Introduction:

Garcia:  For me, making records is a little like drawing, or painting, or being a graphic artist.  Ya see, I compare my final product with what my initial vision was.  And I’ve often failed, ya know, but sometimes the result is better than the vision was, ya know?

Garcia:  We’re sort of a little outside.  Even in the music world, we’re a little bit on the outside.  We’re kind of on the ‘outs’.  So, the whole idea of the outsider or the outlaw and like that, is something I think we’re comfortable with.  And its... I know that I am, just as a singer, certainly.

Garcia:  Music is the incident. Its like we’re always about to play it, ya know, and, uh, it doesn’t come to an end -- it isn’t like that.  It keeps opening up.  It isn’t that you’ve covered more and more ground and thus there’s less and less unknown territory.  Its that the farther you go, the more opening there is, the more unexplored territory there is.

Music:  “Touch Of Gray” (studio: In The Dark)

Garcia:  For the Grateful Dead, a tune is just a place to start.  So a lot of times, a tune doesn’t really find itself until we’ve been doing it for about a year or two years.  So I’d say, quite a long time.  But that’s part of the fun of it... is to see the metamorphosis of a tune as it goes along.

Meg Griffin’s Intro:  Thirty-one years ago, a 15 year old San Francisco kid picked up the guitar for the first time.  After high-school, and a brief stint in the Army, he picked up the banjo and soon passed through a series of folk bands with names like The Wildwood Boys, The Black Mountain Boys, and Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions.
     By 1965, psychedelia was in the air and the Jug Champions became The Warlocks, playing electric space music for Ken Kesey’s infamous Acid Tests.  A year later, the guitarist became known as Captain Trips; the band, as the Grateful Dead.
     In 1988, Jerry Garcia and the Dead are enjoying their first taste of commercial success.  But with 21 albums and countless spin-off records and bootlegs, the Dead aren’t about to change their ways just yet.  The Grateful Dead still spend most of their time touring, playing an ever-changing repertoire of their own songs and just about anything else they might feel like at the time.
     Their fans are unlike any others.  Deadheads span three generations and diverse backgrounds, but share a love of the music that sometimes borders on fanaticism.  While most bands discourage bootleg recordings, the Dead reserve an area at their shows where the faithful set up tape machines and record the band’s every performance.
     On this edition of Rock Stars, Jerry Garcia gives us a glimpse into the rich history of the most legendary of all American rock bands.  Plus we’ll hear a vintage recording of the early Dead back in 1966, before they’d ever released an album.

DF:  I’d like to welcome Jerry Garcia to Rock Stars.  And I guess to start at the very beginning, um, why don’t you tell us how the Grateful Dead formed.

Garcia:  Uh, it kind of evolved from a jug band that, uh, Bob Weir and I and Pigpen were in.  A jug band called Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions, and uh, in that band we played acoustically, we played a few rock ’n roll tunes.  And Pigpen and I had been... both had a sort of an early background in rhythm and blues.  And then, we just sort of decided, hey, it’d be fun to have a rock ’n roll band.  I guess part of what would have been our model at the time, was when we heard the Rolling Stones.  [We] Said, hey these English guys are getting away with playing ‘50s rock ’n roll, ya know, uh, ‘50s rhythm ’n blues, really, which is this music we know very well indeed, ya know.  All we need to do is get a drummer, ya know, and a couple of other pieces, and we could, uh, have fun playing some of this music.  Pretty soon, uh, things started going real good for... I mean, almost from... from the very first time we played publicly we had a... got a huge crowd from a local high-school.  We played at a pizza parlor down there and got an amazing reception, ya know, from... from out of the clear blue sky, “Oh wow, this is gonna be fun, ya know” (chuckling).

DF:  San Francisco, at that time, the record companies were starting to sign a lot of bands: the Airplane, Steve Miller, Quicksilver...

Garcia:  Yeah, they were gettin’ in to it.

DF:  ...but the Grateful Dead didn’t sign right away, did you?

