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474.1 | | CSC32::S_ROCHFORD | | Thu Aug 10 1995 17:33 | 75 |
| Deadhead grief evident after death
**********************************
By MARK EVANS Associated Press Writer
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- The unique faith of Grateful Dead fans was evident in
Haight-Ashbury and across the nation Wednesday as Deadheads, rock stars,
politicians and others mourned the passing of Jerry Garcia.
Crowds quickly gathered in the mecca for '60s counterculture, putting up a
makeshift shrine to their grandfatherly leader. Someone started beating drums.
Others hugged and cried. A single red rose was tied to a tree at 710 Ashbury,
where the Dead began their rock 'n' roll odyssey three decades ago.
Jeff Aitken, kneeling in prayer in front of the Victorian house, was talking
about the Grateful Dead in the past tense.
"It was a great place to be a human being," he said of the roughly 180
concerts he'd seen. " It was the purity and the simplicity of it. It was pure
love, and it just poured out of Jerry."
The neighborhood's faithful called it the passing of an era.
"There's no more Grateful Dead, bro," said Wesley Law, sipping a morning beer
at a nearby cafe. "You can't replace Jerry."
Garcia's friends were shocked at his death.
"It's a big loss for the world and anyone who loves music," said a red-eyed
Bob Weir before dedicating his own concert in New Hampshire to Garcia
Wednesday night.
"His life was far more a blessing for all of us," said Weir, who founded the
Grateful Dead with Garcia back in 1964. "Perhaps if we're going to dwell on
anything, we should dwell on that."
Bob Dylan said "I don't think any eulogizing will do him justice."
"His playing was moody, awesome, sophisticated, hypnotic and subtle," Dylan
said in a statement. "There's no way to convey the loss. It just digs down
really deep."
Carlos Santana, who came out of the same '60s music scene, called him "a
profound talent, both as a musician and as an artist."
"He was one of those really special people on this planet, a person who had
unbelievable skill at what he did in bringing joy and happiness into people's
lives," said former basketball star Bill Walton, an avowed Deadhead who went
to more than 600 of the band's concerts.
Like a lot of diehard fans, percussionist Rob Fried couldn't imagine life
without "Jerry."
"I don't think people realize the void this is going to leave. The Grateful
Dead is no longer," said Fried, who has played "in the spirit of the Dead" for
the band Max Creek for 17 years. "A lot of people probably don't realize what
impact this guy has on a whole culture."
In Columbia, Mo., Arnie Fagan lowered the flag to half staff in front of his
eclectic Cool Stuff store, which sells merchandise hailing the band.
"It's a family thing, so Jerry's death is like losing your grandfather to a
whole lot of people," said Fagan, 30. "He was the most loved member of the
Grateful Dead."
At the United Nations, Bosnian diplomat Omar Sacirbey even turned his attention
from the battles in the former Yugoslavia to mourn Garcia's passing.
"It's an incredibly big loss to a lot of people," said Sacirbey, who spent
most of his childhood in the United States. "A lot of people looked toward the
Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia as the thing ... that made life a little more
worth living."
|
474.2 | (Cleaned it up for 80 columns) | CSC32::S_ROCHFORD | | Thu Aug 10 1995 18:49 | 198 |
474.3 | | CSC32::S_ROCHFORD | | Thu Aug 10 1995 21:41 | 143 |
| 9:41 PM 8/9/1995
Jerry Garcia 1942-1995
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Grateful Dead's Garcia a '60s icon
===================================
By MARTY RACINE
Copyright 1995 Houston Chronicle
The '60s are dead. What a long, strange trip it's been.
When a heart attack claimed the life of 53-year-old Grateful Dead guitarist
Jerry Garcia on Wednesday, the news reached across the music industry to steal
the breath of an entire era.
Born Aug. 1, 1942, in San Francisco, the beloved Garcia was to the '60s what
Elvis Presley was to the '50s -- and perhaps what Kurt Cobain will be to the
'90s: a presence, a figurehead of rock 'n' roll around whom a generation
created a new set of rituals.
"Not to discount the rest of the members of the band, but Jerry Garcia was the
epitome of what the Grateful Dead stood for -- the image, the mannerisms," said
Houston promoter Louis Messina of Pace Concerts. "And by extension the Dead
stood for the '60s."
The '60s stood for myth and magic, built on the hippies' rebuking of
materialism but destroyed, in some quarters, by a drug culture seeking
shortcuts to enlightenment. With his graying beard, Cheshire grin, and
Buddha-like physique, Jerry Garcia, four years the senior of the oldest Baby
Boomers, was the godfather of psychedelic rock.
If he looked wise, Garcia almost always looked aged. From the old school, he
never took care of himself. He smoked, he did drugs, he ate junk food and he
rarely exercised. While he had tried to clean up over the past few years, his
accumulated habits led to a recent "meltdown," band spokesman Dennis McNally
said last year.
When he turned 50, Garcia told Rolling Stone: "God, I never thought I'd make
it. I didn't think I'd get to be 40, to tell you the truth. Jeez, I feel like
I'm a hundred million years old."
He was in a drug rehab center near San Francisco when he died. Garcia is
survived by his third wife, filmmaker Deborah Koons Garcia, and four daughters.
After 30 years of touring, the band is still one of the top-grossing acts in
rock 'n'roll. This year, they ranked No. 3, behind the Rolling Stones and the
Eagles, taking in $34.5 million in 42 shows, according to Billboard's
Amusement Business.
While England furnished early '60s pop music with its mod invasion groups, the
Grateful Dead rose out of San Francisco to paint the decade in swirling,
abstract designs that could be understood only by the initiated -- fueled by
hallucinogens, asphalt mysticism and tribal ceremony.
The band was founded in 1964 as the Warlocks, led by Garcia, a horror-movie
buff and the son of a swing band leader who was mixing rock and bluegrass in an
uncertain alchemy. Two years later, they chose the Grateful Dead name by
happenstance from the Oxford dictionary and added a second drummer.
