Over half a century ago, way back in 1974, the Grateful Dead announced they were retiring, and going out with a five-night run of final shows at Winterland in San Francisco. They’d been at it and on the road for nearly a decade already and were nearly broke and burnt out. Understandably so, but as Southern California high school fans, it seemed we’d better do anything we could to catch at least one of those last concerts. I’d only seen them live once, with their legendarily massive Wall of Sound system, and that couldn’t be all, could it? So off we headed up to the big city in my 1969 VW camper van, hopefully bound for glory or something like it.
Winterland was in what was then a sketchy neighborhood for clueless suburban surfer boys who showed up after dark with no tickets, so the merciful doorman ushered us in, shaking his head at our naïveté. The New Riders of the Purple Sage, a Marin-based Dead offshoot with a more country sound, were playing the Rolling Stones’ “Dead Flowers.” The hall already reeked of pot and sweat. My friends and I were soon separated and I spent the evening wandering on my own, or rather, as part of a mass moving gathering the likes of which I’d never experienced before. The music was enthralling. Beautiful older (20?) hippie girls madly twirled about. The whole vibe was utterly cool, even cosmic. I felt I was experiencing the last of the fabled Sixties at their finest, just in time before everything ended, including the band.
Fifty-one years later, of course, that “retirement” was a bit premature, and the Dead soon reappeared and carried on for another 20 years. But I faded from the ranks of the faithful, only catching them in person about a dozen or so more times, some of those in a work or volunteer capacity. And then Jerry Garcia was gone. Some would say he’d been increasingly gone for some time already.
Garcia was both the musical and spiritual center of the band, even though he hated being deified as some sort of guru figure. “I’m just a guitar player, man,” he was known to say. But jazz figures like Ornette Coleman and Branford Marsalis wanted to sit in with the, and that was mainly because of Garcia. The times I met him, briefly, he was humble, humorous. But still. “Ninety percent of their songs were just there to show off Garcia’s playing,” opined keyboardist Tom Constanten, part of the band during one of their early peak adventurous phases (see: 1969’s classic album Live Dead). Garcia’s folk roots and leanings soon took them into another peak, the era of Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty albums. When another original leader Pigpen, the closest they had to a blues frontman, bowed out with the fabled Europe ’72 tour/album, and then died, they put out a couple more very decent studio albums and then that aspect of the band was basically kaput. They soldiered on as a live band so revered that when they finally had a hit song in the late ‘80s they became the biggest touring act of all. Not bad for a bunch of Haight hippies.
Some veteran fans feel that was their downfall. For those not fully part of the true faithful, the shows were very hit or miss. The main factor seemed to be what kind of shape Garcia was in. As he declined, with hopeful resurgences, the juggernaut rolled on, the money too big, too many family and friends and staff dependent on them, too much of everything, until Garcia’s prematurely aged body just gave out. The drugs didn’t help but that’s not what did him in at 53. One could say “success” killed him, because it wouldn’t let him stop, or even take a real break. I’ve long felt he could have been still be alive today, happily playing bluegrass and whatever else in smaller venues only when he felt like it, had he really had the chance. But no such luck.
It’s a true American tragedy, and still saddens me, 30 years later, so much so that I’ve never much wanted to catch one of the ongoing legacy bands, even those of the late great “lead bass” player Phil Lesh. I’ve listened to lots of their music since but most of it’s just not quite for me. Now the main remnant group, Dead and Company, have returned to San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, where they began with free shows long ago. Our Mayor, who introduced them onstage, has noted it will bring many millions of dollars into the city. If tens of thousands want to spend big money to see whoever’s on offer, fine. Why not? But musically, as good as they are, it seems to me something of a shadow of the Garcia-led group. There are Dead cover bands some feel are actually better (one of them is in West Marin). So be it.