Garcia:  Definitely not.  In fact we held off, uh, for an inordinately long time before we got involved with a record company cause we felt no pressure.  See, we were playing, uh, ballrooms just about whenever we wanted to and any other kind of local thing, so we were working and we were making money -- we had money coming in, ya know, we were doin’ okay.  So, we decided, since we feel no pressure, if a record company wants... does want to sign us, we’ll write the contract, ya know, rather than use the standard form, so to speak.  And that’s exactly what we did, really.  We ended up... we wrote our own contract, we had our own, uh, terms, and we actually pioneered several kind of things that had never been, I don’t think, even mentioned in recording contracts before -- we sort of invented them.

DF:  Your first album was recorded in a very short time, wasn’t it?

Garcia:  Yeah, four days, five days.  Ya know, we didn’t... we weren’t making a record, we were performing for the microphones, is really what it boiled down to.

Music: “Playin’ In The Band” (studio: Grateful Dead)

Garcia:  If all you’re doing is a recreation of your recorded music, its a little bit like playing the record.  I mean, its not... like what... what does that show the audience that they haven’t seen before, ya know.  Its like what I’ve always wanted to do, anyway, when I go to hear somebody live, is hear them be more than what their record is.

Music: End “Playin’ In The Band”

DF:  When was it that the band became the Grateful Dead?

Garcia:  It became the Grateful Dead when we were working... when we uh... after we had been The Warlocks for a while and Phil was playing bass.  And we’d done our time in, uh, bars and clubs and stuff like that, and we joined up the Acid Tests with Kesey and those guys.  That’s when we became the Grateful Dead.

DF:  In San Francisco, uh, in those days, Bill Graham was the big concert promoter.  Uh, did a lot of shows at the Avalon, uh, of course at his own Fillmore.  When did you guys first meet Bill Graham?

Garcia:  Uh, we met Bill Graham... Bill Graham called us for a benefit for the Mime Troupe.  He was the Mime Troupe’s stage manager, or general manager, or something like that.  He was involved with the San Francisco Mime Troupe, which is a radical theater group, uh, in San Francisco at the time.  And, uh, he called us to... to get some advice about the Fillmore Auditorium, actually to find out what... whether he could rent it or not.  ‘Cause we’d been involved in renting it for the Acid Tests.  And, in a way, Bill Kreutzmann talked to him, in a way, Bill Kreutzmann set Bill Graham up in business in a way.  Uh, by turning him on to the Fillmore Auditorium, which, later on, Bill Graham got the lease on and it became The Fillmore and... and all that. And that kind of kicked it off.  But that was how it was... this Mime Troupe he called us for.  To perform a Mime Troupe benefit.

DF:  And that, of course, is a very famous show. I remember reading he’d rented that place for about 60 bucks.

Garcia:  Yeah.

DF:  Do you remember who else was on the bill that night?

Garcia:  Let’s see, I think, uh, probably Jefferson Airplane, probably Quicksilver, although I’m not sure about that, a group called the Mystery Trend, at that time.  Which... Grace Slick was the lead singer of that band.  Uh, let’s see... geez, I don’t know who else.  I... I mean, I don’t... I don’t remember it particularly well because its kind of blended in to a whole lot of other nights at the Fillmore.  I spent... I mean I lost a lot of brain cells at the Fillmore , ya know (chuckling).  So its... one was pretty much like another.  Uh, if I remember, Bill wanted to keep us... uh, he wanted us to go on late or something like that.  So I remember we hung out for an awful long time, we didn’t go on ‘til way late... way early, early... rather early in the morning, ya know.  That’s the thing I mostly remember, was hanging out for a long time.  I met a lot of nice people there and stuff.  It was fun.  Those things were always fun.

DF:  Was Bill Graham your manager at that time?

Garcia:  Bill’s never been our manager, but, uh, he’s always been kind of an interesting combination of, uhm, friend/antagonist.  Mostly friend, he’s been mostly... we’ve been mostly friendly with each other for all this time.  Although, its kind of our duty to be Bill’s gadfly, ya know (chuckling), we keep him moving.  We like to keep him moving.