While their temple was the corner of Haight-Ashbury in a formerly rundown
section of San Francisco, their pulpit became the Fillmore Auditorium and
later the Carousel Ballroom, where the Dead and other emerging Bay Area bands
preached experimentation. They stretched rock, blues and jugband music into
exotic shapes that broke the constraints of a 3-minute pop song and heralded
the arrival of "album-rock" radio. The meandering rhythms were accompanied by
the first full-scale use of light shows, and the ballrooms were cleared of
seats in the earliest form of "festival seating."
Said Carlos Santana on Wednesday: "Being guitarists and being a part of the San
Francisco music scene together, Jerry and I shared a special bond. He was a
profound talent, both as a musician and as an artist, and he cannot be
replaced. I take solace in the thought that his spirit has gone to join the
likes of Bill Graham, Jimi Hendrix, Marvin Gaye, Miles Davis and other greats
who have left us much too soon."
Wednesday night in New Hampshire, Bob Weir dedicated a concert to his friend
and Grateful Dead partner. "It's a big loss for the world and anyone who loves
music," he said. "His life was far more a blessing for all of us ... Perhaps
if we're going to dwell on anything, we should dwell on that."
I was not prepared for the first time I saw the Grateful Dead at the Carousel
one summer evening in 1968. They were co-headlining a homeboy bill with the
Jefferson Airplane, who turned in a rousing, triumphant set that was easily
the best rock 'n'roll I had ever witnessed. I was 22 and a man of the world.
I was, in Jimi Hendrix's view, "experienced," and I was in love with Grace
Slick.
But the Dead were beyond this sphere, reordering reality with jams so magical,
so luminescent as to shine a light on a new way of hearing music -- not just
listening but really feeling it. Their "songs" began as tune-up sessions, in
which Garcia, rhythm guitarist Weir, keyboardist Ron "Pigpen" McKernan,
bassist Phil Lesh and drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann appeared to
pick their way individually through the sonic wilderness. When they came to a
clearing, they forged a consensus, as if by sleight-of-hand, and then split it
into polyrhythms and counter melodies unlike anything rock had ever attempted.
Their songs were constructed like Indian ragas, and they comprised "world-beat"
music long before other Westerners like Paul Simon and David Byrne discovered
it.
Standing out front of the groove was Jerry Garcia, a shaman of the frets whose
celestial runs were beyond sound, like pure energy. His notes aimed for a
faraway place, and we were all eager to follow. I was convinced this portly
figure was the best guitarist on the planet and that the Grateful Dead were
the best damn rock band in existence.
No one "danced" at these jams. Grateful Dead music didn't so much soothe the
soul, spark the feet or please the ear; it went through you.
Their rambling, interactive music attracted a like-minded following known as
Deadheads, bands of blissed-out gypsies which for nearly 30 years would follow
the entourage from show to show and set up temporary communes and marketplaces
of paraphernalia, not all of it legal, outside concert venues.
But, detached from the vibe, stripped of their youthful innocence and perhaps
no longer willing or able to reach for greatness, the band increasingly went
through the motions. The Dead were capable of some horrendous concerts. Their
last Houston show, at The Summit in 1988, was painfully inept -- perhaps
because they were never as home in the South as on the East and West coasts.
Just refer to one of their anthems, Truckin', in which they sing, "Houston,
too close to New Orleans ... ."
In Casey Jones, it was "trouble ahead, trouble behind." Problems on their
current tour included a gate crashing and a series of arrests in Indiana,
forcing cancellation of the next night's show. In St. Louis, a deck collapsed
at a Deadhead campground, killing one and injuring more than 100.
"They had a lot of problems, not caused by the band but by a lot of hangers-on,
" said Messina. "It's the scene."
In The Wheel, "If the thunder don't get you, then the lightning will," and the
Dead were dogged by tragedy. Original keyboardist "Pigpen" died of liver
failure in 1973. His replacement, Keith Godchaux, was killed in a car crash in
1980 after leaving the band. Keyboardist Brent Mydland died the same year of a
drug overdose.
Now, Garcia.
"In one way I hope the Grateful Dead continue because it's part of a culture,"
Messina said Wednesday. "On the other side, maybe it's time to lay it to rest."
|
474.4 | | CSC32::S_ROCHFORD | | Fri Aug 11 1995 13:58 | 54 |
474.5 | Charity info in this note... | CSC32::S_ROCHFORD | | Fri Aug 11 1995 15:37 | 34 |
| Dennis McNally, publicist for the Grateful Dead, just called to give me
the straight poop.
The band is officially in mourning today, and have NO official plans
for anything at this point. When they do, they will let us know. Any
rumors to the contrary at this point are horses**t!
If you want to write the band, write to:
Grateful Dead Productions
PO 1073
San Rafael, CA 94915
Please do NOT send flowers
Regarding charities, if you want to send a donation to a charity other
than your own, send a check to:
Rex Foundation
c/o Grateful Dead Productions
PO 1073
San Rafael, CA 94915
Dennis said we have all the time in the world to mourn Jerry.
We'll keep you posted as things develop.
Geoff Gould
GD Forum
Transmitted: 95-08-09 20:16:46 EDT
|
474.6 | Private rites planned... | CSC32::S_ROCHFORD | | Sat Aug 12 1995 20:15 | 30 |
| From the PEOPLE Daily for Saturday/Sunday, August 12 and 13
A FOND FAREWELL
Private rites planned for Jerry Garcia
Funeral plans for Jerry Garcia are being kept under wraps for fear
that the service would attract thousands of grieving fans. A spokesman for
the Grateful Dead said the late musician, who died early Wednesday of a
heart attack, would be held sometime "late Friday or Saturday" at an
undisclosed location "in the Bay area" in or near San Francisco. Only
family members, band members and close friends will be invited to
attend. Reports of the surviving band members hosting a public
memorial for Garcia are erroneous, said the spokesman for the group,
Dennis McNally,though he didn't rule out such an event in the future.
