tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post938014656411034901..comments2024-03-26T23:10:34.814-07:00Comments on Grateful Dead Sources: October 1970: Jerry Garcia InterviewLight Into Asheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-53344546664071371872014-01-09T18:25:54.431-08:002014-01-09T18:25:54.431-08:00This reporter is maybe the most insightful ever. I...This reporter is maybe the most insightful ever. I wonder if he was some kind of insider. Why was he on the plane? (And "on the plane" if you know what I mean.) Great, great interview.Steve Seachristhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16764044498092528819noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-45309304687490290692014-01-01T16:12:20.992-08:002014-01-01T16:12:20.992-08:00This was a very interesting interview.I didn't...This was a very interesting interview.I didn't realize how hassled he was by being famous this early in the game.jerlouvisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-88107937813737258132013-12-31T23:47:28.182-08:002013-12-31T23:47:28.182-08:00(continued...)
The interview starts with yet anot...(continued...)<br /><br />The interview starts with yet another Altamont discussion, which includes one of Garcia's core philosophies, something that should be kept in mind when reading any of his interviews: <br />"I think that anyone who’s puttin’ anything out into the media, into the mass conscious, has got a responsibility to try and put out good things, positive trips rather than negative trips." <br />Garcia is notably almost always upbeat & optimistic in his interviews - I think he certainly had other moods in real life, as in his music, but consciously tried to express only positive things in the media.<br /><br />Some things he didn't feel very positive about, though - earlier in October '70 he'd done another interview complaining about show hassles, gatecrashing, militant vibes, the "star" trip, and the problems with free shows - clearly a recurrent theme on this east-coast tour: <br />http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2013/08/october-11-1970-jerry-garcia-interview.html <br /><br />Here Garcia explains why Dead shows are not "free" anymore, and also admits, "It’s gettin’ to be such a hassle to play at a big concert, because there’s always this bad scene: “Is it going to be free? Is it a rip-off?” All that. I don’t like to play when I’m uptight... You have to be ready to put yourself through...a lot of stresses if you want to be able to do big concerts... Because we’re the Grateful Dead, we always get that thing, “Are you guys gonna make it free? You’re famous for making it free,” and all that. And I find myself in the role of arbitrator and politician, all the things I rejected years ago. I mean, I just don’t want to be that. And I would go so far as to not perform in public if it’s not cool. I like my music to be in a good place, and my head has to be in a good place for it to do that." <br />[Though Garcia always preferred the laid-back playing environment, I still wonder how much the music suffered when he was feeling "uptight." There are some shows from that period where we know the Dead just mailed it in when they were upset or didn't like the situation, but it's a hard thing to trace.] <br /><br />Garcia also gives a classic description of the basic change in the Dead's situation from '66-70: <br />"We were sort of incidental music at the celebration of life. Which was super cool. Now, however, we’re in the position of being rock and roll stars, which is not anywhere near so cool and takes a lot more from you... You’re playing music, you’re up, you’re excited, you’re on, you leave the stage…and there’s a backstage full of drifting shadow forms and peculiar show-biz vampires." <br />He laments that now, "people are looking to hang you up, and put you through weird trips." And he sighs, "It’s a drag to be a public figure. It’s something that should never happen to anyone. It’s just bad news. If you go for it, it fucks you up. If you don’t go for it…it fucks you up anyway." <br /><br />But otherwise, Garcia often expresses what I think one interviewer called his "genial naivety" - his account of a 'rock-star intervention,' for instance, is all too rosy, as later life would show. A key exchange, the month after Janis and Jimi died: <br />Garcia: "Everybody is getting older, so there’s more wisdom." <br />Reporter: "Those that aren’t getting killed."<br /><br />The interview ends with some ecological warnings from Garcia (he even sounds like an end-times prophet: "All the bummers of this era are coming to a head... The death forces are all over"), and a little fantasizing about the technologies of the future, in which Garcia is quite optimistic. Yes, he even says that computers are "the saviors of mankind" and imagines that with their help, "the whole world will work beautifully!"Light Into Asheshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-9208226219049415102013-12-31T23:47:04.128-08:002013-12-31T23:47:04.128-08:00This is not the way the interview was originally p...This is not the way the interview was originally printed. Goodwin wrote it as a screenplay, complete with camera angles, scene descriptions, etc. For instance, this was the ending: <br />"The soundtrack goes silent. A hand opens the recorder, and removes the tape cassette. Momentarily, another cassette is brought into frame, and the hand begins to put it into the recorder. But it hesitates, and then withdraws again. The camera pulls back into a two-shot of Garcia and the reporter, who are still talking. With the tape recorder off, we cannot hear what they are saying. The shot dissolves to: <br />SHOT 30. A blue frame, with nothing in it. Wind sounds on the soundtrack. This holds for nearly thirty seconds, before it fades slowly to black."<br /><br />I found this so unnecessary, irritating, and wrong that I simply omitted all the screenplay directions - what's here is just the interview.<br /><br />The only real hint of the date is when Garcia says that American Beauty will be out in a week. The album came out in November 1970, but I'm not sure of the precise date, so the interview was in November or late October, on one of the plane flights east. Garcia mentions some recording sessions - Blows Against the Empire (finished), Crosby's solo album ("near to being completed"), the New Riders ("underway," but they hadn't started yet, and I think they wouldn't start til December). <br />He also mentions Hooterollin' with Howard Wales as "just finished" - which is interesting since Blair Jackson reports that there are session tapes for that album from October 1970, but also from March 1971 as well. Perhaps Garcia just thought it was done, and they resumed next year with more session takes/overdubs, or just mixing.<br />( See http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2011/01/hooteroll-next-part.html ) <br /><br />This is much more of a free-flowing conversation than the last interview I posted (though it makes an interesting companion piece, since it shares many topics in common). Garcia's in full philosophical flight, (knowingly?) encouraging his reputation as an underground guru. The interviewer is extremely sympathetic to him.<br />There are a few purely informational tidbits - Garcia mentions that Hunter's still living with him (I'm not sure when Hunter found another place). He also recalls that Weir wrote the Other One "when we were up at Russian River. We had several pieces of songs layin’ around." <br />This would most likely have been in the May 1967 stay there, and confirms Weir's memory, as told to David Gans: <br />"While we were working up 'Alligator,' a friend of ours, John Warnecke...his father had a cabin on the Russian River. It was late spring. We packed up and went to that place and worked up a few songs, among them the first few strains of 'The Other One' and 'Alligator,' and one or two others. Most particularly 'The Other One' and 'Alligator.'" <br />(See the comment at http://hooterollin.blogspot.com/2012/12/russian-river-to-mchenry-library-via.html ) <br /><br />Garcia also mentions how the early Garcia/Hunter songs intentionally followed specific folk-song traditions: "We’ve been doing a thing, ever since Aoxomoxoa, of building on a tradition that’s already there. Like “Dupree’s Diamond Blues'... It’s partly a way of redeveloping what’s been put into us, and it’s partly my way of expressing thanks to that whole tradition: to try and add a good song to it." <br />His little description of Hunter is interesting, as someone who can verbalize new common knowledge. There's also an eloquent eulogy for Neal Cassady. <br /><br />He also describes the September 1970 plane ride with Huey Newton, and the Panther press conference that he visited, getting a direct look at media manipulation, how the only thing that was televised was "the adrenalin flash...no wonder everybody's paranoid."Light Into Asheshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.com