Music:  “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” (Avalon Ballroom, September 16, 1966)
Music:  End “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”

DF:  You’ve written a lot of songs about outlaws and gamblers and, uh, “Friend Of The Devil” is one of those.

Music:  “Friend Of The Devil” (studio: American Beauty)

Garcia:  Its also, that’s interesting, you know, that’s a song that has been absorbed into the bluegrass, uh, mainstream.  Its gotten to be kind of a bluegrass standard, which is very flattering.  Its neat that that song has become a kind of a modern folk song, and uh, I mean all kinds of bluegrass bands do it unselfconsciously, ya know.  That’s one of the things I really like about that tune.

Music: End “Friend Of The Devil”

DF:  Tell me about “Truckin’.”

Garcia:  Well, “Truckin’” was one of those songs that was fun to write.  And it was... cause it kind of wrote itself, ya know.  We all wrote this song, really.  We all took part in the writing of this song.  Just in terms of bits and pieces and hunks of it -- its really... its really is a joint Grateful Dead effort.

DF:  Is there a specific incident that that song is based on?

Garcia:  There isn’t any one incident.  The song has... makes reference to a couple of things -- makes reference to our bust in New Orleans.  It has that... little mention of that, but really its kind of a compendium of some of the towns that we were hitting at that time and also... its also a little bit of just writer’s license too, that Hunter has a way of seeing into our life, ya know. I mean, he has a way of remembering stuff and, uh, being able to sort of call it forth.  This... this tune does have autobiographical elements, but only a couple really.

DF:  Well, at least one of those elements would have to be the drug bust in New Orleans.  Would you tell us about that?

Garcia:  There’s nothing much to tell really.  You see, I missed most of it... I came walking in.... I went out with some hippies after the show.  I went over to visit some people in New Orleans and we sat up raving most of the night and, uh, finally about... I guess about four in the morning or five maybe, I went back to the hotel and I’m walking down the corridor of the hotel with my guitar.  And I notice that on our floor, about every other door is open, the lights are turned on, and nobody’s around.  You know, this is peculiar in the middle of the night.  So I come... I’m coming up to my room and I notice the door to my room is open... “Hey, ya know” and I’m walking... I go walking past my room, I look, and I look in, and there’s a couple guys going through my suitcase in my room (chuckling).  And I... “Oh, god”, and I knew right away “oh,” so I continue walking, ya know (chuckling).  This guy comes out of my room and comes... I look back down the hall, and there’s this guy leaning out of the room, my... beckoning, ya know, “Hey, pssst, hey you, come back here.” (chuckling)  So they took me down to where everybody else was, which was in jail.  And there’s everybody... I come walking into the squad room, and there’s everybody in the... everybody there is seen sitting on the floor, ya know, “Hey Garcia! Hey man, join the crowd!” ya know.  And that was it, ya know, we were all... we were all busted, and we were all nailed.  And they had great fun with us too, I might say... I might add, the Southern cops, ya know.  They had a lot of fun with us.  They had just what they wanted -- hippies! You know, “Oh boy!”

Music:  “Truckin’” (studio: American Beauty)
Music:  End “Truckin’”

DF:  So you guys did get out of that New Orleans jail eventually?

Garcia:  At great expense and, uh, at no small, uh, effort, ya know.  It was a hairy thing.  It was actually pretty creepy, I mean, I think what they wanted to do was say “Not here, you don’t”, you know what I mean?  I think they were just as happy not to have us come back for as long as possible, and to, also, make it nice and clear they don’t want long-haired rock ’n rollers in New Orleans, ya know, if possible.

Music:  “U.S. Blues” (studio: Mars Hotel)
Music:  End “U.S. Blues”

DF:  The Grateful Dead got started at a time when rock bands were getting political.  How do you feel about bringing politics into music?