For days and nights, Deadheads from all over the nation and maybe beyond swarmed into the Haight, looking to see and feel a bit of Dead Ground Zero. It was like a happy circus, with live bands on the corners, vendors of tie dyed everything and more on the sidewalks, and a feeling of jubilation. I sat outside my local market with coffee and talked with many happy pilgrims of all ages, ranging from dreadlocked “crusties” to straight-looking All-American southerners. The band has always stayed resolutely apolitical in statement, albeit with benefit shows and more that tipped their hand towards “sixties” values of ecology, peace, and helping the disadvantaged. There are MAGA or libertarian Deadheads but they must be a small minority. Though I didn’t venture political questions to those folks I met, some, even the All-American types, offered comments like “San Francisco is such an oasis from the Trumpy madness out there,” and “The country is a mess as of this year, but this too shall pass,” and “We’re not worried about ICE here as we’re almost all white!” (True, and the Deadhead scene never quite crossed over to many other communities, but, ugh). The younger ones just shrugged and had other priorities just then, especially those who didn’t have the costly tickets but were hoping for a “miracle” gift of one. One young guy said he’d come directly from forty shows in Las Vegas. I didn’t ask how he afforded that. Another guy wished for a Deadhead dating site as “That’s the first question I ask, man, if they are into the Dead, as otherwise it’s just pointless.” I later looked around, and yes, there is such a site. And a young guy who said he was from “Mendo county, God's country” admitted he was really just there to sell lots of early harvest herb. Did I need any?
Having been gifted a pass, miraculously or not, but being averse to huge crowds, I just visited strategically. On Friday opening night, a foggy cold one in the big park, leader Weir, who one kid said looked like Gandalf with his grey beard and cape, seemed and sounded frail, so much so that I worried about him, and the whole sound suffered. One rumor was that he’d had emergency dental surgery just before and might still be on pain meds. Dead & Co has been labeled “Dead and Slow” by detractors for their sometimes sluggish tempos and that was undeniably in effect. But the next night they rallied, and by Sunday night, actually a clear one, they soared some. In person and online Deadheads endlessly debated every aspects of the shows and everything else about the group. Call it a cult if you wish, but it’s largely a very happy one, and the wide drug abuse that long plagued their scene seemed largely more benign than before, with nitrous oxide, pot, and psychedelics in evidence but without many negative incidents. In a “town” of over 60,000 each evening, especially one including lots of older folks, there’s bound to be some incidents and there were, including a lethal cardiac arrest and some creepy predatory behavior by men, but maybe even less so than in a comparable-sized non-Deadhead burg. There was an inordinate amount of tobacco smoking too, which is sad, as that’s a bad drug.
So really the whole big weekend was celebratory. I just wish that the Dead & Company folks might project a bit more of the original “grateful” spirit with, if not free shows, some benefits for worthy causes in these perilous times, when the movements of the whole “‘60s dream” are under severe attack. But when I raised that modest idea regarding the impending Golden Gate Park shows in a San Francisco Chronicle letter, my proposal was met with silence from the band and corporations presenting the shows, and a bit of “how dare you” blowback from the ever-faithful. I’ve been told it’s all a corporation now, with the bottom line the primary goal, and Weir and drummer Mickey Hart, the two remaining players from Garcia’s days, just love to still play on but don’t even have controlling votes about what goes on. Weir has in the past prompted some fine philanthropy, as did Garcia, and the Dead still have a charitable arm, the Rex Foundation. But an elder Deadhead with insider knowledge just sadly advised “Nice try, but Jerry and the Sixties are long gone and Dead & Company is just that: a company.” Ouch.
However, having lived in The Haight for 42 years now, I know firsthand that their still-living legacy lives on in countless hearts and memories and jam bands. The only tie I wear is the official beautiful autographed Jerry Garcia one he once gave me. They have about a dozen classic songs, mostly by Garcia and his lyricist Robert Hunter. But what really made the real Dead different? I think one key is that they never completely severed their roots in blues, country, folk — American roots music, in other words, even when steeped in LSD. They started as a jug band in fact. The legendary founder of “country rock,” the doomed Gram Parsons, strove to make what he termed “Cosmic American Music.”