Meanwhile, a doctor who treated Garcia for the last 28 years, said the
drug-abusing star "wanted to live. He recognized that his addictions were
aggravating his medical condition. He was on the way back," said Dr. David
Smith of the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic. "That's what makes this doubly
painful." Smith said it was "a good sign" when Garcia entered the Betty
Ford Clinic last month. He said Garcia told him, "Maybe this isn't so bad
after all." Garcia left the clinic two weeks into his treatment, according
to sources cited by the San Francisco Chronicle, but entered Serenity
Knolls, a Marin County residential treatment center last Monday. Smith
said Garcia seemed upbeat that he'd finally be able to get drugs out of
his life. "We were optimistic about his recovery," Smith told the
Associated Press. "I was going to take him to a recovery group" on
Thursday night, the doctor added.
-Marianne Goldstein
|
474.7 | "Knockin' on Heaven's Door." | CSC32::S_ROCHFORD | | Sat Aug 12 1995 20:23 | 40 |
| THE BAND PLAYED ON
Dead guitarist Bob Weir plays N.H. gig
It was a fitting tribute to a departed friend. Although Grateful
Dead guitarist Bob Weir was grieving over the death of Jerry Garcia, he
played in front of a packed nightclub in Hampton, New Hampshire on
Wednesday night and dedicated the performance to both his longtime musical
partner and the band's fans. "Good music can make bad times better," he
told the sold-out crowd at the Hampton Casino Ballroom.
"It's a big loss for the world and anyone who loves music", a
tearful Weir told reporters before the show. Calling Garcia's life "a
blessing for all of us," he added, "If we are going to dwell on anything,
we should dwell on that."
Weir, who writes music and plays rhythm guitar for the Dead, is one
of the band's original members. He had been scheduled to perform with his
band, Bob Weir, Rob Wasserman and Ratdog, weeks in advance, but after
learning of Garcia's apparent heart attack earlier that morning, there was
some uncertainty as to whether the show would go on. By then, 900 of the
concert's 2000 tickets had already been sold. After it was announced at 1
p.m. that there would indeed be a performance that evening, fans
snapped up the remaining 1100 tickets in less than an hour. "We turned
away 5,000 people, too," said the club's promoter, Marc Gentilella.
Deadheads without tickets gathered in back of the nightclub and held an
impromptu vigil during the show. As a courtesy gesture, the band left the
back doors of the venue open so that the fans outside, estimated at 5,000
to 6,000, could hear the music as well. The all-ages crowd played guitars
and drums, lit candles and carried flowers in tribute to Garcia.
As an encore the band played a Dead favorite, "Knockin' on Heaven's
Door." After Weir left the stage in the middle of the last verse, "the
crowd picked up on it and the 5,000 people outside and the 2,000 inside
were all singing [the song] for literally 20 minutes," says Gentilella.
"It was priceless, there's no doubt about it. I've never seen
anything like it in my life. It was the most amazing outpouring of love
I've ever seen."
-Lorraine Goods
|
474.8 | Life & Times | CSC32::S_ROCHFORD | | Sat Aug 12 1995 20:43 | 102 |
| Garcia: Life and Times
Over the 30-year lifespan of the Grateful Dead, the group has
become more than just a band-- they have come to personify a lifestyle and
a state of mind. And Jerry Garcia, in his role as the band's nonchalant
leader, was a central pop culture figure who represented -- depending on
who you are -- everything from a counterculture radical to a revered guru.
He was also among a handful of 60s rock stars, like Mick Jagger, Pete
Townsend and Eric Clapton, who had survived their own abuses and excesses
to continue making music well into the nineties.
With his burly figure and frizzy grey locks and beard, Jerry Garcia
was truly an eminence gris of rock and roll -- a low-keyed, mellow
presence who drew people into the world created by his music. "He was a
charismatic person, but one who refused to make decisions," recalled
Dennis McNally, who worked for Grateful Dead Enterprises as a band
spokesman. "So as a result, he was not a leader like a Mick Jagger; he
led by example."
And lead he did -- a roving and rag-tag group of followers trailed
the group from performance to performance, often joined by middle-class,
middle-aged professionals who would break away from their everyday lives
several times a year to recapture their youth -- and listen to some
wonderful music.
Garcia's long, strange trip began on August 1, 1942, in San Francisco.
His father, who died when he was young, was a swing bandleader and reed
player. After the death of Jose Garcia, Jerry's mother, Ruth, a nurse,
struggled to make ends meet and keep up Jerry's music lessons -- though he
hated the piano. When he was 15, his mother gave him an accordion, but a
disgruntled Jerry informed her what he really wanted was an electric
guitar. "Man, I was just in heaven," he recalled to Rolling Stone magazine.
"I stopped everything I was doing at the time" -- including his schoolwork,
which was sporadic, at best. "I was a juvenile delinquent. My mom even
moved me out of the city to get me out of trouble. It didn't work," he
remembered.
After dropping out of school at 17, Jerry joined the Army, but,
predictably, enjoyed the military as much as he enjoyed academia. After
nine months -- and two court martials -- Garcia was discharged and
traveled up to Palo Alto, where he joined the coffee house scene that
spawned other seminal San Francisco talents such as Janis Joplin, Jorma
Kaukonen and Paul Kantner. Garcia began to broaden his musical interests,
using acoustic guitars to play bluegrass and folk. Soon he began playing
regularly with several other musicians -- drummer Bill Kreutzmann, bass
player Phil Lesh, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan and Bob Weir. They began as a jug
band, but soon, influenced by the Beatles revolution, dubbed themselves
The Warlocks, playing their first gig in a pizza parlor.
It was also around that time that people began experimenting with LSD,
championed by writer Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters. The Warlocks
started hanging out with Kesey and his friends, playing at their infamous
Acid Test parties, which Garcia later described as "thousands of people,
all hopelessly stoned, finding themselves in a roomful of other thousands
of people, none of whom any of them were afraid of." The Warlocks'
reputation began to grow, but, learning of another band by the same name,
decided to come up with a new one. While at Lesh's house one day, Garcia
opened up an Oxford dictionary. "The first thing I saw was The Grateful
Dead. It said that on the page and it was so astonishing. It was truly
weird, a truly weird moment."
