical highlight of the show – despite being instrumental, stylistically it’s much closer to a thunderous early-’69 Other One than what we might hear in mid-’68. The jam keeps getting more intense until finally they pound out the titanic Other One chords, then quietly trickle to a stop. (It sounds like they might be thinking of a segue into Death Don’t, but decide to just stop instead.) As the tape cuts off in the applause, it’s not clear whether the show ended there.
The suggestion that this show was 2/19/69 was first made in 2006, as far as I know; yet the new date still seems to be little-known…perhaps suggesting the conservatism of show collectors, or how slowly Dead information gets around! For myself, I was sad to see a tape removed from the already nearly-empty recording gap of mid-’68; but the evidence seems undeniable. It’s some consolation to find that it’s actually the tape of a unique Dead event I thought was lost. (Funnily enough, the misdate echoes the lack of solid dates for the early ‘66 Acid Test recordings.)
Musically, the redate doesn’t really change our knowledge of the Dead. The free-flowing improvs are closer to the style of a Hartbeats show with guests than the experimentation of early ’68. (And there would be a couple more Hartbeats shows later that week.) Now we know, when the Dead almost went into Not Fade Away for the 4/23/69 encore, they had played it just a couple months earlier. The biggest surprise is that the Main Ten is now completely removed from 1968 – its absence from the ’68 Hartbeats shows may indicate that it was composed later than we thought. (It turns up next in a couple Dark Stars of April ’69.)
As for the real 6/19/68? It was the Grateful Dead’s last show at the original pre-Bill Graham Carousel, a benefit for the Black Man’s Free Store. No recording is known to survive. (Though it would be ironic if one of the 1968 ‘mystery reels’ was from this date, which is possible…)
January 1, 2011
December 28, 2010
Jerry Garcia & Surrealistic Pillow
I was spurred to write this by a fellow Dead researcher:
http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2010/12/garcia-on-jefferson-airplane.html
It seemed like it would be useful to have a thorough review of Garcia’s involvement in Surrealistic Pillow.
Garcia was listed as the “Musical and Spiritual Adviser” on the back cover when it was released in February ’67. Though perhaps meant to be tongue-in-cheek, it’s actually quite a serious indication of Garcia’s high standing (at least among the Jefferson Airplane). Hidden behind that vague credit, Garcia did quite a bit of work on the Airplane’s album, a couple months before the Dead even entered the studio – in fact, he spent more time on Surrealistic Pillow than he did recording the Dead’s first album!
This is even more surprising since the Airplane were comparative veterans of the studio, compared to Garcia. They had almost as much playing experience as the Dead – they’d formed just a few months later than the Warlocks, gotten a record contract with RCA much earlier, and were already the most successful band in San Francisco, thanks in part to a first album (Takes Off) which had captured lots of attention.
The Dead, meanwhile, had only just signed up with Warner Brothers in September ’66 and wouldn’t record for a few more months. Garcia’s only known studio experience was a few sessions & demos with Autumn Records back in ’65, and a disappointing attempt at recording a single in June ‘66. (His early studio work is actually mostly unknown, really. When asked later on about his pre-Dead recordings, Garcia vaguely replied, “I did some various sessions around San Francisco. Demos and stuff like that.” I haven’t seen any more definite information!)
On the other hand, the Airplane looked up to Garcia as a guitar player and musician. They had not been too happy with their first album (just as the Dead would later feel!), and felt they needed extra help making things run smoothly in the studio. They had also been going through changes – new drummer Spencer Dryden had joined in July ’66, and singer Grace Slick had just joined them in mid-October, only a couple weeks before they started the album sessions. So it’s likely they were still pulling new material together when it came time to record.
Garcia was asked about Surrealistic Pillow in a mid-’67 interview – the interviewer enthused about How Do You Feel: “Yeah, I played flattop on that. I didn’t play flattop in My Best Friend. Skip Spence did – he wrote the song. Let’s see, on Today I played the high guitar line, and I played on Plastic Fantastic, and I played on Comin’ Back To Me… I’m fond of the songs that Grace is in: I like Rabbit a lot, I like Someone to Love – the original on the album is more or less my arrangement, I kind of rewrote it. I’ve always liked the song she used to do with the Great Society, but it didn’t have - the chord changes weren’t very interesting.”
This is the Great Society’s version of Somebody to Love, pre-Garcia:
Studio - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzyDLwUgFdc
Live - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SB11giesKc
(In the same interview, he was asked about the ‘San Francisco Sound’: “I’m not sure what they mean by that. There’s a similarity in the sound…but there’s not really that much similarity in the music… Each of the bands sounds as different from each other as they do from everybody else. The San Francisco music scene is healthier and there’s more stuff going on than there is anyplace else… We all steal freely from each other, we all play together, we’re all friends, we spend a lot of time with each other, we all listen to each other, we’ve all gotten good together, we’ve all improved over the past year or so...playing gigs, getting together and jamming.”)
Garcia later said, “The Airplane thought it would be helpful to have somebody there who could communicate to their producer… And since they all knew me and I understood their music and understood pretty much what they were doing at the time, it would be far-out. I went down there and hung out and was a sort of go-between between them and their producer. I helped out with some arrangements and stuff – I just hung out.”
The Airplane felt Garcia did more than just hang out!
Paul Kantner said, “We had an RCA producer, but Garcia did the art side of it.”
And Jorma Kaukonen said, “Jerry could be credited with really being the producer…in that he was one of us and he knew what to do with the band… He really was the producer who arranged those songs.”
The RCA producer was Rick Jarrard - the Airplane hadn’t liked the producer on their first album, but again they used engineer Dave Hassinger (whom the Dead would work with later).
As Kantner told the story: “Our first album had been made rather restrictive by RCA and we were sort of unhappy with the results, and we needed to get more communication between us and the studio, and in some idiotic fancy of mine, we figured Jerry Garcia would be the person to communicate some of the things we were trying to accomplish in the studio. So [the engineer] would know that Jack's bass should make the board smoke. Smoke comes out of the board, put another fuse in; don't try to damp it down…
"We would be rehearsing something out in the studio, [Garcia] would say, 'I have a nice little part that would work in there; maybe you should play this.' And he would pick up his guitar and go boom, 'Why don't you play that?' and he would play it so good that we said, 'Why don't you play it? It sounds really good and we can't play it better than that. Come on, help us out here.'
"But mostly he was there to serve as sort of a buffer zone between us and the other side of the window. A lot of what we were trying to do, both sound-wise and lyric-wise was eased quite a bit by his very gentlemanly manner. He was not harsh, not abrasive…”
Ironically, the actual producer denied that Garcia was there at all!
Rick Jarrard said, “Jerry Garcia was never present on any of those sessions. Jerry Garcia played no guitar on that album. I never met Jerry Garcia. I produced that album from start to finish, never heard from Jerry Garcia, never talked to Jerry Garcia. He was not involved creatively on that album at all.”
Nonetheless, Garcia is listed as playing guitar on RCA’s session paperwork.
He played the high lead part on Today - he also played guitar on Plastic Fantastic Lover, How Do You Feel, and Comin’ Back To Me - he also played on JPP McStep B Blues and In the Morning, which weren’t included on the album – and he also rearranged Somebody to Love. (All this aside from musical suggestions which went undocumented.) By the band’s admission, this was clearly more than casual session work – Garcia was virtually a band-member! It’s likely that he wasn’t given any music credit on the album since he was now a Warner Brothers artist, while the Airplane were on RCA; so the band may have preferred him to work officially ‘undercover’.
(As an aside, though it’s been thought that Garcia played guitar on My Best Friend, we have his word it was Skip Spence – which is curious, because Skip by then was long out of the band, and already playing in Moby Grape.)
The recording sessions went through November 1966 – though the Dead had shows on the weekends, apparently Garcia would fly down to Los Angeles for the Airplane’s weekday recording sessions. It’s clear he attended every session he could, from start to finish, and he must have stayed with the Airplane extensively between sessions while they were in L.A.
Here’s the rundown:
Oct 31 (Mon) – they started with She Has Funny Cars and My Best Friend, without Garcia. (The Dead were playing the “Dance of Death Costume Ball” in San Francisco that day.)
Nov 1 (Tues) – Garcia joined them, and played on Plastic Fantastic Lover.
Nov 2 (Wed) - he played on Today.
Nov 3 (Thu) - White Rabbit, redone from the Great Society’s version.
Nov 4 (Fri) - 3/5 of a Mile, without Garcia – the Dead were playing at the Avalon that night.
(Then there was a break in the sessions for shows in San Francisco & Vancouver.)
Nov 14 (Mon) – recording continued with JPP McStep B Blues, with Garcia playing, and How Do You Feel. (Garcia’s memory might be off when he recalled playing on this song too, but he was definitely at the session that day.)
Nov 15 (Tues) – DCBA-25, and the newly rearranged Somebody to Love.
Nov 16 (Wed) – Comin’ Back To Me, with Garcia playing. (Marty Balin wrote this song during the sessions, and recorded it right away with just Garcia, Slick, and Casady.)
Nov 17 (Thu) – Go To Her (remake of old song, no Garcia involvement, not included on album).
Nov 21 (Mon) – In the Morning, with Garcia playing.
Nov 22 (Tues) – Embryonic Journey.
At some point, Garcia apparently called the music “as surrealistic as a pillow,” thus inspiring the album title.
The sessions wrapped there, and the Airplane returned to San Francisco to play a run of shows at the Fillmore from Nov 25-27 (some of which has just been released, with the Surrealistic Pillow songs still fresh in the sets).
Jorma Kaukonen had many admiring words for Garcia’s role in this album. “He’s definitely in the mix and an important part of the band on those tracks. When I got into the Airplane, I didn’t have a clue about what an electric guitar was except that you plugged it in and it was louder. Jerry was way ahead of all of us in that. Jerry was his own electric guitar player from the jump.”
“When he worked with us on Surrealistic Pillow, he really helped discipline us. Because he had come from a band, and as a band leader and as an arranger, he just really knew what was important. He was really important in the formation of that record, and I know that personally he taught me a lot about playing in a band. I remember one evening he said to us, ‘It’s not what you play. It’s what you don’t play that’s important.’ In terms of dynamics and just plain letting the music speak for itself. As a band leader, he was really ahead of the rest of us.”
(Though Kaukonen may be exaggerating a bit in hindsight, it’s interesting how close this is to David Crosby’s statements about recording If I Could Only Remember My Name, when Garcia played a very similar role as a kind of co-producer – “Jerry Garcia is responsible for that record a very great deal. He was there night after night after night…thinking, listening, talking - you know, acting as a friend, saying ‘Hmmm, man, what if you, how did you, why don't you try a little more, and....’ And he would play. He played on a lot of stuff.”)