The Dead made that vision real. Garcia found a perfect lyrical partner in Robert Hunter (“Wharf Rat” is an Americana literary marvel about winos, and “Ripple” a timeless quiet uplifting anthem, and there are more) and a twangier foil in Bob Weir. They covered Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Chuck Berry, and outer space, sometimes in the same sequence. And “Dark Star,” well, that will always be the Holy Grail of psychedelic music. I still listen to their 1969-74 peak period with pleasure, with careful forays into later years. And while I’ve shared skepticism about former John Mayer, the divisive pop star who took on the impossible task of filling Garcia’s fingers, after these shows he gratefully and humbly posted “It must be said… I'll never come close to playing like Jerry Garcia. But if I can somehow get you closer to him - and to the spirit he created 60 years ago - then I suppose l've done my job. Thank you for accepting me.” That’s class.
The days after the shows, things slowly calmed down. There were some stragglers on Haight spinning around to boombox Dead music. These recalled the Church of Unlimited Devotion, Mendocino County spinners of the 1980s who made their own brown clothing and whirled like dervishes, living communally near Philo until that scene melted down into the usual cult pathology in the 1990s. They believed Garcia’s guitar channeled the voice of God. Garcia’s resigned take was “Well, I’ll put up with it till they come for me with the cross and nails.” Overall he seemed to have an almost fatherly concern for the most devoted traveling Deadheads, wondering aloud what they might do when not “on tour”, following the band, or when it was all over. But so far, 30 years after his death, it’s obviously not over.
The next weekend, there was the big Outside Lands festival in the same spot, featuring 100 more current musical acts, most of whom I’d never heard of. Will any of them still have a following 50 years from now? Possible, but I doubt it in this ephemeral cultural age. Yes, I felt some sadness for Weir at points, but also found it inspiring that he’s still doing what he loves, and for people who love it - and him. Old blues and jazz musicians have been revered for playing on and on into decrepitude, so why not rockers, if people enjoy seeing and hearing them? Thankfully, nobody’s forcing anyone to see Dylan or Jagger or others, but long may they run.
Bruce Springsteen, one of the few other musicians with a comparable cultlike following, was initially unimpressed, but later said this about the Dead: “I don’t know if they were great but I know they did something great. Years later, I came to appreciate their subtle musicality, Jerry Garcia’s beautifully lyrical guitar playing and the folk purity of their voices…. They had a unique ability to build community and sometimes, it ain’t what you’re doing but what happens while you are doing it that counts.”
Indeed. And there’s more to come. I do intend to catch the August “Meet Up At The Movies” theater showing of The Grateful Dead Movie, professionally filmed at those 1974 retirement shows and “directed” by Garcia, even though it sunk them further financially. It’s yes, a “community” thing. Plus after all, somewhere in that footage is the teen version of me, utterly and thankfully amazed at the wild splendor of it all.
It certainly has been a long, strange trip for the Grateful Dead/Dead & Co.
I watched a couple of videos from the San Francisco concerts and was saddened. Though the Grateful Dead varied over the years from transcendence to tedium, there typically was some balance. What I saw in the clips was a group going through the motions, but finding it impossible to overcome the long shadow of the Grateful Dead’s past. By contrast, the Rolling Stones after 60 years remain a vibrant group, able to deliver new music and play shows that look – and feel – like they matter.
I never saw the Grateful Dead live. However, around 1975, I saw Jerry Garcia play with Merle Saunders. It was an unannounced gig in a small bar on Union Street in San Francisco, the cover charge was one dollar and the audience numbered about 40, half of which were associated with the band. The music – the bits I remember after 50 years – was great. There was a sense they were playing because they loved making music.
The essence of Jerry Garcia’s guitar works is difficult to recreate. But there is a young woman guitarist from Santa Rosa named Bella Rayne who captures his idiosyncratic style really well – in my view, even better than John Mayer. Check her out.