The Dead were signed by Warner Bros. records and released their first
album in 1967. Though their albums never were chart-busters, they shined
onstage, going into long improvisation riffs that made their third album,
"Live Dead," a watershed recording for them. They hit greater heights in
1970, when they released two popular -- and accomplished -- studio albums,
"American Beauty" and "Workingman's Dead." But after some financial losses
and the death of Ron McKernan, the disheartened band dissolved -- but only
briefly. Garcia recorded some albums on his own, but the band reformed
and, backed by an astonishing strong band of fans, began to tour again.
During the mid-80s, though, malaise struck Garcia, who put on a lot of
weight and seemed lackluster onstage. His friends blamed his increasing
drug use and urged him to cut back; in January, 1985, Garcia was busted in
Golden Gate Park, and was charged with possession of cocaine and heroin.
He agreed to undergo rehab in lieu of jail time, but a year later almost
died after going into a diabetic coma. It was enough to get him to try
to change his personal habits. "It was like my physical being saying,
'Hey, you're going to have to put in some time here if you want to keep on
living' " he recalled.
But Garcia's discipline wavered and he fell ill again in 1991 -- and
again pledged to stop smoking, cut back on junk food and begin exercising.
He also began exploring his love for visual art, taking up drawing and
painting as a pastime. He even began a sideline business designing fabric
that was made into a line of neckties and was, earlier this year, used to
decorate a hotel suite in Los Angeles. "It's a process of discovery for
me," he told the Chicago Tribune in 1993. "I can't say 'Oh, yeah, I'm a
total model for health.' But I'm on a program. I've accepted the idea that
my life has to change, and I've taken some steps to do that, to create
less stress, have more physical activity, eat right and just be sensible."
The band played on -- last year grossing $50 million, making them
the top concert attraction in the country. "I feel like we've been getting
away with something ever since there were more people in the audience than
there were on stage," Garcia reminisced in 1993. "The first time that
people didn't leave after the first three tunes, I felt like we were
getting away with something. We've been falling uphill for 27 years. I
don't know why. I have no idea. All I know is it's endlessly fascinating
and incredible luck probably has a lot to do with it."
-Marianne Goldstein
|
474.9 | Grateful Dead likely to play on | CSC32::S_ROCHFORD | | Tue Aug 15 1995 02:46 | 117 |
474.10 | | SSGV02::TPNSTN::strobel | Jeff Strobel | Tue Aug 15 1995 17:26 | 3 |
| re: -.1
notice that one of the SF Chronicle writers is Kenneth **J. Garcia**
|
474.11 | New Yorker | BINKLY::CEPARSKI | Broken Heart Don't Feel So Bad... | Wed Aug 30 1995 19:54 | 106 |
| New Yorker Article - Reprinted W/O Permission of course
AMERICAN BEAUTY
The Grateful Dead's burly, beatific alchemist.
As word of the death of Jerry Garcia spread last Wednesday, via
news reports and phone calls and E-mail, the scale of the reaction and
the depth of the response quickly surpassed what anyone might have
expected. It was suddenly obvious that Garcia had become, against all
odds, an American icon: by Thursday morning, the avuncular old reprobate
had smuggled his way onto the front pages of newspapers around the world.
That his battered, ruined body had finally given out was somehow less
surprising than the abrupt recognition of how much he had meant to so
many. He was eulogized as a rock star and as a guitar god, of course;
he was praised as a businessman who marketed his mystique both shrewdly
and generously; and, in the obituaries that recounted the intermittent
struggles with addiction that preceded his demise, at the age of
fifty-three, in a Marin County drug-rehabilitation center, he was
inevitably, and with some justice, pronounced a casualty of
drug abuse. But Jerry Garcia was a more graceful and complicated
figure than those categories can encompass: he transcended show business,
and it's impossible, even now, to think of him as a victim or a sad case.
The choices he made in life, whatever their ultimate cost to him, command
respect. He was a lyrical hipster, an outlaw with a sense of humor, a
fount of profound pleasure for tens of millions of people.
He started his extraordinary career as a bad boy in the classroom
("I was a wise guy, I talked too much, I spoke out of turn, and I was a
notorious underachiever," he told an interviewer in 1989) and graduated
to become a hood on the streets of San Francisco. In the late fifties, he
joined the Army to avoid jail (the reverse of what some of his fans
would do a decade later), was discharged after a few months, and wound up
living in a car and playing low-end folk gigs in clubs and coffeehouses
around Palo Alto. It was a fateful place and time: Beat culture was mixing
with pop culture, and the Bay Area's perpetual party was on the verge of
being hijacked by the novelist-provocateur Ken Kesey and his band of Merry
Pranksters, who spiked the punch with a stash of LSD that had been
liberated from local research laboratories. Garcia and his friends went
to see "A Hard Day's Night" and metamorphosed from a jug band into a rock
band. In 1965, the newly psychedelicized Garcia opened a dictionary of
folklore and alighted on the phrase "grateful dead," and his group, having
adopted the name, began playing at a series of Acid Test gatherings: wild,
euphoric, Dadaist affairs that celebrated noise, nonsense, and open-ended
improvisation. Those acid-fuelled evenings became the inspiration and
the model for the next three decades of Grateful Dead concerts, each of
which sought to invoke, in some measure, the crazed, beatific spirit of the
Acid Tests.
Amid the chaos, Garcia managed to project a casual authority, and
his crystalline guitar enhanced the alchemist's aura that he gradually
acquired. (For a long time, Deadheads called him Captain Trips, a title
he disliked.) Onstage, he was a stolid, impassive, faintly Buddha-like
presence, but in conversation he turned out to be a street philosopher
with a keen wit and a taste for the absurd. Despite, or because of,
all the drugs, he was a lucid, articulate raconteur and spokesman. What he
was a spokesman *for* was not exactly clear (and, in any case, he disavowed
the role). The Grateful Dead seemed to be the ultimate hippie band, but its
members, and Garcia in particular, were far more sardonic and
tough-minded than the flower children who wafted into their concerts.