Garcia:  That always used to scare me.  Uh, its tough when a musician...when somebody takes a topical stand like and makes their work political; even if the nature of the politics is to say “Give peace a chance,” ya know.  Its like, what you’re doing is you’re entering in the war game whether you like it or not, ya know.  Your saying “Give peace a chance” is like saying “Forget about war for a while.”  Which is really like saying “Remember war,” you know what I mean?  Its my... back in the ‘60s, when everybody was either on one side or the other, ya know what I mean?  Like we used to spend all our time avoiding being on one side or the other, because in that particular game, there’s only one side, ya know.  And any energy that you give to the idea of war, is war, ya know.  It... it is all war and the best thing to do is to drop the whole notion.  I mean, fighting about war is just like fighting about anything... its fighting about peace, you know what I mean?  A war is a war; a fight is a fight; and a struggle is a struggle and if you put yourself in that position, you’re going to have to deal with it, I mean, you are playing the game, you’re gonna have to pay the dues.  And so, as far as I was concerned, it was always... that’s why we never wrote any anti-war songs, you know what I mean?  It’s because, like, uh, why participate on any level?  Why give war any energy?  Any energy you give it, glamorizes it.  Any energy you give it, even to say its a bad trip.  Its just like what they did to our cocaine song...ya know what I mean?  Like our cocaine song is really fundamentally an anti-cocaine song, ya know, it’s lyrics are...are dire, ya know.  And uh, I mean, in terms of if it takes a position, the position it takes is: you’re gonna get in trouble if you mess with cocaine.  But, that song became a celebration of cocaine, ya know.  Its like, you can’t get into the drug discussion without being for drugs.

Music:  “Casey Jones” (studio: Workingman's Dead)
Music:  End “Casey Jones”

Garcia:  Hunter and I have rewritten folk music, ya know (chuckling).  That’s been part of our process, has been to rewrite famous folk songs.  Well, its like our “Casey Jones” song, or like our “Stagger Lee” song, ya know what I mean?  We like to go in there and muddy the water (chuckling) by writing current versions of those tunes.

DF:  Tell me about “Sugar Magnolia.”

Garcia:  “Sugar Magnolia?”  Well, that’s Bobby’s tune.  And he wrote it, uh, they say, about the girl that he was living with at the time.  Although I... actually what happened was that that person he was living with sort of adopted that song, really, more than I think Weir actually meant it that way, ya know.  Cause, uh, Bob’s mind doesn’t really work that way, uh (chuckling).

Music:  “Sugar Magnolia” (studio: American Beauty)
Music: End “Sugar Magnolia”

Garcia:  Its a good-time song.  A good song... still good, still fun to do.  And, uh, I contributed the end rift to that.  That’s my contribution to that song... was the “Sunshine Daydream” part.  Not the lyrics, but the, uh... the chord changes at the end.  And uh,... its a good tune.

DF:  Another Grateful Dead favorite is “Uncle John’s Band.”  What’s the story behind that one?

Garcia:  Well, “Uncle John’s Band” is uh... inspired, I’ll tell ya... melodically, its inspired by a little bit of a melodic hunk that I lifted from a Bulgarian folk tune, believe it or not.  Uh, there’s one little turn in the melody that was a... just a beautiful part of a... of a Bulgarian folk melody that I just loved.  And so, I needed an excuse to use that in a song.  And uh, I put the melody together and Hunter wrote the lyrics into the melody, uh, and he understood, I think, that... my feeling about the melody.  Which was that I wanted it to be really celebratory, ya know.  I wanted... wanted it to be a holiday, and a celebration, a... an anthem, ya know.  Something of that sort, because the melody contained that kind of feeling to it.  And uh, so Hunter... Hunter wrote into it and, uh, came up with that “Uncle John’s Band” thing, which was nice: “Come All Ye.” Its that kind of thing. So, ya know, it was a matter of custom tailoring lyrics, really, to the feel of the melody and the sense I wanted to impart by the tune, ya know.

Music:  “Uncle John’s Band” (studio: Workingman's Dead)
Music:  End “Uncle John’s Band”
Music:  “Alabama Getaway” (studio: Go To Heaven)
Music:  End “Alabama Getaway”

Garcia:  I’m not a comfortable person as a singer, ya know what I mean?  Its something that, uh, I’m just starting to get used to, really, in a way.

DF:  Really?  Why is that?

