tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post8137221212059121185..comments2024-03-26T23:10:34.814-07:00Comments on Grateful Dead Sources: 1970: Bob Weir InterviewLight Into Asheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-8776406393538734902020-01-31T10:46:56.470-08:002020-01-31T10:46:56.470-08:00Extremely articulate and balanced for a 23 year ol...Extremely articulate and balanced for a 23 year old, thanks!Trance https://www.blogger.com/profile/08927760780262546403noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-80375175051907246162019-01-30T17:47:00.271-08:002019-01-30T17:47:00.271-08:00An excellent interview. Though printed in February...An excellent interview. Though printed in February 1971, it seems to have been done in fall 1970 - it took place in New York City, and Weir refers to the six-member band. Since they talk about general issues rather than specific recent events, it's impossible to date more precisely. (Though it would be nice to know what date was the Other One Weir talks about, it may likely be from a lost show. When Weir says "a lot of times we play Coasters songs," he may specifically be thinking of 11/8/70.)<br />The interviewers do a great job, talking on the same level as Weir and finding some interesting questions.<br /><br />This interview finds Weir fretting about the band's accessibility. The Dead have now become successful to a mass audience, and the interviewers ask him about the changes from the band's earlier, more improv-heavy period: short tight songs, more singing. <br />Weir particularly has Coltrane on the brain here, as an example of great but inaccessible music reaching only a small audience, a fate he wants the Dead to avoid. In later years as well, he'd be concerned with not "getting over people's heads" and making sure the music didn't get "too far out" for the audience to follow.<br />Nonetheless, he's proud of the Dead's improvisational skills here, boasting about their ability to "cohesively intuit chord changes together... That hasn't been done in music yet." (But I think he exaggerates how unstructured their songs are.) His account of a recent Other One is probably the best description of being inside a jam that anyone in the Dead has given. <br /><br />A few other highlights: <br />- when he wants to write a song that suggests a 20-minute jam theme within 15 seconds, that can grow in later performances, it's hard not to think of Playing in the Band, soon to be composed. <br />- the 23-year-old Weir imagines that "when I'm 30 years old," he might be an influence to other players. (Nonetheless, he doesn't think he'll be a true genre-melding innovator until he's 60, although an interviewer suggests the Dead might help more traditional country musicians stretch out.)<br />- he talks about the Dead keeping different styles of music separate: "If we're playing in a country mode, you won't hear us going off into Coltrane licks." <br />- he briefly mentions playing different styles or genres in a show to suggest a larger whole, playing "the roots [and] where they're going [so] you can suggest easily all the distance in between... We've suggested much more music than we can possibly play in one night."<br />- Weir talks quite a bit about jazz music, Coltrane's and Davis's bands, but is somewhat critical of both.<br />- he's concerned about becoming a rock star, not only in not being able to relate to people anymore, but in having to be evasive about what he says in public: "I've got to be right on with whatever I say." <br />- best line: "Garcia was more grin than beard." Light Into Asheshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.com