The Dead were independent, apolitical, and free of self-dramatizing
posturing, and their ornery edge was one of the secrets of their longevity.
Garcia was both starry-eyed and impish about the first blush of the
psychedelic subculture he helped bring into being, but there was also a
touch of cruelty in his outlook. He loved to tell stories about the
first Trips Festival, which was held in San Francisco's Longshoremen's Hall
in 1966. It took place "right down on Fisherman's Wharf, near where all
the tourists are," Garcia once told a radio interviewer. "People came in
total drag __ the parking lot was full of cars painted Day-Glo colors, and
all kinds of crazy things. Nobody had seen any of this before, this was
all *brand new*. One of my vivid recollections is seeing this old friend
of mine, who was stoned out of his head on God knows how many tabs of
acid, and he was running down the street stopping tourists and sticking tabs
of acid into their mouths, making them take acid, forcing them to take
it." He laughed his smoker's half-choked laugh at the memory. "It was
crazy, outrageous. There were women running around naked, and Hell's Angels,
and every kind of weird thing. Nobody had ever seen this stuff before.
The straight people had not seen it. It was like taking Martians and
dropping them right into 1957."
It *is* funny, but the slightly chilly indifference to the reality
that some people did not (and do not) survive the Acid Test was a
characteristic that persisted throughout the history of the Grateful
Dead. Yet it was an honest indifference: the imagery of death's-heads and
skeletons and matter-of-fact mortality ("If the thunder don't get you then
the lightning will," as Garcia's song "The Wheel" puts it) was right on the
surface, and the band carried on with a minimum of angst through the
passing of three earlier members. Garcia was unwilling to condemn even
heroin. "It's tough for me to adopt a totally anti-drug stance," he
said in 1989. "For me, it was like taking a vacation while I was still
working, in a way. I was on for eight years. It was long enough to find
out everything I needed to know about it, and that was it." Evidently,
Garcia was unable to maintain that kind of detachment until the end.
In spite of these dark tints, Jerry Garcia's legacy is overwhelmingly
positive. Grateful Dead tours became an American institution, a
travelling Chautauqua of eclectic musicianship and communal,
cross-generational joy. For every show that fizzled out into noodling
mediocrity, there were two or three that sheltered the audience in a
beneficent rainbow of great rock and roll. In the future, those who will
come to know the Grateful Dead only through their recordings may wonder
what all the fuss was about; the Dead's most original creation, after all,
was the gestalt of their concerts -- the belongingness that enveloped
their audience and made it as central to their music as their very voices
and instruments. If something so evanescent could be put in a museum, an
evening with the Grateful Dead would warrant a place of honor in the
Smithsonian. But what was best about the band cannot, by its nature, be
preserved, and that gives Garcia's passing a special sting.
With his death, only the gratefulness remains.
- HAL ESPEN
|
474.12 | A-huih | CSLALL::LEBLANC_C | WithoutLoveDayToDayInsanity'sKing | Wed Aug 30 1995 20:22 | 7 |
|
amen
i thank christ i was a part of it and able to experience what i did
as was stated before...feel bad for those who never got to go
:^)
|
474.13 | | ALFA2::DWEST | his job is to shed light... | Wed Aug 30 1995 21:33 | 6 |
| zounds... too cool...
oh, and about my earlier request to post it? never mind... :^)
da ve
|
474.14 | PEOPLE's special tribute issue. | TEAMLK::PELLAND | | Thu Aug 31 1995 18:32 | 8 |
|
PEOPLE Magazine just came out with a Tribute to Jerry Garcia issue.
It's was well worth the $3.95 that I paid for and had some great
pictures and articles. Quite a few ads in the magazine that pay tribute
to Jerry also.
FWIW,
Chris
|
474.15 | | AWECIM::HANNAN | Beyond description... | Thu Aug 31 1995 18:38 | 6 |
|
The special People magazine on Jerry is on the web at
http://www.pathfinder.com/people/jerry/special/index.html
/Ken
|
474.16 | | STAR::HUGHES | Captain Slog | Thu Aug 31 1995 21:37 | 3 |
| Thanks for the NYer article. I thought that hit the nail on the head.
gary
|
474.17 | | DELNI::DSMITH | and they keep on dancin | Fri Sep 08 1995 14:25 | 134 |
|
Following are some clips from an Interview with Garcia in Spring 95
Relix Magazine. A very personal and touching interview with Jerry's
concepts of death.
D: Do you feel sometimes at your shows that you're guiding people or
taking people on a journey through those levels?
J:In a way, but I con't feel like I'm guiding anybody. I feel like I'm
sort of stumbling along and a lot of people are watching me or
stumbling with me or allowing me to stumble for them. I don't feel
like, here we are, I'm the guide and come on you guys, follow me. I do
that, but I don't feel I;m particularly better than anybody else.
For example, here's something that used to happen all the time. The
band would check into a hotel. We'd get our room key and then we'd go
to the elevator. Well, a lot of times we didn't have a clue where the
elevator was. So, what used to happen was that everybody would follow
me, thinking that I would know. I'd be walking and thinking, "Why the
fuck is everybody following me?" (laughter) So, if nobody else does it,
I'll start something - it's a knack.
D: A lot of people are looking for someone to follow.
J: Yeah. I don't mind being that person but it doesn't mean that I'm
good at it or that I know where I'm going or anything else. It doesn't
require competence, it only requires the gesture.
D: Is there any planning involved about the choosing songs in a certain
sequence to take people on a journey?
J: Sometimes we plan, but more often than not we find that when we do,
we change our plans. Sometimes we talk down a skeleton of the second
set, to give ourselves some form - but it depends. The important thing
is that it not be dull and that the experience of playing doesn't get
boring. Being stale is death. So we do whatever we can to keep it
spontaneous and amusing for us.
New interviewer:
R: I understand that you became ill a few years ago and came very close
to death. I'm interested in how that experience affected your attitude
to life?