David Freiberg said, “He sure did help the Airplane with Surrealistic Pillow. I don’t know what that would have been without him. He was on every track, pretty near. I can hear him playing on Today. I always thought the sweetness that got put on that whole album never would have been there if it wasn’t for him. Because it wasn’t on any other album they ever did.”
http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2010/12/garcia-on-jefferson-airplane.html
It seemed like it would be useful to have a thorough review of Garcia’s involvement in Surrealistic Pillow.
Garcia was listed as the “Musical and Spiritual Adviser” on the back cover when it was released in February ’67. Though perhaps meant to be tongue-in-cheek, it’s actually quite a serious indication of Garcia’s high standing (at least among the Jefferson Airplane). Hidden behind that vague credit, Garcia did quite a bit of work on the Airplane’s album, a couple months before the Dead even entered the studio – in fact, he spent more time on Surrealistic Pillow than he did recording the Dead’s first album!
This is even more surprising since the Airplane were comparative veterans of the studio, compared to Garcia. They had almost as much playing experience as the Dead – they’d formed just a few months later than the Warlocks, gotten a record contract with RCA much earlier, and were already the most successful band in San Francisco, thanks in part to a first album (Takes Off) which had captured lots of attention.
The Dead, meanwhile, had only just signed up with Warner Brothers in September ’66 and wouldn’t record for a few more months. Garcia’s only known studio experience was a few sessions & demos with Autumn Records back in ’65, and a disappointing attempt at recording a single in June ‘66. (His early studio work is actually mostly unknown, really. When asked later on about his pre-Dead recordings, Garcia vaguely replied, “I did some various sessions around San Francisco. Demos and stuff like that.” I haven’t seen any more definite information!)
On the other hand, the Airplane looked up to Garcia as a guitar player and musician. They had not been too happy with their first album (just as the Dead would later feel!), and felt they needed extra help making things run smoothly in the studio. They had also been going through changes – new drummer Spencer Dryden had joined in July ’66, and singer Grace Slick had just joined them in mid-October, only a couple weeks before they started the album sessions. So it’s likely they were still pulling new material together when it came time to record.
Garcia was asked about Surrealistic Pillow in a mid-’67 interview – the interviewer enthused about How Do You Feel: “Yeah, I played flattop on that. I didn’t play flattop in My Best Friend. Skip Spence did – he wrote the song. Let’s see, on Today I played the high guitar line, and I played on Plastic Fantastic, and I played on Comin’ Back To Me… I’m fond of the songs that Grace is in: I like Rabbit a lot, I like Someone to Love – the original on the album is more or less my arrangement, I kind of rewrote it. I’ve always liked the song she used to do with the Great Society, but it didn’t have - the chord changes weren’t very interesting.”
This is the Great Society’s version of Somebody to Love, pre-Garcia:
Studio - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzyDLwUgFdc
Live - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SB11giesKc
(In the same interview, he was asked about the ‘San Francisco Sound’: “I’m not sure what they mean by that. There’s a similarity in the sound…but there’s not really that much similarity in the music… Each of the bands sounds as different from each other as they do from everybody else. The San Francisco music scene is healthier and there’s more stuff going on than there is anyplace else… We all steal freely from each other, we all play together, we’re all friends, we spend a lot of time with each other, we all listen to each other, we’ve all gotten good together, we’ve all improved over the past year or so...playing gigs, getting together and jamming.”)
Garcia later said, “The Airplane thought it would be helpful to have somebody there who could communicate to their producer… And since they all knew me and I understood their music and understood pretty much what they were doing at the time, it would be far-out. I went down there and hung out and was a sort of go-between between them and their producer. I helped out with some arrangements and stuff – I just hung out.”
The Airplane felt Garcia did more than just hang out!
Paul Kantner said, “We had an RCA producer, but Garcia did the art side of it.”
And Jorma Kaukonen said, “Jerry could be credited with really being the producer…in that he was one of us and he knew what to do with the band… He really was the producer who arranged those songs.”
The RCA producer was Rick Jarrard - the Airplane hadn’t liked the producer on their first album, but again they used engineer Dave Hassinger (whom the Dead would work with later).
As Kantner told the story: “Our first album had been made rather restrictive by RCA and we were sort of unhappy with the results, and we needed to get more communication between us and the studio, and in some idiotic fancy of mine, we figured Jerry Garcia would be the person to communicate some of the things we were trying to accomplish in the studio. So [the engineer] would know that Jack's bass should make the board smoke. Smoke comes out of the board, put another fuse in; don't try to damp it down…
"We would be rehearsing something out in the studio, [Garcia] would say, 'I have a nice little part that would work in there; maybe you should play this.' And he would pick up his guitar and go boom, 'Why don't you play that?' and he would play it so good that we said, 'Why don't you play it? It sounds really good and we can't play it better than that. Come on, help us out here.'
"But mostly he was there to serve as sort of a buffer zone between us and the other side of the window. A lot of what we were trying to do, both sound-wise and lyric-wise was eased quite a bit by his very gentlemanly manner. He was not harsh, not abrasive…”
Ironically, the actual producer denied that Garcia was there at all!
Rick Jarrard said, “Jerry Garcia was never present on any of those sessions. Jerry Garcia played no guitar on that album. I never met Jerry Garcia. I produced that album from start to finish, never heard from Jerry Garcia, never talked to Jerry Garcia. He was not involved creatively on that album at all.”
Nonetheless, Garcia is listed as playing guitar on RCA’s session paperwork.
He played the high lead part on Today - he also played guitar on Plastic Fantastic Lover, How Do You Feel, and Comin’ Back To Me - he also played on JPP McStep B Blues and In the Morning, which weren’t included on the album – and he also rearranged Somebody to Love. (All this aside from musical suggestions which went undocumented.) By the band’s admission, this was clearly more than casual session work – Garcia was virtually a band-member! It’s likely that he wasn’t given any music credit on the album since he was now a Warner Brothers artist, while the Airplane were on RCA; so the band may have preferred him to work officially ‘undercover’.
(As an aside, though it’s been thought that Garcia played guitar on My Best Friend, we have his word it was Skip Spence – which is curious, because Skip by then was long out of the band, and already playing in Moby Grape.)
The recording sessions went through November 1966 – though the Dead had shows on the weekends, apparently Garcia would fly down to Los Angeles for the Airplane’s weekday recording sessions. It’s clear he attended every session he could, from start to finish, and he must have stayed with the Airplane extensively between sessions while they were in L.A.
Here’s the rundown:
Oct 31 (Mon) – they started with She Has Funny Cars and My Best Friend, without Garcia. (The Dead were playing the “Dance of Death Costume Ball” in San Francisco that day.)
Nov 1 (Tues) – Garcia joined them, and played on Plastic Fantastic Lover.
Nov 2 (Wed) - he played on Today.
Nov 3 (Thu) - White Rabbit, redone from the Great Society’s version.
Nov 4 (Fri) - 3/5 of a Mile, without Garcia – the Dead were playing at the Avalon that night.
(Then there was a break in the sessions for shows in San Francisco & Vancouver.)
Nov 14 (Mon) – recording continued with JPP McStep B Blues, with Garcia playing, and How Do You Feel. (Garcia’s memory might be off when he recalled playing on this song too, but he was definitely at the session that day.)
Nov 15 (Tues) – DCBA-25, and the newly rearranged Somebody to Love.
Nov 16 (Wed) – Comin’ Back To Me, with Garcia playing. (Marty Balin wrote this song during the sessions, and recorded it right away with just Garcia, Slick, and Casady.)
Nov 17 (Thu) – Go To Her (remake of old song, no Garcia involvement, not included on album).
Nov 21 (Mon) – In the Morning, with Garcia playing.
Nov 22 (Tues) – Embryonic Journey.
At some point, Garcia apparently called the music “as surrealistic as a pillow,” thus inspiring the album title.
The sessions wrapped there, and the Airplane returned to San Francisco to play a run of shows at the Fillmore from Nov 25-27 (some of which has just been released, with the Surrealistic Pillow songs still fresh in the sets).
Jorma Kaukonen had many admiring words for Garcia’s role in this album. “He’s definitely in the mix and an important part of the band on those tracks. When I got into the Airplane, I didn’t have a clue about what an electric guitar was except that you plugged it in and it was louder. Jerry was way ahead of all of us in that. Jerry was his own electric guitar player from the jump.”
“When he worked with us on Surrealistic Pillow, he really helped discipline us. Because he had come from a band, and as a band leader and as an arranger, he just really knew what was important. He was really important in the formation of that record, and I know that personally he taught me a lot about playing in a band. I remember one evening he said to us, ‘It’s not what you play. It’s what you don’t play that’s important.’ In terms of dynamics and just plain letting the music speak for itself. As a band leader, he was really ahead of the rest of us.”
(Though Kaukonen may be exaggerating a bit in hindsight, it’s interesting how close this is to David Crosby’s statements about recording If I Could Only Remember My Name, when Garcia played a very similar role as a kind of co-producer – “Jerry Garcia is responsible for that record a very great deal. He was there night after night after night…thinking, listening, talking - you know, acting as a friend, saying ‘Hmmm, man, what if you, how did you, why don't you try a little more, and....’ And he would play. He played on a lot of stuff.”)
David Freiberg said, “He sure did help the Airplane with Surrealistic Pillow. I don’t know what that would have been without him. He was on every track, pretty near. I can hear him playing on Today. I always thought the sweetness that got put on that whole album never would have been there if it wasn’t for him. Because it wasn’t on any other album they ever did.”
December 3, 2010
Jerry Garcia Interview Links
For some time I’ve lamented that there isn’t a complete archive of Jerry Garcia interviews online. Many interviews in old publications are now more or less inaccessible – a few have been reprinted; a few others have been transcribed online; a few circulate in audio.
So I’ve decided to at least take a small step and try compiling links to the various interviews available to read or hear online. This list is just a start, and is meant to be a work in progress – I hope readers can suggest other interviews I’ve missed, so I can make additions.
This list is not meant to cover what’s available in books or DVDs – it’s a list of weblinks, not a bibliography. I was hesitant to include youtube videos; but there’s a lot of good material there. I drew the line, though, at listing every ten-second snippet!
I also (somewhat arbitrarily) decided not to include torrent downloads, only things that can be streamed, but many audio interviews can also be found on Lossless Legs.
An ever-growing text collection of Garcia interviews up to 1975 is also included on this site:
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2012/08/index-of-articles.html
This list is arranged by date – I tried to list the actual interview dates, but sometimes had to settle for publication date.
UPDATED March 2018 with some youtube interviews added (and others deleted). I'm sure I've missed or forgotten other items online, so it would be appreciated if people could point out some of those!