Garcia:  Well, its because when the Grateful Dead started, really, the only real singer we had was Pigpen.  And, uh, Weir and I kind of became singers kind of by default, you know.  Just kind of like the way we became composers, really, and writers is kind of by default. I mean, it was just like because of... there’s always been those demands, ya know.  For a band, you’ve got to have your own material, ya know.  And its nice if everybody sings and we all sort of became singers, uh, because we felt you ought to have a lot of singers in the band, if possible, ya know.  But back in the days when I was a folkie, ya know, and a banjo picker, and stuff like that, I certainly never thought of myself as a singer.  And... and, uh, I never worked at it -- I never was very comfortable at it.  And I haven’t been, like I say, up until about the last couple of years -- I’m starting to get... I’m starting to find... I’m starting to get some sensibility, I guess, about what it means to be a singer esthetically, ya know -- what... what that, uh... what that is.  And it... boy, its been har... its hard for me.  Its, uh... its not an easy thing, its not something that comes real natural to me.

DF:  Well, the guy that writes most of the words that you sing is Robert Hunter.

Garcia:  Yeah, Hunter is so good.  That’s one of those things that’s like a very special gift.  The thing of being able to come up with a line that’s graceful, and economical, and says exactly what you would want it to say, ya know -- with no fat, ya know what I mean.  Like see, I’ve... I take a stab at writing lyrics occasionally, but I can’t pull that off, ya know, that kind of economy -- that’s something that I envy so much.  And Hunter is one of the guys that can do it.

DF:  One of the things that Robert Hunter writes about quite often, again, is that gambling metaphor -- that taking a chance in life.  You guys really seem to relate to that.

Garcia:  Sure do.  You know, for us, for the Grateful Dead, certainly, that’s the way... that approach certainly has been the most fruitful.  I mean, uh, not that we’ve really experimented with any other approach, but as far as the way our whole carreer has gone, and everything like that, its... it has been really a matter of going with, uh... playing the hunch, ya know, playing your hunches.  Drawing to an inside straight, doing things like that, ya know.  Doin’ crazy things.  And just in terms of luck, I think we’ve been incredibly lucky.  So, ya know, I don’t feel bad about telling people to go ahead and trust that.  I mean, if in the event that there’s somebody who’s out there actually listening to the lyrics in the sense of obeying them (chuckling), ya know what I mean, God forbid (chuckling).  Ya know, yeah right! I certainly hope nothing like that is happening.  But in the event that it is happening, I feel good about saying go with that, ya know, just because... its worked for us.

Music:  “Deal” (studio: Garcia)
Music:  End “Deal”

DF:  Jerry Garcia, maybe you can answer this question.  What is a deadhead?

Garcia:  I don’t know.  I, uh, a deadhead is someone who... who loves the Grateful Dead music and apart from that, its like saying ‘what is an American?’ ya know what I mean.  I haven’t been able to find a kind of a general thing that I can say about deadheads to characterize them at all, except for the fact that they all like the Grateful Dead music, ya know.  That’s... that’s really the thing they share.  And they... possibly they... they share something with each other -- which is the Grateful Dead, again, ya know.  So that’s... the Grateful Dead is the common denominator all the way, but... and then maybe there is kind of a vertical, uh, community that they relate to each other the way they relate to the Grateful Dead.  There’s this certain amount of community in there, maybe.  But my experience with Gr... deadheads, is that they don’t group easily, ya know what I mean.  They don’t... you can’t characterize them too simply cause there all kinds of ‘em.  I mean, they’re... they go all the way from professional people, lawyers and doctors, and... and, uh, grandmothers, and, uh, to... uh, teenagers and, uh, little kids. I mean, ya know, there’s all kinds of ‘em.  There’s all kinds of ‘em.  From every strata too, and from every kind of ethnic gr... I mean, ya know, literally, there are... there’s a huge range there.  Which is, I think, nice. I think... I think that’s good.  But apart from that, boy, I wouldn’t try to characterize them (chuckling).

Music:  “Hell In A Bucket” (studio: In The Dark)
Music:  End “Hell In A Bucket”

- This interview was broadcast on May 7, 1988.