J: It's still working on me. I made a decision somewhere along the
line to survive, but I didn't have a near death experience in the
classical sense. I came out of it feeling fragile, but I'm not afraid
of death.
R: Where you afraid of death before?
J: I can't say that I was, actually. But it did make me want to focus
more attention on the quality of life. So I feel like now I have to
get serious about being healthful. If I'm going to be alive, I want to
feel well. I never had to think about it too much before, but finally
mortality started to catch up with me.
R: You say that you didn't have a near death experience, but did
anything happen that gave you unusual insights?
J: Well I had some very weird experiences. My main experience was one
of furious activity and tremendous struggle in a sort of futuristic
space-ship vehicle with insectoid presences. After I came out of my
coma, I had this image of myself as these hunks of protoplasm that were
stuck together kind of like stamps with perforations between them that
you could snap off. (laughter) They were run through with neoprene
tubing, and there were these insects that looked like cockroaches which
were like message units that were kind of like my bloodstream. That
was my image of my physical self and this particular feeling lasted a
long time. It was really strange.
D: That sound really similar to a DMT experience.
J: It was DMT-like as far as the intensity was concerned, but it lasted
a couple days!
D: Did it affect what you think might happen after death?
J: No. It just gave me a greater admiration for the incredible baroque
possibilities of mentation. The mind is so incredibly weird. The
whole process of going into a coma was very interesting, too. It was a
slow onset - it took about a week - and during this time I started
feeling like the vegetable kingdom was speaking to me. It was
communicating in cosmic dialect in iambic pentameter. So there were
these italian accents and german accents and it got to be this vast
gabbing. Potatoes and radishes and trees were all speaking to me.
(laughter) It was really strange. It finally just reached hysteria and
thats when I passed out and woke up in the hospital.
D: Do you feel psychedelics might be a way for the vegetable kingdom to
communicate with humans?
J: I like that thought, but I don't knowif it's true. The thing is
that there's no way to prove this stuff. I would love it of somebody
would put the energy into studying the mind and psychedelics to the
extent where we could start to talk about things and somebody could
even throw forth a few suggestions as to what might be happening.
There's no body of information - we need more research. These are
questions that we should be asking, this is important stuff.
R: And when you came out of your coma, did you come out of it in stages?
J: I was pretty scrambled. It was as though in my whole library of
information, all the books had fallen off the shelves and all the pages
had fallen out of the books. I would speak to people and know what I
meant to say, but different words would come out. So I head to learn
everything over again. I had to learn how to walk, play the guitar,
everything.
R: Did you always have faith that you would access it again? It didn't
scare you, the idea that you might have lost it forever?
J: I didn't care. When your memory's gone, you don't care because you
don't remember when you had one. (laughter)
D: What do you think happens to consciousness after death?
J: It probably dies with the body. Why would it exist apart from the
body?
D: People have had experiences of feeling like they're outside of their
body.
J: That's true. But unfortunately, the only ones who have gone past
that are still dead. (laughter) I don't know what consciousness is
apart from a physcial being. I once slipped out of my body
accidentally. I was at home watching television and I slid out through
the soles of my feet. All of a sudden, I was hovering up by the
ceiling looking down at myself. So I know that I can disembody myself
somehow from my physical self, but more than that I have know way of
knowing.
----------------------
I will try to type in more over the weekend.
|
474.18 | Phoenix publishes a letter from one of our own | OBJRUS::SLOAN | Tell ME all that 'cha know | Fri Sep 08 1995 18:16 | 54 |
|
I received this in mail today from Bob Segal (ZKO) and he said
it was ok to post. I thought you might appreciate it. I think it's
grate that he pointed out to the Phoenix, FNX etc. that they
did'nt acknowledge Jerry/The Dead until he/they were gone.
Also Re: 474.17. Thanks for putting that in DeanO. Jerry sure
provides some mind expanding concepts, ie. communicating
with veggies.
Sloan
=================
Subj: Man of letters finally gets one printed ...
Just thought I'd blow my own horn here in case any of you music fans might be
interested. I got a letter published in this week's (Sept. 7) edition of the
Boston Phoenix.
I was compelled to write after Jerry Garcia died. You see, for years WFNX has
pretty much ignored the Dead, barely acknowledging the existence of their
Boston shows and of course rarely (if ever) playing their music. This despite
the fact that I'm sure a decent percentage of college age kids and other
listeners who fall into the WFNX demographics must have attended Dead shows.
The Phoenix too pretty much ignored the comings and goings of the Dead these
past several years. Only when Garcia died did they throw his picture on the
cover (a small insert) and write about him and the Dead. Why bother to do that
when they had already decided for their readership that the Dead wasn't of
interest musically, culturally, or otherwise? I was offended by the hypocrisy
and sent in the following letter:
I'm sure Al Giordano's piece about Jerry Garcia came from the heart, but
your tribute was a sham nonetheless. The incestuous Phoenix/WFNX hype
machine has disdainfully ignored the Dead--the original "alternative"
rock band--for years. Now that you have dutifully acknowledged Garcia'a
death, you can hop off the bandwagon and go back to wallowing in the
"legacy" of Kurt Cobain.
The letter generated the phrase "respect for the Dead" on the front cover where
the highlights of the contents appeared and, next to the letter itself, a
photo of Garcia with the caption "Cobain received more coverage" (not really
the point of my criticism).
I didn't build my life around the Dead but they certainly played a role. And
while I myself sometimes looked on in amusement at the antics of the second
generation of tie-dyed fans, I nonetheless resented the potshots often taken
by the media. So I got one in of my own this time.
- Bob
|
474.19 | Matt Groening "Life In Hell" Tribute | ASDG::IDE | My mind's lost in a household fog. | Mon Sep 11 1995 15:25 | 71 |
| Matt Groening is the creator of the Simpsons, fyi. Jamie
Article 77766 of alt.tv.simpsons:
This, copied without permission, is the text to Matt Groening's "Life
in Hell", from Aug 18, 1995:
Portland, Oregon, April 1967...I'm a miserable, confused, 13-year-old
Boy Scout.