July '64 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eJfdPThgD4 (Mother McCree's interview)
Spring ’67 - http://www.archive.org/details/gd1967-XX-XX.sbd.bershaw.5419.shnf (Audio)
(Several copies are also up on youtube, for instance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuSGHiQf-n0)
May '70 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpJUZn_G6og (brief video interview in England - excerpt also available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzvUgR4CRvE )
More complete at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmN2k2Dlu8w & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbrVvbjRxTw
'70 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_g2GWeAgYQ (Audio - Grateful Dead radio interview) - link dead
9/70 -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UZZAPWHjlA (Audio - Grateful Dead interview with Alex Bennett on WMCA-AM, New York) - link dead
Also at: https://digitalcollections.library.ucsc.edu/concern/works/rv042t04f?locale=en
10/11/70 - http://www.itkowitz.com/mam1965text.php?aid=260 (by Jay Itkowitz, for Action World) - link dead
Feb ‘71 - ftp://gdead.berkeley.edu/pub/gdead/interviews/garcia-in-JazzPop-mag-Feb71 (by David Bromberg)
6/21/71 (has French voiceover) - taken off youtube; may be available elsewhere?
Summer/Fall ’71 - ftp://gdead.berkeley.edu/pub/gdead/interviews/72-rs-interview (by Charles Reich & Jann Wenner; published in Signpost to New Space)
Also part here: http://www.jannswenner.com/archives/jerry_garcia_part1.aspx
4/11/72 - http://www.muthergrumble.co.uk/issue05/mg0523.htm
April ‘72 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BU30HpQlV94 (very short, only a minute)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqoEI0k0q8I (brief Danish TV bit, from same interview)
5/7/72 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7eh6NDAR-s (brief preshow interview)
'73 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yivr8a9cioc (brief Hell's Angels documentary clip)
6/7/73 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gm8nqWUZso (Audio - by Dennis McNally; mostly about early scene, Neal Cassady) - link dead, but probably available in the "Jerry on Jerry" audiobook.
also here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1fyYBjxIcA
Oct ’73 - http://www.theuncool.com/journalism/grateful-dead-circus-magazine/
Jan ’74 - http://www.theuncool.com/journalism/the-grateful-dead-creem-magazine/ (by Cameron Crowe - not straight interviews, but use lots of Garcia quotes)
6/8/74 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTAHRpJieFk (Audio - by Ken Wardell for BAM, backstage at Oakland Stadium)
9/74 - https://digitalcollections.library.ucsc.edu/concern/works/pz50gw084?locale=en (Audio - WPLJ interview, New York)
October '74 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ve3NqNo7yEA (unreleased interview done for the Grateful Dead Movie) [Dead.net also had an unedited clip of this interview on a "Celebrating Jerry" page a couple years ago]
3/23/75 - http://www.archive.org/details/gd1975-03-23.sbd.snack.18525.flac16 (Audio - preshow interview by James Cameron included)
Spring '75 - https://soundcloud.com/mvyradio/peter-simon-interviews (Audio - by Peter Simon, for WVOI radio)
https://beta.prx.org/stories/179550 (shorter edit, excerpts with songs added)
also here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVBmhw3MDzs
8/6/75 - https://www.wolfgangs.com/music/jerry-garcia/audio/20050256-3264.html?tid=4796387
(Audio - by Mary Travers)
9/22/75 - https://www.wolfgangs.com/music/jerry-garcia/audio/30009-3264.html?tid=49863 (audio)
1/23/76 - https://digitalcollections.library.ucsc.edu/concern/works/jd472w44j?locale=en (Audio - by Bonnie Simmons, on KSAN)
1/31/76 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUGCzIddFL0 (Audio - by Miles Riley, on KPIX)
Video available too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80dcUvmVWzM
4/1/76 - http://www.relix.com/articles/detail/the_grateful_dead_revisited_a_1976_interview_with_jerry_garcia (by Steve Weitzman, for Relix - also published in Rolling Stone's Garcia tribute book)
1976 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjjsI_RDUBA (Audio - by Ben Fong-Torres for Rolling Stone; in 5 parts, follow links - from the "Got Some Things To Talk About" CD)
https://digitalcollections.library.ucsc.edu/concern/works/0r967373m?locale=en (Audio - Ben Fong-Torres interview, dated c.1975, part 1)
https://digitalcollections.library.ucsc.edu/concern/works/0c483j36g?locale=en (part 2)
1976 - https://digitalcollections.library.ucsc.edu/concern/works/g732d897c?locale=en (Audio - "What Was That" interview for KSAN)
10/2/77 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj48pFBUuqo (audio)
also here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-wzFBZnEsQ
3/10/78 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6fijoFd8v0 (Audio - radio interview w/ Garcia & Kahn about punk & new-wave bands – great music excerpts)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ya2Vv1zcGmY (longer, unedited)
3/11/78 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZZYCzoFSIw (Audio - radio interview by Andy Gefen, w/ the JGB)
Oct ‘78 - http://www.guitarplayer.com/miscellaneous/1139/gp-flashback--jerry-garcia-october-1978/11702 (by Jon Sievert; excerpts from Guitar Player interview) - link dead
(deadhookforums.com/archive/index.php/t-17932.html had a few short excerpts from later Guitar Player interviews, but the page is now gone)
11/27/78 - https://digitalcollections.library.ucsc.edu/concern/works/0p0966899?locale=en (Audio - WHMR interview)
also here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iR-aK31pZw
1/11/79 - https://digitalcollections.library.ucsc.edu/concern/works/5425k9713?locale=en (Audio - WLIR interview with Ray White)
also here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB93Pt67j7I
5/10/79 - https://www.wolfgangs.com/music/jerry-garcia-and-mickey-hart/audio/20052081-37384082.html?tid=4796312 (Audio - with Mickey Hart; for Direct News radio broadcast)
6/10/79 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9gUbh02wAo (Audio - Robert Klein radio show)
Also at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWTWF_9_KU0
Also at: http://www.concertvault.com/the-robert-klein-hour/episode-8-june-10-1979.html
11/7/79 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbcqE416lRY (Audio - WMMR radio show, Philadelphia)
12/6/79 - http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/hear-jerry-garcia-talk-bruce-springsteen-grateful-deads-egypt-visit-20160122
Audio - https://studsterkel.wfmt.com/programs/discussing-rock-music-and-pop-culture-and-interviewing-member-grateful-dead-jerry-garcia (Studs Terkel/Abe Peck interview, Chicago)
Also at: https://digitalcollections.library.ucsc.edu/concern/works/j6731377h?locale=en
Oct ‘80 Radio City press conference w/ Weir - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdp_MPqOn5E (pt 1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzFQVIncM64 (complete)
3/28/81 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VccFNwMkr5Q (Audio - hotel room, Essen, Germany)
also here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuzjAxQBf2c
5/7/81 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXPdo2M3ivo (Tomorrow Show w/ Tom Snyder - with Ken Kesey & Bob Weir)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kutqwEFPUdU (with the band)
band clip also here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSdmogq1Hrc (dead links)
& here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO-Q0tGYJiw
Full interview also at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CRohnpQC_8 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zTrVY80kVo
7/10/81 - http://www.archive.org/details/jg1981-07-10-Interview.shnf (audio, St. Paul hotel interview)
also at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl4sxAG3jH4
& https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UH51rOBfQA
9/7/81 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbtdAWZKLdQ (video)
Oct ’81 - ftp://gdead.berkeley.edu/pub/gdead/interviews/Musician.article.1981 (“In Search of the X Factor” – also includes other Dead interviews from Musician issue)
1982 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTMqbNJwITA (Audio - "A Talk with Jerry Garcia" - by Joe Territo) - link dead
also at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GLD3EIzONo (Audio - "a Talk with Jerry," part 1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N11PA-sJF1Y (part 2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pf7cqJsfhAw (part 3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1CY5Qpk1y4 (part 4)
4/9/82 - https://www.wolfgangs.com/music/jerry-garcia/audio/20050252-3264.html?tid=4748644 (Audio - by Lisa Robinson)
5/82 - https://digitalcollections.library.ucsc.edu/concern/works/5425k968s?locale=en (Audio - WRNW interview with Bill Cooper, Westchester NY)
11/8/82 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqItkTk6R-g (Audio - by Bob Coburn, on Rockline radio show) - link dead
https://digitalcollections.library.ucsc.edu/concern/works/v405s9361 (audio)
1/21/83 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBJZSjOhQ2Q (Audio - Santa Rosa 101.7 KVRE FM radio interview)
and here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQzfkOPiuaw
and here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQADTMieWgY
6/2/83 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-zEcX9_nXM (MTV interview, part 1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl85mQ49Rlw (part 2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLEjbZxkFe8 (part 3)
Complete 30-minute clip also here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJbL4HD8t_Q
and here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN4E5GQIZao
May '84 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN4dI4o9VBA (Audio - Paul Krassner radio interview in Eugene, partly printed in '85)
also here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUMOG5tl19E
Fall ’84 - http://www.denniselsas.com/jerry-garcia/ (Video - “PM Magazine” TV spot by Dennis Elsas - brief Garcia comments used)
Fall '84 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC-ZRAAQG84 (Audio - by Alice Kahn, for San Jose Mercury News "West" magazine)
12/31/84 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igfxUvcu_-I (Audio - by Guido Sarducci)
also here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnAIb6hPyuY
1/12/85 - http://jasobrecht.com/jerry-garcia-the-complete-1985-interview/ (complete Jas Obrecht interview for Frets; excerpt was used on guitar.com) - dead link
6/14/85 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCwXK6NfcZM (Audio - 20th-anniversary Grateful Dead press conference in Berkeley)
Sep ’85 - ftp://gdead.berkeley.edu/pub/gdead/interviews/Garcia.1985.by.Paul.Krasner (by Paul Krassner, for Realist; different edit than '84 radio excerpt above)
10/14/86 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JOhtcJCjXA (by Steven Marcus)
also here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdpTSBbo3Vc
’87 (video) - NBC News On Stage, Jerry Garcia Speaks, vol. 1 - used
to be on
hulu.com/watch/11363/nbc-news-on-stage-grateful-dead-jerry-garcia-speaks-vol-1
as well as sidereel.com video, Amazon instant video, etc., but no
longer available for streaming
'87 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tamQ9Uj1Hk (video for Rolling Stone 20th-anniversary TV special) - dead link
’87 - http://blogcritics.org/music/article/interview-jerry-garcia-on-the-making/ (by Justin Kreutzmann, about the Touch of Grey video) - dead link
'87 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S819x9yRJfY (Audio - Grateful Dead "In the Dark" promo interview)
April ’87 - http://edcone.typepad.com/wordup/2003/01/a_conversation_.html (audio - brief)
10/31/87 - https://www.wolfgangs.com/music/jerry-garcia-and-bill-graham/audio/30455-66989.html?tid=50004 (audio)
11/12/87 - http://www.yoyow.com/marye/garcia.html (by Mary Eisenhart, for BAM – full transcript)
12/87 - https://www.guitarworld.com/artists/jerry-garcia-discusses-his-gear-near-fatal-illness-and-new-grateful-dead-album-dark (for Guitar World)
12/31/87 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDPVxYesve8 ("Garcia's backstage kitchen" comedy bit w/ Tom Davis)
also here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMZnjWONmUs
'88 - http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/05/17/jerry-garcia-opens-up-about-life-in-long-lost-1988-interview-tapes/ (by Kate Kelly, for KPIX TV)
full interview at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_8Shnqc5_0
see also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcT3Az70oqs (only brief excerpts)
5/23/88 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyC0oEjfhH8 (Audio excerpt on the acid tests - by Joe Smith - partial interview was printed in Off The Record)
9/13/88 - http://hightimes.com/entertainment/ht_admin/609 (by Legs McNeil for High Times, on rainforests) - dead link
7/3/89 -
http://www.relix.com/articles/detail/q-a-with-jerry-garcia-portrait-of-an-artist-as-a-tripper
(by Jeremy Alderson, for Relix)
Oct ‘89 -
http://www.relix.com/articles/detail/built-to-last-a-conversation-with-jerry-garcia (by Steve Peters, for Relix)
10/13/89 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1qnkJO4hCI (video)
10/16/89 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7TzOtos1Zw (radio call-in questions)
11/20/89 - https://digitalcollections.library.ucsc.edu/concern/works/4q77fr33m?locale=en (Audio - "Timothy White's Rock Stars" radio interview with Garcia & Bob Weir)
https://digitalcollections.library.ucsc.edu/concern/works/h128nd71m?locale=en (part 2)
11/30/89 - http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/the-rolling-stone-interview-jerry-garcia-19891130 (by Fred Goodman, for Rolling Stone)
Also at:
http://www.dead.net/features/jerry-garcia-rolling-stone-interview-page-2
http://www.dead.net/features/jerry-garcia-rolling-stone-interview-page-3
http://www.dead.net/features/jerry-garcia-rolling-stone-interview-page-4
May '90 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_lSnwBddzg (in Hawaii, on a boat) - dead link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9vMF_7gMoo (by Peter Connett)
Part of this video is a different Hawaii boat interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q38_r-DorSA
5/10/90 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ3wbJ2Mfsw (audio - Honolulu hotel interview by Ben DiPietro)
5/19/90 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eHi48I2gPc (audio - Hawaii hotel interview)
6/27/90 - https://medium.com/@hrheingold/june-27-1990-interview-with-jerry-garcia-c63ddb4178d1 (by Howard Rheingold - with Bear)
Oct '90? - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6rNO0i2gxE (GD press conference)
2/27/91 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMiqDiSU8xY (Headliners TV) - This has been taken down.
