Growing up with the Dead

Since my wonderful first experience with Brahms

at age four, I've found music to be, among many other things,

a safety net, a lifeline that remains constant 

when all other mental constructs 

are in total Heraclitean flux.

Phil Lesh, bassist, Grateful Dead

This is who I am.

Every thing makes sense now. After reading Phil Lesh's biography Searching for the Sound I felt like I was hanging out with a version of my childhood buddies and myself, just from a time 30 years before my childhood.

Like Lesh, I was raised on classical music and then I became entranced with Jazz and then rock n' roll. Kind of the backwards route for most people.

I love how Lesh describes his first encounter with music and his earliest memory. Brahms. First Symphony. Age 4. I, too, remember when I first "discovered" music. KKHI, the Bay Area's great classical music station in the seventies and eighties, had this Sunday afternoon opera show. My parents had KKHI on 24/7 growing up and I remember this opera show's opening tune blended perfectly with the idyllic backyard patio I grew up knowing in Menlo Park.

Menlo Park, my hometown, is really the birthplace of the Dead, though usually it's Palo Alto that takes the credit because it has a strong claim, too.

Jerry and Phil, cornerstones of the Dead, met up in Menlo Park, at the Chateau, Ken Kesey's house, somewhere near my local drinking hole the Dutch Goose. The Dead's first gig, at Magoo's Pizza, 635 Santa Cruz Avenue, which is now a fancy French restaurant, is where the band discovered the wonderful power of improvisational music. Early folk gigs and meet-ups among the band and Jerry's other folkie friends took place at Kepler's, which is still in Menlo Park but moved across the street, and was a place where you could drink coffee and read books, quite a novelty at the time.

So glad that there was another band called the Warlocks, so the Dead could come up with a much better name. The centuries old Grateful Dead myth is the essence of the band, their community, and is a good rule to live by.

Pigpen learned to sing the blues in blues clubs in East Palo Alto, when I grew up the "other side of the tracks," and now the home of Facebook. Jerry taught guitar at a music shop that might have been where I first took sax lessons, where he met Bobby Weir, who was attending M-A, my old high school, and the idea for the Dead began its embryonic stage. Of course, Weir never graduated. The dyslexic was expelled from every school he ever attended. Quite a prankster!

After their beginnings in Menlo Park and Palo Alto, the Dead became the greatest touring improvisatory band in the history of music blending so many influences (folk, blues, country, jazz, rock, avant garde classical) into one collective and totally unique American experience. They really are an American Beauty.

Dead, circa 1965.

The Dead were 5 non-prodigies. I only trust musicians who are ugly and the Dead were five of the ugliest (in physical appearance) that ever existed. Just think. Pigpen. Organically greasy. I love Lesh's side note on how he never saw Pigpen without his leather vest which was glued onto him. Jerry was the only member of the Dead who exhibited any extraordinary talent, but even his talent was of the kind that is purely from working hard, literally practicing every waking hour of the day his banjo, guitar and pedal steel. Nobody practiced as hard as Garcia in the 60s and 70s.

Pigpen, one of the ugliest dudes ever. Which is why I trust him as a musician.

What made the Dead great is that they all learned how to play together. They didn't develop individual talents and then form. When they formed, they had no real individual talents (except for Jerry). Phil was a classically trained trumpet player who learned to play bass on the fly. As Lesh notes, "For more than 2 months we played together every day and I can't exaggerate the importance of this experience. The unique organicity of our music reflects the fact that each of us consciously personalized his playing to fit with what others were playing and to fit with who each man was an an individual, allowing us to meld our consciousnesses together in the unity of a group mind." The Dead took the concept of "bleshing"--mesh + blend--from Theodore Sturgeon's sci-fi novel More Than Human bringing their freakish X-men like idiosyncratic powers to make music in a completely group think mind-melding experience.