Young Matt(YM)'s thought balloons:
"I'm trapped. I'm surrounded. I'm doomed."
"I'm horny."
"I hate my life."
We spend our troop meetings lining up, saluting the flag, reciting the
scout laws, getting inspected, receiving demerits, and marching around
in a rigid frenzy.
Nasty Scoutmaster(NS): Atten-hut!
YM: A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind,
obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent, SIR!
NS: Wipe that smirk off your face, Groany. You win the big prize,
Groany, you're the worst scout in the whole troop. What do you htink
of that?
YM: Well...Someone's gotta be the worst, sir.
NS: THAT'S A FINE ATTITUDE!
I spend a lot of time alone, walking in the woods, trying to sort out
my bad thoughts and feelings....
(thought balloon): Dear God, I know you can read my thoughts, so
please try to forgive me for not believing in you anymore.
One weekend our scoutmaster volunteers us all to be ushers at a
gigantic evangelistic Christian rally at the Memorial Colidrum across
the river. We pile into a bus, and on the way through downtown I see
something strange and exotic....
YM: What's that??
Other kid: That's the psychedelic shop! Hippies go there.
At the coliseum I help old ladies find their seats and then stand at
attention, listening to the echoey preaching. Finally, I can't take it
anymore, and I slip out of the cooliseum when my scoutmaster isn't
looking....
Three miles later, I reach my destination....
Inside, I stare at all the wild posters and sniff my first
incense. I'm transfixed by this new world, and barely notice the
hippies snickering at my Boy Scout uniform. Finally, I buy an album
with the coolest name-The Grateful Dead. And that's when I begin my
escape.
(thought balloon): This music is great!!! I bet it'd sound even better
in stereo.
This strip is dedicated to Jerry Garcia, R.I.P.
|
474.20 | | ZENDIA::FERGUSON | Dry your eyes on the wind | Mon Sep 11 1995 17:08 | 15 |
| not sure if i posted something in here about a WSJ editorial
which was very negative towards Jerry. it was 2-3 wks ago or so.
anyways, i wrote a letter...
well, in friday's journal, just about the entire (all but 1)
letters to the editor section was deadicated to people pissed
about the editorial. everyone said the guy who wrote the editorial
was off track BIG TIME. unforetunately, mine wasn't one of them.
rarely do editorials generate that kind of response. i would
guess they got flodded with people saying the editorial was off track.
anyways, i felt good about readingh all those letters this morning....
JERRY LIVES!
|
474.21 | | CXDOCS::BARNES | | Tue Sep 12 1995 16:42 | 4 |
| my respect to Bob Segal and JC....
rfb
|
474.22 | Saunders on Garcia | HELIX::CLARK | | Wed Sep 20 1995 18:10 | 4 |
| This month's Musician magazine (Back Side department, just inside the back
cover) has a tribute to Jerry by Merl Saunders. Really nice. And as you
would expect from this magazine, definitely a musician's tribute to
another musician. Should be hitting the stands right now. - Jay
|
474.23 | | CXDOCS::BARNES | | Tue Sep 26 1995 13:17 | 15 |
| Just finished reading Entertainment's Jerry tribute...some good stuff
and some stuff (esp. the reviews of albums) that made me say "F*ck U"
out loud...good thing no one was around here early this morning.
Still gets to me when I read certain things....like some of the little
snippits in the article "The Life and Crimes of the Grateful Dead",
esp. ones that ring a bell real close to home like:
"Dec 2, 1992: The Dead resume performing with a conceret in Denver."
Patty and I will never, never, ever wear that t-shirt again that says
"Jerrys Back" on the back.....
still missin the fat man everyday,
rfb
|
474.24 | Just Ain't Right | BINKLY::CEPARSKI | Were They Ever Here At All? | Tue Sep 26 1995 14:54 | 6 |
| rfb -
I bought one of those "Jerry's Back" t's in Albany on Spring Tour
the following year. Pretty cool shirt at the time but yes, it will be
packed away nevah to be worn again.
_Jeff
|
474.25 | Peter Rowan's tribute... | AITRNG::DWEST | his job is to shed light... | Fri Nov 03 1995 16:03 | 28 |
|
not exactly in the "press", but i recently got my Free Mexican Air
Force newsletter (Peter Rowan's flyer for the uninitiated) and it
has this to say abou Jerry from Peter:
" 'he can heal your wounded heart, he can set your spirit free
he can raise your hopes to be the very best that you can be...
I was fortunate enough to have worked with Jerry Garcia at a time
when Dave Grisman, myself, and Jerry were all living in Stinson Beach
California and we could get together casually just to play music.
Old and In the Way grew out of spontaneity and openness of playing
music for the joy of it. Garcia's enthusiasm was infectious and made
us all feel the boundless quality of music.
At a show he once said "no thoughts!" He asked only that music go
beyond concept and flow freely. That's the legacy of Jerry Garcia,
that's the challenge.
Peter"
i thought it was pretty cool... very Jerry and very Peter....
da ve
|
474.26 | | ZENDIA::FERGUSON | Run, run, run for the roses | Tue Nov 07 1995 18:35 | 3 |
| Anyone check out the GD Almanac?
Bill Weld's letter/comments made it in.
Rage!
|
474.27 | Friday Afternoon read - RS book review | BINKLY::CEPARSKI | Guess It Doesn't Matter, Anyway | Fri Dec 15 1995 15:43 | 145 |
474.28 | | DELNI::DSMITH | Answers aplenty in the by & by | Fri Dec 15 1995 16:45 | 11 |
|
Where can I get this R.S. tribute?
>Kesey, in a breezy farewell, remembers that Jerry was always "the sworn
>enemy of hot air and commercials, however righteous the cause or lucrative
>the product. Nobody ever heard you use that microphone as a pulpit. No
>anti-war rants, no hymns to peace. No odes to the trees and All Things
>Organic. No ego-deaths or born-againness. No devils denounced, no
>gurus glorified. No dogmatic howlings that I ever caught wind of."