3/1/91 - ftp://gdead.berkeley.edu/pub/gdead/interviews/Garcia-Costello-Musician-03011991 (w/ Elvis Costello, for Musician)
4/16/91 - https://medium.com/@hrheingold/interview-with-jerry-garcia-bob-weir-april-16-1991-dff48d26f0af (with Bob Weir, by Howard Rheingold, for Interview magazine)
6/27/91 - http://brigidmeier.com/jg-interview/ (by Brigid Meier - excerpt later printed in spring 1992 Tricycle magazine) - the site is now gone!
9/9/91 - http://www.nytimes.com/1991/09/09/arts/grateful-dead-alive-and-thriving.html
(by Peter Watrous, for the NY Times)
9/13/91 - ftp://gdead.berkeley.edu/pub/gdead/interviews/Jerry-Garcia-09.13.91 (by Scott Muni)
(Same as ftp://gdead.berkeley.edu/pub/gdead/interviews/jerry-interview-fall1991 and ftp://gdead.berkeley.edu/pub/gdead/interviews/garcia91 )
10/31/91 - http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/jerry-garcia-the-rolling-stone-interview-19911031 (by James Henke, for Rolling Stone)
spring ’92 - ftp://gdead.berkeley.edu/pub/gdead/interviews/garcia-Tricycle-Buddhist-Review (by Barbara Meier, for Tricycle)
May '93 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBuBKctZ0xE (backstage in Las Vegas)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5af3P8gOOQo (part 2)
also here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AmK5wsQ-4A
May '93 - http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1993-06-10/features/9306100421_1_polite-fall-tour-band (by Greg Kot, for the Chicago Tribune)
5/20/93 - ftp://gdead.berkeley.edu/pub/gdead/interviews/Guitar-Player-1993 (w/ Bob Weir - by Jon Sievert, for Guitar Player)
9/2/93 - http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/the-rolling-stone-interview-jerry-garcia-19930902 (by Anthony Decurtis, for Rolling Stone)
’93 - ftp://gdead.berkeley.edu/pub/gdead/interviews/New-Yorker-article (10/11/93 New Yorker retrospective, by Bill Barich)
Jan ’94 – http://www.lycaeum.org/~maverick/garcia.htm (for Magical Blend)
(Different edits of this interview also available at ftp://gdead.berkeley.edu/pub/gdead/interviews/jerry-interview-Magic-Blend and
http://malfalfa1.tripod.com/garciainterview.htm and
ftp://gdead.berkeley.edu/pub/gdead/interviews/GarciaInterview-byDavidJayBrown-RebeccaMcClenNovick )
3/31/94 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rM64QhtDWGo (short interview on art)
5/2/94 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVkkbJ_KI2Y (History of Rock & Roll unedited interview)
also one fragment here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grQ8f5oOcY4
There used to be a shorter two-part copy on youtube, but it's gone now -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlLz5PBwUQc - this is part 2.
'94 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdfpzVaVSek (phone interview about comic-book artist Will Elder)
'95 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeW-kdQ46ys (Jerry talks about Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein)
also here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qVIKJuSZbI
4/28/95 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1APJNMkfiys (Garcia's last interview) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo2E_n27WjQ (excerpt from above - a brief reminiscence about the old Palo Alto days) - Now gone!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqYGZqel-ss (excerpt on LSD)
ftp://gdead.berkeley.edu/pub/gdead/interviews/Jerry-on-Lord-Buckley.02dec1995
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf28wgj5RbQ (a brief clip of Jerry talking about playing on Merl Saunders' Blues From the Rain Forest) - This has been taken down.
I think this is the same one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77V2KaDofzA (don't know what interview it's from)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utNwlr1Bxc8 (brief audio on 1970 drug bust; don't know what interview it's from)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hwnI8haOeA (on the trip to Egypt; haven't placed interview)
Various - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zxn66PN74aE (Audio - "Got Some Things To Talk About" compilation) - dead link, but see 1976 link above.
compilation of excerpts - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzxYXOWQ8tQ
'80s - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcV2ljT3xiQ (Don Fass "Reaching Up Radio" show, part 1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfrZsbGXTCg (part 2)
Nov ’91 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaT5FO-qkvU (some interesting Garcia comments used in this CNN news report from Aug '95)
https://digitalcollections.library.ucsc.edu/concern/works/2z10wq22z?locale=en (Audio - 1999 "American Routes" radio program, has excerpts from a July '89 Smithsonian interview by Nick Spitzer)
https://digitalcollections.library.ucsc.edu/concern/works/cj82k731z?locale=en (part 2)
Also at: http://americanroutes.wwno.org/archives/show/397/Jerry-Garcia
Some other short TV bits:
11/6/79 Philadelphia TV show (with Weir) -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPRxHU9Zr0g
https://digitalcollections.library.ucsc.edu/concern/works/zp38wc63s?locale=en
c.1980 Good Morning America -
https://digitalcollections.library.ucsc.edu/concern/works/1v53jw986?locale=en
10/29/80 Good Morning America (with Weir) -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2pBgYBI30s
1982 Don Bleu's Weekend (talking about Run for the Roses) -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4rBNNL8DQw
4/13/82 Letterman TV show w/ Weir -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ss-i2VgcPw
also at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4skH27r5dLc
9/5/82 ABC Nightline w/ Sting -
9/17/87 Letterman TV show w/ Weir -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTut68r_Q-E
9/15/88 Good Morning America (talking about rain forests) -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM1wgpeaSSM
10/10/89 ABC Studios, interviewer Kurt Loder (with Weir, on the growing audience at recent tours) -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9J2ISeLQ7fw
October '89 Today Show (with Weir, a similar interview) -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kq2VpRfl0U
And
Garcia with Grace Slick & Bill Graham on a San Francisco TV show in
1984, interviewer Bill Kurtis (talking about changes in the music scene
since the '60s) -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mc05osNEdo
November 25, 2010
The Very Short Tale of Golden Road
When the Grateful Dead went home from the LA studios in February ’67, they probably thought they were finished recording – after all, they’d recorded more than enough songs for an album. But Warner Bros wanted a single, and asked for another song: as Garcia reported, “After we recorded the album they said, ‘We still haven’t got anything here that’d be a strong single,’ so we said, ‘Ah, a strong single, sure!’ So we went home and wrote a song.”
They decided to write a song about the Haight hippie scene. The title came to them from Sue Swanson – she was their first fan, having watched over them ever since the first Warlocks rehearsals at Dana Morgan’s store in ’65. (She’d been Weir’s friend, and immediately became so enthusiastic about them, she insisted on going to every Warlocks rehearsal and even playing the 45s they learned songs from. “My job was to change the 45s. ‘Play that part again!’ It was a crummy little phonograph that would sit on the counter. I’ll never forget the sound of them practicing in there, and all the cymbals and everything in the whole room would be…making all this noise.”)
She’d been their constant companion since then. With the Dead’s first album now finally being released, Sue decided it was time to organize a fan club, and called it The Golden Road to Unlimited Devotion. She, Connie Bonner, and Bob Matthews put out the Dead’s first fan newsletter that April, the Olompali Sunday Times. (The first two issues can be seen here: http://www.dead.net/tags/fan-club - they’re short, and well worth the read.)
The Dead recorded the song at Coast Recorders in San Francisco later in February, rather than going back to LA. They were able to take more time with this song, recording lots of takes, so it’s more layered with overdubs than the other songs on the album.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45YoZCo8dvU - the alternate single mix, with more studio effects than the cleaner album mix.
Lyrically, it’s something of an attempt to capture the Haight scene in a bottle, inviting everyone to “come and join the party every day.” (Ironically, the second fan-club newsletter from May describes the Haight being swamped with tourists, staring at the hippies!)
Garcia said, “The Golden Road was our effort at nailing down some of that feeling, I guess. That was sort of our group writing experience before Hunter was with us. We kept it simple. But what can you say? ‘We took a bunch of acid and had a lot of fun?’”