Music, for me, is all about contrast and compliment. Tension and release. These are the 2 big laws of music. And those are the rules that guide the Dead. Build tension, epic tension, and then find beauty in the release. Contrast--Jerry's guitar and Phil's bass were like a Bach counterpoint, contrasting but fitting together in a sort of puzzle, with Weir complimenting and filling the in between sounds.

The show that most impressed Lesh was seeing John Coltrane in a small San Francisco club. Oh how I wish I could take a time capsule to go see Trane, particularly in '59 with Miles, or the Classic Coltrane Quartet in the glory years '64-'65. I'd also of course love to take a time capsule to see the Dead in their most classic shows (2-14-68, 2-13-70, 5-2-70, 8-27-72, 9-21-72, 12-19-73). Oh my! That's all I'd do with a time capsule. That and maybe talk to Lincoln.

Lesh talks about how Coltrane's version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "My Favorite Things" was one of the blueprints for the Dead. Listening to Coltrane's version of "My Favorite Things" was a moment when music changed for me, too. It really is the quintessential essence of Jazz. Taking a standard and making it completely unique is what Jazz is and what the Dead did so well.

Jerry in the early days playing pedal steel guitar with David Nelson and the New Riders of the Purple Sage

Reading the book was like being in a conversation with my childhood buddies. Lesh has been a musician I've worshiped my entire life. Not worship in an untouchable Jimi Hendrix or Mozart kind of way. Those guys were superhuman meteors and not really of this earth. But worship in the sense that "If I could play bass, this is how I'd play" kind of way. Lesh seems approachable. I try to play my bari sax with a lot of the same influences that Lesh had (from Stravinsky to Coltrane).

Note the Red, White and Blue wristbands. That's my workout gear, too.

The Dead led me to discover Johnny Cash long before he became re-popularized with the movie and the recordings he did in his twilight years with Rick Rubin. Also Chuck Berry--not many kids my age were listening to Chuck Berry, who just about smokes any of the music being made nowadays. Lesh also brings influences from the world of classical like Charles Ives or Brahms. Which brings up 3 wonderful anecdotes Lesh tells about Jerry:

1) Lesh was invited to be a guest conductor for the Berkeley Community Orchestra conducting Stravinsky's Rite of Spring as a benefit. It was in the later years when the band had grown apart and wasn't spending as much time together when they weren't on the road. Lesh didn't tell anybody in the band, thinking none of the guys would show up anyways. But who does he see in the front row when he goes to conduct but his best buddy Jerry. Surprise! It took Lesh aback when Jerry later brought some paintings of him conducting.

2) Lesh tells another story of how he rented a box at the San Francisco Opera for Wagner's Ring Cycle, some 24 hours of German opera. He invited the band. The only member to come for more than 2 nights was Jerry, who came all nights except for the last one, because he had promised to take his teenage daughter to see the Phil Collins concert. It's a pretty funny mental image to imagine Jerry at either a Wagner opera or a Phil Collins concert and it makes me howl out loud laughing to think about.

3) SCUBA diving--Apparently Jerry found peace from all the pressures of being a cultural icon by going SCUBA diving. Phil was always afraid of activities like that but Jerry insisted he come with him. And Phil describes just how happy it made Jerry to be under water. One more anecdote just to close it up: Jerry loved water and Phil describes coming to his house and watching Jerry just swim with his giant New Foundlands in his pool. Lesh describes the immense closet in Jerry's house that is empty except for 8 black t-shirts, the only attire Jerry ever wore.

If anything, Lesh's memoir of playing with the Dead, the greatest touring band of all time, is a story of friendships. Especially, his friendship with Jerry. Although there are some really great anecdotes about Bob Weir and Mickey Hart. That's what it's all about. Traveling with your buddies. Having adventures. Living a dream. Being kind to people in between and making people happy. I have tremendous gratitude for the great work Lesh and his buddies did for the thousands of people they made happy.

Always good to see a happy Jerry (and a wild Weir).