Yeah! :-)
|
474.29 | Tear up a picture of Christ, Ghandi, Mao, etc etc | STOWOA::LEBLANC_CH | All good things in all good time | Fri Dec 15 1995 16:54 | 4 |
| yeah
just imagine what, say, Sinead O'Connor coulda done with an audience the
size of a sold out RFK or Rich Stadium show
|
474.30 | | BINKLY::CEPARSKI | Guess It Doesn't Matter, Anyway | Fri Dec 15 1995 17:50 | 13 |
| >>Where can I get this R.S. tribute?
I saw this book at a book store in one of the malls this week while I
was shopping. The same picture that was on the Jerry RS magazine is the
cover of this book. (circa 1980 picture of Jerry peeking over his
glasses for those that didn't see the mag.) I flipped through it quick
while in the store and it looked pretty decent from the few pix I saw
and snippets I read. I think it goes for $30 or so - didn't buy it as
I'm hoping it'll be a X-mas gift. Should be able to find it at any
major bookstore I'd figure.
|
474.31 | on the cover... | SMURF::HAPGOOD | Java Java HEY! | Wed Jul 17 1996 12:30 | 16 |
| Anyone see the latest Rolling Stone?
Well Jerry made the cover again - this time w/ his monkey that rode on his
back. Actually it's a skeleton on his back.
The article is about Jerry's drug use and is an excerpt from a book soon
to be released. It's an "oral history" in that they interview a lot of people
who knew Jerry personally such as; Owsley, Grisman, Parrish, Merle,
Jon Mcintire, Laird Grant, Mountain Girl, Barsotti, his housekeeper, doctor,
personal advisor, first girlfriend, wives you name it...on and on and on.
It's the dirt. You knew it wouldn't take long....they made the money praising
and what's left? DIRT!
bob
|
474.32 | | SPECXN::BARNES | | Wed Jul 17 1996 16:24 | 9 |
| i knew there was a reason i let my subscrip to RS lapse again....RS has gone
way down hill IMO. I felt this way a couple of years ago after I had
agreed over the phone to renew, then an issue came out that I took
offense to, decided to let them know by NOT renewing...they took me to
a collection agency, I called the editor and bitched them out, they
said don't worry, I would NEVER get another subscrip again.....couple
of years later...introductory offer, couple of months ago...lapse.
rfb
|
474.33 | probably an unpopular opinion on this subject in this place | STAR::EVANS | | Fri Jul 19 1996 19:34 | 12 |
|
I haven't read the article, but the truth as I saw it was that there were
years when Jerry was heavy into drugs that the Dead weren't progressing much
artistically. In particular, I think that his heroin use and addition should
be talked about so that it can be de-glamorized. Jerry's and music was highly
praised - as it should have be. Jerry was also remembered as a great guy
to be around. However, I would not want any young people to be given the
impression that *everything* in his life was an example for how a life should
be led. YMMV
Jim
|
474.34 | | SPECXN::BARNES | | Fri Jul 19 1996 20:01 | 9 |
| Jim, your opinion is always welcome...just don't piss us off! %^)
Jerry often said "Don't follow me!" and we all know heroin isn't something
to be glamorized, but Jerry's main message, when asked, was "Do your own
thing, don't look to us(me) for an answer, cause we ain't got it!"
I think if we listen to THAT msg, at least -I- don't need "The Secret
Life of Jerry Garcia"
rfb
|
474.35 | I don't care to hear about any dirt... | FABSIX::T_BEAULIEU | Like A steam Locomotive | Fri Jul 19 1996 20:52 | 7 |
|
We put Jerry high up on that pedestal and it was/is easy
to forget that he was just another human being(a very talented one!)
and subject to all of life's pitfalls like the rest of us.
Toby
|
474.36 | | NAC::TRAMP::GRADY | Squash that bug! (tm) | Mon Jul 22 1996 20:33 | 17 |
| An artist's substance addiction is hardly anything new. Whether it was Billy
Holiday's heroin addiction, or Earnest Hemingway's alcoholism, many
of the greatest artistic forces throughout time have had life threatening
substance abuse problems - and many of them were taken from us as a result.
Jerry's personal life and his public persona were, to me, an ongoing paradox.
I think it's important, especially for young people who look up to someone
like Jerry and his memory, to remember that he was still just a man. He had
many faults, perhaps the worst of which, or at least the most frightening
and dangerous of which, was his inability to control his vices.
Maybe it's just because I have three teenagers, and such things sometimes
concern me, I don't know. It's important to avoid deifying him - he himself
would have detested that, I'm sure. Let people know that he was imperfect,
fragile, talented and beautiful -- just like all of the rest of us.
tim
|
474.37 | | SPECXN::BARNES | | Mon Jul 22 1996 20:42 | 1 |
| very good, tim...
|
474.38 | | STAR::64881::DEBESS | knocking on the Golden Door | Mon Jul 22 1996 20:52 | 17 |
|
I think the best one can do with their children is to
help them and encourage them to make up their own minds.
Jerry's message seemed to be about "doing your own thing -
follow your bliss"...not "do it my way - follow my lead".
I'm not saying "deify" Jerry - I agree, he would hate that! -
but I am saying - I don't think that "exposing" him as
"fragile and imperfect" has to be done so that kids won't
follow in his footsteps. That seems like "crucifying"
Jerry. I don't think that's necessary.
as I started to say - teach your children well...
Debess
|
474.39 | | BINKLY::CEPARSKI | May Your Song Always Be Sung | Mon Jul 22 1996 21:23 | 1 |
| "When it's done and over, a man is just a man, Playin', Playin' In the Band"
|
474.40 | from Dupree's Celebrates Garcia | STAR::64881::DEBESS | We'llKnowTheNextStepWhenItComes | Tue Sep 24 1996 13:43 | 125 |
474.41 | | SPECXN::BARNES | | Tue Sep 24 1996 14:01 | 1
|