The band credited Golden Road on the album to McGannahan Skjellyfetti – a mythical character, based on a name in Kenneth Patchen’s book Memoirs of a Shy Pornographer. (My guess is Pigpen was the Patchen fan, since he was into beat poetry.)
As it turned out, Skjellyfetti would have a brief writing career, getting credits for Golden Road, Cold Rain & Snow, New Minglewood Blues, and “Feedback” on Live/Dead, before fading away. (On more recent CD issues, he’s disappeared altogether under the stern frowns of music publishers.)
We only have two live Golden Roads.
3/18/67 - http://www.archive.org/details/gd1967-03-18.sbd.sacks.1594.shnf (the other, better Archive file is currently not streaming)
‘5/5/67’ - http://www.archive.org/details/gd67-05-05.sbs.yerys.1595.sbeok.shnf (segues into New Potato Caboose)
It’s unusual among the Dead’s live songs – they do it exactly like the studio version (even the guitar solo’s unchanged) - and clocking in at two minutes, it must be the shortest live song they ever did. (Which may be one reason they moved on and left it behind – in ’67, the Dead didn’t stand still for long. Ironically, this summer-of-love song was already history by the summer of love.)
Those who wonder why the Dead dropped it so quickly should also remember that all the Dead’s early pre-Hunter songs followed that pattern. Garcia was never too happy with his lyrics (“I felt my lyric writing was woefully inadequate”), and the band was eager to abandon their early compositions. (They were primarily a covers band at the time, and wrote very few of their own songs in any case.) Almost none of their 1966 songs made it into ’67 except for Cream Puff War (that we know of…for all we know, they may well have played Alice D Millionaire or Tastebud live in ’67). And by the time Hunter started writing lyrics for them, pretty much all their older original songs were dropped.
Though they likely played Golden Road quite often in early ’67, it probably didn't last in their sets past the summer/fall.
Some inaccurate setlist sites report more specific performances of Golden Road. Deadbase.com, for instance, shows the mysterious 6/15/67 Straight Theater show with the setlist borrowed from ‘5/5/67’. Setlists.net has at least finally omitted their hoax listing of 12/18/65 Big Beat Club (which also used the same setlist).
For the 4/12/67 Mime Troupe benefit at the Fillmore, Golden Road is the only song listed, and is said to have opened the set. The Dead may well have played it.
6/8/67 Cafe au Go Go has a very nice-looking setlist which includes Cream Puff, Cryptical, New Potato, Born Cross-Eyed, and Alligator>Caution. Clearly a fake! (The available setlist for 6/6/67, though probably also fake and suspiciously Pigpen-heavy, does at least show what a full mid-’67 set would have looked like, and is also partly confirmed by Phil Lesh’s description of a Café au Go Go set in his book: “Pig’s blues and R&B, arrangements of traditional songs, a Dylan song,” and Alligator…though ironically, he may have just looked up this setlist!)
Back in the real world, there is also a video of Golden Road from a '60s British TV show called Whicker's World. This was “a weekly UK news journal show that ventured to San Francisco to report on the hippie generation. The Grateful Dead were featured getting stoned in their Haight Ashbury pad, as well as performing The Golden Road.” (The filming took place in March ’67, and is actually mentioned with some excitement in the first fan-club newsletter.)
I can’t find a good link to this clip, so I’ll offer this description from deadlists: “The video portion is intense to watch. Strobe lights are flashing and the camera zooms in and out very fast on the band members… There is a lot of footage of people dancing (and the guy doing the oil-based light show).”
The British narrator announces the clip: “An assault on the senses, an LSD trip without drugs. Flashing strobe lights, spermatazoic color.”
Sad to say, the Golden Road is not live, but dubbed from the album.
The band did at least mention Golden Road onstage again, a few years later. On 6/7/70, the fourth night of a Fillmore West run, the Dead were taking a little break onstage after Sitting on Top of the World.
Garcia explained, “We’re waiting around until a good idea comes up.” Of course, the audience offered a few ideas of their own. (Earlier in the show, the band had jokingly aborted Louie Louie as Weir exclaimed, “Hey man, none of us knows that song!”)
Now Weir spoke up again: “Hey, there’s a guy over there, and he’s always over there, and he always yells out ‘Golden Road.’ And I want to know who he is, man, because you take the cake. I mean, actually, quite truthfully, we’ve forgotten that song, we’ve forgotten how to play it.”
They decided to write a song about the Haight hippie scene. The title came to them from Sue Swanson – she was their first fan, having watched over them ever since the first Warlocks rehearsals at Dana Morgan’s store in ’65. (She’d been Weir’s friend, and immediately became so enthusiastic about them, she insisted on going to every Warlocks rehearsal and even playing the 45s they learned songs from. “My job was to change the 45s. ‘Play that part again!’ It was a crummy little phonograph that would sit on the counter. I’ll never forget the sound of them practicing in there, and all the cymbals and everything in the whole room would be…making all this noise.”)
She’d been their constant companion since then. With the Dead’s first album now finally being released, Sue decided it was time to organize a fan club, and called it The Golden Road to Unlimited Devotion. She, Connie Bonner, and Bob Matthews put out the Dead’s first fan newsletter that April, the Olompali Sunday Times. (The first two issues can be seen here: http://www.dead.net/tags/fan-club - they’re short, and well worth the read.)
The Dead recorded the song at Coast Recorders in San Francisco later in February, rather than going back to LA. They were able to take more time with this song, recording lots of takes, so it’s more layered with overdubs than the other songs on the album.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45YoZCo8dvU - the alternate single mix, with more studio effects than the cleaner album mix.
Lyrically, it’s something of an attempt to capture the Haight scene in a bottle, inviting everyone to “come and join the party every day.” (Ironically, the second fan-club newsletter from May describes the Haight being swamped with tourists, staring at the hippies!)
Garcia said, “The Golden Road was our effort at nailing down some of that feeling, I guess. That was sort of our group writing experience before Hunter was with us. We kept it simple. But what can you say? ‘We took a bunch of acid and had a lot of fun?’”
The band credited Golden Road on the album to McGannahan Skjellyfetti – a mythical character, based on a name in Kenneth Patchen’s book Memoirs of a Shy Pornographer. (My guess is Pigpen was the Patchen fan, since he was into beat poetry.)
As it turned out, Skjellyfetti would have a brief writing career, getting credits for Golden Road, Cold Rain & Snow, New Minglewood Blues, and “Feedback” on Live/Dead, before fading away. (On more recent CD issues, he’s disappeared altogether under the stern frowns of music publishers.)
We only have two live Golden Roads.
3/18/67 - http://www.archive.org/details/gd1967-03-18.sbd.sacks.1594.shnf (the other, better Archive file is currently not streaming)
‘5/5/67’ - http://www.archive.org/details/gd67-05-05.sbs.yerys.1595.sbeok.shnf (segues into New Potato Caboose)
It’s unusual among the Dead’s live songs – they do it exactly like the studio version (even the guitar solo’s unchanged) - and clocking in at two minutes, it must be the shortest live song they ever did. (Which may be one reason they moved on and left it behind – in ’67, the Dead didn’t stand still for long. Ironically, this summer-of-love song was already history by the summer of love.)
Those who wonder why the Dead dropped it so quickly should also remember that all the Dead’s early pre-Hunter songs followed that pattern. Garcia was never too happy with his lyrics (“I felt my lyric writing was woefully inadequate”), and the band was eager to abandon their early compositions. (They were primarily a covers band at the time, and wrote very few of their own songs in any case.) Almost none of their 1966 songs made it into ’67 except for Cream Puff War (that we know of…for all we know, they may well have played Alice D Millionaire or Tastebud live in ’67). And by the time Hunter started writing lyrics for them, pretty much all their older original songs were dropped.
Though they likely played Golden Road quite often in early ’67, it probably didn't last in their sets past the summer/fall.
Some inaccurate setlist sites report more specific performances of Golden Road. Deadbase.com, for instance, shows the mysterious 6/15/67 Straight Theater show with the setlist borrowed from ‘5/5/67’. Setlists.net has at least finally omitted their hoax listing of 12/18/65 Big Beat Club (which also used the same setlist).
For the 4/12/67 Mime Troupe benefit at the Fillmore, Golden Road is the only song listed, and is said to have opened the set. The Dead may well have played it.
6/8/67 Cafe au Go Go has a very nice-looking setlist which includes Cream Puff, Cryptical, New Potato, Born Cross-Eyed, and Alligator>Caution. Clearly a fake! (The available setlist for 6/6/67, though probably also fake and suspiciously Pigpen-heavy, does at least show what a full mid-’67 set would have looked like, and is also partly confirmed by Phil Lesh’s description of a Café au Go Go set in his book: “Pig’s blues and R&B, arrangements of traditional songs, a Dylan song,” and Alligator…though ironically, he may have just looked up this setlist!)
Back in the real world, there is also a video of Golden Road from a '60s British TV show called Whicker's World. This was “a weekly UK news journal show that ventured to San Francisco to report on the hippie generation. The Grateful Dead were featured getting stoned in their Haight Ashbury pad, as well as performing The Golden Road.” (The filming took place in March ’67, and is actually mentioned with some excitement in the first fan-club newsletter.)
I can’t find a good link to this clip, so I’ll offer this description from deadlists: “The video portion is intense to watch. Strobe lights are flashing and the camera zooms in and out very fast on the band members… There is a lot of footage of people dancing (and the guy doing the oil-based light show).”
The British narrator announces the clip: “An assault on the senses, an LSD trip without drugs. Flashing strobe lights, spermatazoic color.”
Sad to say, the Golden Road is not live, but dubbed from the album.
The band did at least mention Golden Road onstage again, a few years later. On 6/7/70, the fourth night of a Fillmore West run, the Dead were taking a little break onstage after Sitting on Top of the World.
Garcia explained, “We’re waiting around until a good idea comes up.” Of course, the audience offered a few ideas of their own. (Earlier in the show, the band had jokingly aborted Louie Louie as Weir exclaimed, “Hey man, none of us knows that song!”)
Now Weir spoke up again: “Hey, there’s a guy over there, and he’s always over there, and he always yells out ‘Golden Road.’ And I want to know who he is, man, because you take the cake. I mean, actually, quite truthfully, we’ve forgotten that song, we’ve forgotten how to play it.”
November 24, 2010
The Zodiacs
Sometime in early 1965, the Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Band, with gigs drying up and rock bands sprouting all around them, decided to take the plunge and go electric. For years, Garcia had floated around in various bluegrass bands, playing at folk clubs like the Tangent in Palo Alto, where electric guitars were a forbidden, despised instrument.
But the Warlocks were not taking a total step into the dark – for Garcia, Pigpen, and Kreutzmann had played in a blues-rock band back in 1963.
Bob Weir: "Garcia had done a few electric gigs with Pig in a band called the Zodiacs before I'd ever known them, and so they had a little experience with R&B."
Sara Garcia: “For money, Jerry had played in a rock & roll band with Troy Weidenheimer. They played fraternity parties. What they had to put up with was awful.”
In fact, Garcia’s rock & roll connection went back even farther than that. Several of Garcia’s friends said that he’d played the brief solo in Bobby Freeman’s Do You Wanna Dance back in 1958, when he was 15:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-CzCDIiylE
Sara Garcia, David Nelson, Rock Scully, and Phil Lesh all independently claim that Garcia played guitar on this single - presumably he told them so. It’s rather mysterious how it could have happened; there’s some more discussion here:
http://www.whitegum.com/introjs.htm?/songfile/DO1YOUWA.HTM
(Other Dead researchers have firmly refuted this story in the comments. But it appears Garcia did do some session work for Bobby Freeman when he was on Autumn Records, around '65 or so. Garcia later said, "I did some various sessions around San Francisco; demos and stuff like that.")
In 1959, Garcia was briefly in a band called the Chords, ‘featuring the Golden Saxes,’ a group mainly featuring ‘40s big-band tunes like Misty. As Garcia said, “kind of easy-listening stuff. Businessman’s bounce, high school version.” They mostly played for fellow high-school audiences – sometimes they’d play a rock song such as Raunchy, one of the first big instrumental rock hits:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnbSEm8Pnxk
Garcia remembered, "We had a five-piece combo - a piano, two saxes, a bass, and my guitar. We won a contest and got to record a song. We did Raunchy, but it didn't turn out very well."
But it wasn’t long before Garcia discovered folk music and left rock & roll behind.
By 1963, Garcia was playing in as many bluegrass bands as he could put together. As one friend noted, “He loved to play, and it didn’t take much encouragement or much of an occasion to get him to throw a ‘band’ together. For sidemen he would use whoever was handy to fill out his band, oftentimes naming the band on the way to the gig.”
Trouble was, there wasn’t much money in it, and there weren’t that many bluegrass players around. As Garcia said, “Bluegrass bands are hard to put together because you have to have good bluegrass musicians to play, and in Palo Alto there wasn’t really very many of them – not enough to keep a band going all the time.” So on the side, Garcia also played in a rock band with his friend Pigpen (who was not such a folkie purist, and was happy to accompany anyone who’d play the blues).
http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2010/11/swains-music-store-palo-alto-ca.html quotes this article:
“Towards the end of 1962 [Pigpen] got a part-time job at Swain's Music Store in Palo Alto, and it was there more than anywhere else that the Grateful Dead seed began to grow.... Swain's Music Store, where Pigpen was working, was run by a guy named Troy Weidenheimer who had ideas about forming his own rock'n'roll band. He of course knew Pigpen, Pigpen knew Garcia, Garcia knew Kreutzmann, and so…a short-lived band called the Zodiacs was formed. Troy played lead guitar, Pigpen was on harp. They used a wide selection of drummers but most of the time it was Bill Kreutzmann, and Garcia would sometimes join in on bass guitar when he wasn't involved with his own bluegrass groups.”
Blair Jackson:
“Occasionally, Jerry picked up a bass and Pigpen sang with a local group called the Zodiacs, which played frat parties and other dances on the Peninsula, churning out the radio hits of the day, along with hipper R&B selections. The group was fronted by a guitarist named Troy Weidenheimer, who could play Freddie King lyrics like the master himself….”
According to Dennis McNally, Troy was the manager at Dana Morgan’s Music Store, where Garcia was giving guitar & banjo lessons. Regardless of which music store Troy was at, he was also a music teacher, and he and Garcia were already acquaintances.
They had met back in ’61 at the Boar’s Head folk club in San Carlos - Garcia would play folk songs there; Troy would play Ventures or Jimmy Reed songs on electric guitar; and Pigpen would play solo blues on guitar & harmonica. (David Nelson and Robert Hunter would also play there.) So when Troy wanted to form a band, he didn’t have to cast far for fellow members.
http://jerrywrite.blogspot.com/ is an interesting essay by Norm van Maastricht, a friend of Garcia’s in the early Tangent bluegrass days, which talks a lot about Garcia at that time, and his love of practicing banjo and playing loud instruments. “Hunter, Nelson, Garcia and I hung out together a lot. We would pool our money and [rotate coffeeshops] and nurse cups of coffee for hours… We talked about getting gigs and maybe getting famous one day. ‘Fame! Cookies! Comic books!’ as Garcia would say…”
“Jerry would let me know when a Playing Opportunity was coming up [and] we four would load us and our instruments into that old car and go anywhere we could play… We played a lot of little gigs, usually at no pay. Sometimes it would just be a house party. Sometimes a coffeehouse in San Francisco… We’d just pile in the car, get there, set up and play, get in the car and go home… You just played as much as you could. Sometimes they even fed you. They seldom paid you.”
“Troy Weidenheimer taught guitar over at Swain’s House of Music in Palo Alto. He would get together with us from time to time… Troy was an excellent guitarist. He played and taught electric jazz and rock. He would laughingly refer to our [folk] music as ‘hamburger music’, but he would come by and jam all the same.”
Dark rumours circulated that Garcia was “secretly fooling around with an electric group,” playing blues and rock, definitely a no-no among the Tangent crowd…
McNally: “Troy had a band called the Zodiacs, and that summer [‘63] he invited Garcia to join it – as the bass player. It was great fun, Jerry would say, despite the fact that it was ‘out of my idiom’…. The band also included a young local drummer named Bill Kreutzmann, and Jerry’s old friend Ron McKernan on harmonica.”
McNally also reports that Troy attemped to teach Bob Weir guitar circa ‘63/64, “but Troy taught a straight-ahead big-band style, and it did not appeal to Weir.” (So Weir gravitated to Jorma Kaukonen for guidance instead.)
Eric Thompson (one of Garcia’s bluegrass bandmates):
“While Jerry was teaching folk guitar, Troy was teaching electric guitar; he was known around town. Troy had an R&B band that played Stanford frat parties, and Jerry sometimes played bass in it, and Pigpen was the singer. Troy could not only play exactly like Freddy King, he could move like Freddy King, too. During that period, Freddy had his blues song hits in the chitlin’ circuit and his instrumental hits in the frat circuit, and he was playing both kinds of gigs. So that was part of the Troy niche, those instrumental hits Freddy King had – Hideaway, San Hozay, The Stumble…it was like surf guitar in a way, instrumental music that you could dance to. When Jerry got interested in the electric guitar again, he devoured the Freddy King stuff, but he’d already been watching Troy do it, so he already knew a lot about it.”
(I don’t know much about what the Zodiacs played other than Freddy King covers, but the music clearly had a big impact on Garcia. This article talks about Hideaway’s later appearances in Grateful Dead shows:
http://www.thebestofwebsite.com/Bands/Grateful_Dead/Misc/Hideaway.htm
Probably the closest we get in early Dead shows to the atmosphere of a Zodiacs set are things like Heads Up & the blues instrumental from 3/19/66, or the instrumental on 3/25/66.)
Pigpen remembered in 1970:
"I was in a band with Troy Weidenheimer called the Zodiacs. The Zodiacs were playing beer-drinkin' fraternity parties at Stanford, and Troy played lead, his old lady Sherry played rhythm, Garcia would occasionally sit in on Fender bass, Roy Ogburn would play bass and drum, and I'd sing and play harmonica. The Zodiacs played really wet gigs, man...they'd rent the men's dressing room and we'd play in there with the showers and benches...weird frat-house parties and stuff... Troy got the gigs; he was the leader. Each of us would make 20 bucks per gig. But it ain't worth having to contend with 200 football players...they thought we were strange, long-haired freaks. [We'd play] Searchin', Walkin' the Dog, Sensation, San-Ho-Zay, some Jimmy Reed tunes. We played Gert Chiarito's Midnight Special show on KPFA. Me and Jerry did one, too. I played harmonica and Jerry played guitar."
Garcia was already familiar with Pigpen from the folk clubs, but said: "As early as when we were playing in the Zodiacs together, I discovered that Pigpen was not a guy who wanted to be a performer. I had to practically force him to perform. He'd always be out in the parking lot or somewhere when we were supposed to go onstage."
Garcia later spoke at length about Troy Weidenheimer’s influence on him:
“Troy taught me the principle of ‘hey – stomp your foot and get on it.’ He was a great one for the instant arrangement…fearless for that thing of ‘get your friends and do it,’ and ‘fuck it if it ain’t slick, it’s supposed to be fun.’ He had a wide-open style of playing that was very, very loose; like when we went to play gigs at the Stanford parties, we didn’t have songs or anything, and he would just say ‘play B-flat,’ you know, and I’d play bass, and we’d just play along and he’d jam over the top of it; so a lot of my conceptions of the freedom available to your playing really came from him. He would take chorus after chorus, but he directed the band right in the now… We never rehearsed or anything ever, we would just go to the shows and play – and he was so loose about it, he didn’t care, he just wanted it cookin’ so he could play his solos; and he was just a wonderful, inventive, and fun, good-humored guitar player. One of the first guys I ever heard who exhibited a real sense of humor on the guitar. He was quite accomplished. I mean, in those days he was certainly the hot-rod guitar player of Palo Alto, as far as electric guitar was concerned. While I was a folkie and all that…”
Troy Weidenheimer says,
"My band the Zodiacs was active for about 4 years and began with 4 friends at Menlo College in Menlo Park, Ca. It was always a blues band. The Zodiacs is where Pigpen worked out his harp playing and blues singing.
My regular bassist was a jazz player on Fender bass and my preferred drummer was a very young jazz drummer. Kreutzmann was a stand in when the jazz drummer was unavailable. We often had a jazz sax player also. In the later years we usually played with an RnB quartet from East Palo Alto called the Outer Limits. So we billed the band "The Zodiacs and the Outer Limits".
There were opportunities for me to play in Jerry's bluegrass or electric groups but I was pretty put off by the drug and acid trips that were becoming part of that scene in San Francisco, and I was really only interested in a blues/jazz style of music, whereas Jerry's first bands tended to sound a lot like folk-rock groups.
By the way my wife Sharon Huddleston was key to that band. She was a great rhythm guitarist and good blues singer. I met her at the same time I met Jerry and a group of folkies who hung out together around Palo Alto. She was only about 16 but a very solid natural musican and singer. She had been mainly playing folk stuff and acoustic blues from the 30's before meeting me. We got married within a year or so and she bought a Gibson electric and started playing rhythm in my band. Whenever Jerry played with us it was always on bass, but at casual jams at parties we would both be on acoustic guitars or often Jerry on banjo. At most of the parties there would be an acoustic jam going in one room and a jazz/blues jam usually with a drummer in another room. In those days I was almost always in the jazz jam on electric, and Jerry would be in the acoustic folk/bluegrass jam."
I don’t know how long Garcia played with the Zodiacs – or if he was even in the band at the same time Kreutzmann was. Garcia later fuzzily remembered, “I may have played a gig with him once when I was playing electric bass in a rock & roll band on weekends.” (Garcia had, coincidentally, met Kreutzmann sometime earlier, when he bought a banjo Kreutzmann’s father was selling.)
But soon Garcia retreated back to the folkie world, making a bluegrass trip east in ‘64. By the end of ’64, though, he’d become dissatisfied with the opportunities in bluegrass, and the call of rock music started to sound more appealing. “In the area I was in, there were virtually no bluegrass musicians: very few, certainly nobody very good… I wanted to have a great bluegrass band, but I only got occasional chances to put a bluegrass band together that was (by my standards) even acceptable. Although I had fun, none of them was serious or a very good attempt.”
In the meantime, “I decided to put together a jug band, because you could have a jug band with guys that could hardly play at all.”
Blair Jackson says that the Zodiacs kept playing concurrently with Mother McCree’s jugband in ’64, but I'd guess Garcia was out of the band by then. Bill Kreutzmann, meanwhile, became the drummer in another popular R&B band called the Legends. Mike Shapiro (of the band William Penn & His Pals) claimed that Troy was also a guitarist in the Legends, but that wasn't so. (Shapiro also reports, "We were actually in a Battle of the Bands with the Grateful Dead. They won and I never really could figure that out because they were really bad back then." This was in '65 with the Warlocks, at the Cinnamon Tree in San Carlos.)
McNally describes the Legends: “Fronted by a black vocalist named Jay Price, the Legends…covered James Brown, Junior Parker, Freddie King, the Isley Brothers’ Shout, and Ray Charles’ What’d I Say. They wore red coats, black ties, and black pants, and played YMCA dances, fraternity parties, and shows at the local navy airstrip…” Kreutzmann later said, “It wasn’t too soulful,” but one Palo Alto high-schooler remembered, “They were the best band at the school…they were great…they made the kids dance like they weren’t supposed to…”
Meanwhile, Mother McCree’s was going through an identity crisis.
Garcia said, “We played any place that would hire a jug band, which was almost no place, and that’s the whole reason we finally got into electric stuff.” He also wanted to have “big fun… I was up for the idea of breaking out. You know: ‘give me that electric guitar – fuckin’ A!’ … For me, playing the electric guitar represented freedom from the tremendous control trip [of banjo playing.] What I wanted to do more than anything else was not be in control nearly so much. And playing the electric guitar freed me!… It was much easier putting together a rock & roll band than having a bluegrass band.”
Lesh: “Some say it was Garcia’s idea to turn Mother McCree’s into an electric blues band, but Garcia told me it was Pigpen’s idea. At first he wanted to electrify the jug band, but then changed his mind, saying, ‘No, let’s get a drummer and make it a blues band.’”
Garcia: “[The electric band] was Pigpen's idea. He'd been pestering me for a while, he wanted me to start up an electric blues band....because in the jug band we used to do blues numbers like Jimmy Reed tunes and even played a couple of rock & roll tunes, and it was just the next step.... Theoretically it's a blues band, but the minute we get electric instruments it's a rock & roll band....”
They didn’t have to look far for a drummer, or for instruments, as the entire band was working in Dana Morgan’s Music Store - Garcia and Weir both taught guitar there, Kreutzmann was a drum teacher there, the bass player was the owner’s son Dana Morgan Jr, and (according to McNally) Pigpen was the janitor. Three of them had already been Zodiacs, and one was even a Legend, so they had some rock experience. So becoming an electric band was as simple as borrowing some instruments from the store… (Garcia’s folkie banjo students who dropped by Morgan’s were shocked and saddened to see that he had succumbed to the electric demon!)
But as John Dawson said, “Dana had all the stuff to play on, so they let him be the bass player. But he couldn’t play bass for shit, man.” So Dana was fired – unfortunately, that meant the band was kicked out of Morgan’s music store, and had to return their instruments. (Dana Morgan Sr said, “I just hated the noise they were making… They kept sneaking back in. Finally I got so tired of them I sold the instruments.”) Undaunted, the band simply moved to other stores, borrowing instruments from Guitars Unlimited and Swain’s House of Music (and buying what they could, with the help of their parents). As for a bass player? Garcia had played bass in a rock band himself, despite never playing bass before, so he had no hesitation in asking another non-bass player to join…
And what of Troy Weidenheimer, guitarist for the first embryonic pre-Dead band? He later moved to Vancouver, Canada, where he opened his own music store, Troy Music. Though their doors closed long ago, he still teaches music:
http://www.rakun.com/music/
He says, "I am still playing and teaching. Fortunately I've not had any physical problems so at age 69 am playing better guitar than ever, and in the last 7 years have learned mandolin, fiddle and keyboard which helps keep music fresh for me. We now live in the woods near Charlottesville, Virginia."
He was recently in an acoustic trio called the Elsah String Band, which you can see in a video here:
http://www.meramec.org/lotm/archives/2007/09/at_the_focal_po.html
The Zodiacs were a brief musical episode that remains a mysterious little early side-trip in the Dead's story. But any additional information is welcome!
But the Warlocks were not taking a total step into the dark – for Garcia, Pigpen, and Kreutzmann had played in a blues-rock band back in 1963.
Bob Weir: "Garcia had done a few electric gigs with Pig in a band called the Zodiacs before I'd ever known them, and so they had a little experience with R&B."
Sara Garcia: “For money, Jerry had played in a rock & roll band with Troy Weidenheimer. They played fraternity parties. What they had to put up with was awful.”
In fact, Garcia’s rock & roll connection went back even farther than that. Several of Garcia’s friends said that he’d played the brief solo in Bobby Freeman’s Do You Wanna Dance back in 1958, when he was 15:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-CzCDIiylE
Sara Garcia, David Nelson, Rock Scully, and Phil Lesh all independently claim that Garcia played guitar on this single - presumably he told them so. It’s rather mysterious how it could have happened; there’s some more discussion here:
http://www.whitegum.com/introjs.htm?/songfile/DO1YOUWA.HTM
(Other Dead researchers have firmly refuted this story in the comments. But it appears Garcia did do some session work for Bobby Freeman when he was on Autumn Records, around '65 or so. Garcia later said, "I did some various sessions around San Francisco; demos and stuff like that.")
In 1959, Garcia was briefly in a band called the Chords, ‘featuring the Golden Saxes,’ a group mainly featuring ‘40s big-band tunes like Misty. As Garcia said, “kind of easy-listening stuff. Businessman’s bounce, high school version.” They mostly played for fellow high-school audiences – sometimes they’d play a rock song such as Raunchy, one of the first big instrumental rock hits:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnbSEm8Pnxk
Garcia remembered, "We had a five-piece combo - a piano, two saxes, a bass, and my guitar. We won a contest and got to record a song. We did Raunchy, but it didn't turn out very well."
But it wasn’t long before Garcia discovered folk music and left rock & roll behind.
By 1963, Garcia was playing in as many bluegrass bands as he could put together. As one friend noted, “He loved to play, and it didn’t take much encouragement or much of an occasion to get him to throw a ‘band’ together. For sidemen he would use whoever was handy to fill out his band, oftentimes naming the band on the way to the gig.”
Trouble was, there wasn’t much money in it, and there weren’t that many bluegrass players around. As Garcia said, “Bluegrass bands are hard to put together because you have to have good bluegrass musicians to play, and in Palo Alto there wasn’t really very many of them – not enough to keep a band going all the time.” So on the side, Garcia also played in a rock band with his friend Pigpen (who was not such a folkie purist, and was happy to accompany anyone who’d play the blues).
http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2010/11/swains-music-store-palo-alto-ca.html quotes this article:
“Towards the end of 1962 [Pigpen] got a part-time job at Swain's Music Store in Palo Alto, and it was there more than anywhere else that the Grateful Dead seed began to grow.... Swain's Music Store, where Pigpen was working, was run by a guy named Troy Weidenheimer who had ideas about forming his own rock'n'roll band. He of course knew Pigpen, Pigpen knew Garcia, Garcia knew Kreutzmann, and so…a short-lived band called the Zodiacs was formed. Troy played lead guitar, Pigpen was on harp. They used a wide selection of drummers but most of the time it was Bill Kreutzmann, and Garcia would sometimes join in on bass guitar when he wasn't involved with his own bluegrass groups.”
Blair Jackson:
“Occasionally, Jerry picked up a bass and Pigpen sang with a local group called the Zodiacs, which played frat parties and other dances on the Peninsula, churning out the radio hits of the day, along with hipper R&B selections. The group was fronted by a guitarist named Troy Weidenheimer, who could play Freddie King lyrics like the master himself….”
According to Dennis McNally, Troy was the manager at Dana Morgan’s Music Store, where Garcia was giving guitar & banjo lessons. Regardless of which music store Troy was at, he was also a music teacher, and he and Garcia were already acquaintances.
They had met back in ’61 at the Boar’s Head folk club in San Carlos - Garcia would play folk songs there; Troy would play Ventures or Jimmy Reed songs on electric guitar; and Pigpen would play solo blues on guitar & harmonica. (David Nelson and Robert Hunter would also play there.) So when Troy wanted to form a band, he didn’t have to cast far for fellow members.
http://jerrywrite.blogspot.com/ is an interesting essay by Norm van Maastricht, a friend of Garcia’s in the early Tangent bluegrass days, which talks a lot about Garcia at that time, and his love of practicing banjo and playing loud instruments. “Hunter, Nelson, Garcia and I hung out together a lot. We would pool our money and [rotate coffeeshops] and nurse cups of coffee for hours… We talked about getting gigs and maybe getting famous one day. ‘Fame! Cookies! Comic books!’ as Garcia would say…”
“Jerry would let me know when a Playing Opportunity was coming up [and] we four would load us and our instruments into that old car and go anywhere we could play… We played a lot of little gigs, usually at no pay. Sometimes it would just be a house party. Sometimes a coffeehouse in San Francisco… We’d just pile in the car, get there, set up and play, get in the car and go home… You just played as much as you could. Sometimes they even fed you. They seldom paid you.”
“Troy Weidenheimer taught guitar over at Swain’s House of Music in Palo Alto. He would get together with us from time to time… Troy was an excellent guitarist. He played and taught electric jazz and rock. He would laughingly refer to our [folk] music as ‘hamburger music’, but he would come by and jam all the same.”
Dark rumours circulated that Garcia was “secretly fooling around with an electric group,” playing blues and rock, definitely a no-no among the Tangent crowd…
McNally: “Troy had a band called the Zodiacs, and that summer [‘63] he invited Garcia to join it – as the bass player. It was great fun, Jerry would say, despite the fact that it was ‘out of my idiom’…. The band also included a young local drummer named Bill Kreutzmann, and Jerry’s old friend Ron McKernan on harmonica.”
McNally also reports that Troy attemped to teach Bob Weir guitar circa ‘63/64, “but Troy taught a straight-ahead big-band style, and it did not appeal to Weir.” (So Weir gravitated to Jorma Kaukonen for guidance instead.)
Eric Thompson (one of Garcia’s bluegrass bandmates):
“While Jerry was teaching folk guitar, Troy was teaching electric guitar; he was known around town. Troy had an R&B band that played Stanford frat parties, and Jerry sometimes played bass in it, and Pigpen was the singer. Troy could not only play exactly like Freddy King, he could move like Freddy King, too. During that period, Freddy had his blues song hits in the chitlin’ circuit and his instrumental hits in the frat circuit, and he was playing both kinds of gigs. So that was part of the Troy niche, those instrumental hits Freddy King had – Hideaway, San Hozay, The Stumble…it was like surf guitar in a way, instrumental music that you could dance to. When Jerry got interested in the electric guitar again, he devoured the Freddy King stuff, but he’d already been watching Troy do it, so he already knew a lot about it.”
(I don’t know much about what the Zodiacs played other than Freddy King covers, but the music clearly had a big impact on Garcia. This article talks about Hideaway’s later appearances in Grateful Dead shows:
http://www.thebestofwebsite.com/Bands/Grateful_Dead/Misc/Hideaway.htm
Probably the closest we get in early Dead shows to the atmosphere of a Zodiacs set are things like Heads Up & the blues instrumental from 3/19/66, or the instrumental on 3/25/66.)
Pigpen remembered in 1970:
"I was in a band with Troy Weidenheimer called the Zodiacs. The Zodiacs were playing beer-drinkin' fraternity parties at Stanford, and Troy played lead, his old lady Sherry played rhythm, Garcia would occasionally sit in on Fender bass, Roy Ogburn would play bass and drum, and I'd sing and play harmonica. The Zodiacs played really wet gigs, man...they'd rent the men's dressing room and we'd play in there with the showers and benches...weird frat-house parties and stuff... Troy got the gigs; he was the leader. Each of us would make 20 bucks per gig. But it ain't worth having to contend with 200 football players...they thought we were strange, long-haired freaks. [We'd play] Searchin', Walkin' the Dog, Sensation, San-Ho-Zay, some Jimmy Reed tunes. We played Gert Chiarito's Midnight Special show on KPFA. Me and Jerry did one, too. I played harmonica and Jerry played guitar."
Garcia was already familiar with Pigpen from the folk clubs, but said: "As early as when we were playing in the Zodiacs together, I discovered that Pigpen was not a guy who wanted to be a performer. I had to practically force him to perform. He'd always be out in the parking lot or somewhere when we were supposed to go onstage."
Garcia later spoke at length about Troy Weidenheimer’s influence on him:
“Troy taught me the principle of ‘hey – stomp your foot and get on it.’ He was a great one for the instant arrangement…fearless for that thing of ‘get your friends and do it,’ and ‘fuck it if it ain’t slick, it’s supposed to be fun.’ He had a wide-open style of playing that was very, very loose; like when we went to play gigs at the Stanford parties, we didn’t have songs or anything, and he would just say ‘play B-flat,’ you know, and I’d play bass, and we’d just play along and he’d jam over the top of it; so a lot of my conceptions of the freedom available to your playing really came from him. He would take chorus after chorus, but he directed the band right in the now… We never rehearsed or anything ever, we would just go to the shows and play – and he was so loose about it, he didn’t care, he just wanted it cookin’ so he could play his solos; and he was just a wonderful, inventive, and fun, good-humored guitar player. One of the first guys I ever heard who exhibited a real sense of humor on the guitar. He was quite accomplished. I mean, in those days he was certainly the hot-rod guitar player of Palo Alto, as far as electric guitar was concerned. While I was a folkie and all that…”
Troy Weidenheimer says,
"My band the Zodiacs was active for about 4 years and began with 4 friends at Menlo College in Menlo Park, Ca. It was always a blues band. The Zodiacs is where Pigpen worked out his harp playing and blues singing.
My regular bassist was a jazz player on Fender bass and my preferred drummer was a very young jazz drummer. Kreutzmann was a stand in when the jazz drummer was unavailable. We often had a jazz sax player also. In the later years we usually played with an RnB quartet from East Palo Alto called the Outer Limits. So we billed the band "The Zodiacs and the Outer Limits".
There were opportunities for me to play in Jerry's bluegrass or electric groups but I was pretty put off by the drug and acid trips that were becoming part of that scene in San Francisco, and I was really only interested in a blues/jazz style of music, whereas Jerry's first bands tended to sound a lot like folk-rock groups.
By the way my wife Sharon Huddleston was key to that band. She was a great rhythm guitarist and good blues singer. I met her at the same time I met Jerry and a group of folkies who hung out together around Palo Alto. She was only about 16 but a very solid natural musican and singer. She had been mainly playing folk stuff and acoustic blues from the 30's before meeting me. We got married within a year or so and she bought a Gibson electric and started playing rhythm in my band. Whenever Jerry played with us it was always on bass, but at casual jams at parties we would both be on acoustic guitars or often Jerry on banjo. At most of the parties there would be an acoustic jam going in one room and a jazz/blues jam usually with a drummer in another room. In those days I was almost always in the jazz jam on electric, and Jerry would be in the acoustic folk/bluegrass jam."
I don’t know how long Garcia played with the Zodiacs – or if he was even in the band at the same time Kreutzmann was. Garcia later fuzzily remembered, “I may have played a gig with him once when I was playing electric bass in a rock & roll band on weekends.” (Garcia had, coincidentally, met Kreutzmann sometime earlier, when he bought a banjo Kreutzmann’s father was selling.)
But soon Garcia retreated back to the folkie world, making a bluegrass trip east in ‘64. By the end of ’64, though, he’d become dissatisfied with the opportunities in bluegrass, and the call of rock music started to sound more appealing. “In the area I was in, there were virtually no bluegrass musicians: very few, certainly nobody very good… I wanted to have a great bluegrass band, but I only got occasional chances to put a bluegrass band together that was (by my standards) even acceptable. Although I had fun, none of them was serious or a very good attempt.”
In the meantime, “I decided to put together a jug band, because you could have a jug band with guys that could hardly play at all.”
Blair Jackson says that the Zodiacs kept playing concurrently with Mother McCree’s jugband in ’64, but I'd guess Garcia was out of the band by then. Bill Kreutzmann, meanwhile, became the drummer in another popular R&B band called the Legends. Mike Shapiro (of the band William Penn & His Pals) claimed that Troy was also a guitarist in the Legends, but that wasn't so. (Shapiro also reports, "We were actually in a Battle of the Bands with the Grateful Dead. They won and I never really could figure that out because they were really bad back then." This was in '65 with the Warlocks, at the Cinnamon Tree in San Carlos.)
McNally describes the Legends: “Fronted by a black vocalist named Jay Price, the Legends…covered James Brown, Junior Parker, Freddie King, the Isley Brothers’ Shout, and Ray Charles’ What’d I Say. They wore red coats, black ties, and black pants, and played YMCA dances, fraternity parties, and shows at the local navy airstrip…” Kreutzmann later said, “It wasn’t too soulful,” but one Palo Alto high-schooler remembered, “They were the best band at the school…they were great…they made the kids dance like they weren’t supposed to…”
Meanwhile, Mother McCree’s was going through an identity crisis.
Garcia said, “We played any place that would hire a jug band, which was almost no place, and that’s the whole reason we finally got into electric stuff.” He also wanted to have “big fun… I was up for the idea of breaking out. You know: ‘give me that electric guitar – fuckin’ A!’ … For me, playing the electric guitar represented freedom from the tremendous control trip [of banjo playing.] What I wanted to do more than anything else was not be in control nearly so much. And playing the electric guitar freed me!… It was much easier putting together a rock & roll band than having a bluegrass band.”
Lesh: “Some say it was Garcia’s idea to turn Mother McCree’s into an electric blues band, but Garcia told me it was Pigpen’s idea. At first he wanted to electrify the jug band, but then changed his mind, saying, ‘No, let’s get a drummer and make it a blues band.’”
Garcia: “[The electric band] was Pigpen's idea. He'd been pestering me for a while, he wanted me to start up an electric blues band....because in the jug band we used to do blues numbers like Jimmy Reed tunes and even played a couple of rock & roll tunes, and it was just the next step.... Theoretically it's a blues band, but the minute we get electric instruments it's a rock & roll band....”
They didn’t have to look far for a drummer, or for instruments, as the entire band was working in Dana Morgan’s Music Store - Garcia and Weir both taught guitar there, Kreutzmann was a drum teacher there, the bass player was the owner’s son Dana Morgan Jr, and (according to McNally) Pigpen was the janitor. Three of them had already been Zodiacs, and one was even a Legend, so they had some rock experience. So becoming an electric band was as simple as borrowing some instruments from the store… (Garcia’s folkie banjo students who dropped by Morgan’s were shocked and saddened to see that he had succumbed to the electric demon!)
But as John Dawson said, “Dana had all the stuff to play on, so they let him be the bass player. But he couldn’t play bass for shit, man.” So Dana was fired – unfortunately, that meant the band was kicked out of Morgan’s music store, and had to return their instruments. (Dana Morgan Sr said, “I just hated the noise they were making… They kept sneaking back in. Finally I got so tired of them I sold the instruments.”) Undaunted, the band simply moved to other stores, borrowing instruments from Guitars Unlimited and Swain’s House of Music (and buying what they could, with the help of their parents). As for a bass player? Garcia had played bass in a rock band himself, despite never playing bass before, so he had no hesitation in asking another non-bass player to join…
And what of Troy Weidenheimer, guitarist for the first embryonic pre-Dead band? He later moved to Vancouver, Canada, where he opened his own music store, Troy Music. Though their doors closed long ago, he still teaches music:
http://www.rakun.com/music/
He says, "I am still playing and teaching. Fortunately I've not had any physical problems so at age 69 am playing better guitar than ever, and in the last 7 years have learned mandolin, fiddle and keyboard which helps keep music fresh for me. We now live in the woods near Charlottesville, Virginia."
He was recently in an acoustic trio called the Elsah String Band, which you can see in a video here:
http://www.meramec.org/lotm/archives/2007/09/at_the_focal_po.html
The Zodiacs were a brief musical episode that remains a mysterious little early side-trip in the Dead's story. But any additional information is welcome!
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