tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post567900537275721958..comments2024-03-16T06:44:23.745-07:00Comments on Grateful Dead Sources: Early 1971: Jerry Garcia InterviewLight Into Asheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-67545119062769496402014-04-25T09:09:23.178-07:002014-04-25T09:09:23.178-07:00Thanks! Almost certainly a music-store guitar then...Thanks! Almost certainly a music-store guitar then, since I don't recall Garcia ever playing one elsewhere.Light Into Asheshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-1777191331824373862014-04-25T06:52:22.779-07:002014-04-25T06:52:22.779-07:00It's a Micro-Frets Spacetone
http://guitarz.b...It's a Micro-Frets Spacetone<br /><br />http://guitarz.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/1971-micro-frets-spacetone.htmlAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-60963158956604515092014-04-03T20:14:58.113-07:002014-04-03T20:14:58.113-07:00Yeah, surely a music store model. Visual evidence ...Yeah, surely a music store model. Visual evidence of Jerry being on the hunt for a new guitar during exactly this time frame. <br /><br />All the recent posts have been A+ finds with a lot to digest. Amazing work. See you on the other side.Jessehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08985467102325218695noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-53390950355783247242014-04-03T19:12:49.103-07:002014-04-03T19:12:49.103-07:00Interesting find! Although, considering it's a...Interesting find! Although, considering it's a music-store jam, it need not have been Garcia's regular guitar...in fact he may never have touched it before that song! <br /><br />Photos I think are from the Dead's March '71 St Louis shows reveal Garcia playing the custom Alembic guitar.Light Into Asheshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-75886500557811216712014-04-03T17:31:24.638-07:002014-04-03T17:31:24.638-07:00Here's JG jamming on an unusual axe at Scotty&...Here's JG jamming on an unusual axe at Scotty's Music in St. Louis in March '71: http://www.thejerrysite.com/shows/show/815<br /><br />It resembles a Telecaster, but it's clearly not...Jessehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08985467102325218695noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-8132180091469546842014-04-03T15:51:21.433-07:002014-04-03T15:51:21.433-07:00Enjoy your hiatus and please come back pre-hiatus ...Enjoy your hiatus and please come back pre-hiatus style and not like some band we know.jerlouvisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-71326922017018933592014-04-02T17:38:03.903-07:002014-04-02T17:38:03.903-07:00We'll miss you!We'll miss you!<br />Fate Musichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05648291938690043423noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-65116836311572052232014-04-02T12:11:51.712-07:002014-04-02T12:11:51.712-07:00This blog will be on hiatus for the next month.This blog will be on hiatus for the next month.Light Into Asheshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-1182869311548477272014-04-02T11:59:53.691-07:002014-04-02T11:59:53.691-07:00I'd also like to know when Garcia tried out a ...I'd also like to know when Garcia tried out a Telecaster, since I don't recall any mention of this either. It could have been at a Saunders show - here we see the Strat appear at a Matrix show earlier than its use in a Dead show. Blair Jackson writes that "Garcia would change guitars more in 1971 than in any other year" - including the first Alembic custom guitar (in the spring), a Les Paul, the Strat (in May/June), a Les Paul TV (July), and back to the Strat (in the fall).<br /><br />From transcribing some Garcia interviews, I'm pretty confident that most printed interviews probably omit most the times he actually said "like" or "you know" - those are often, like, every third word for him, y'know. Students of speech patterns could have a field day with the variety of ways he uses "you know." I think of it as California-speak.Light Into Asheshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-88844098297118350842014-04-01T10:02:41.800-07:002014-04-01T10:02:41.800-07:00Per usual you hit on all the cool stuff in your co...Per usual you hit on all the cool stuff in your comments.I have to say I don't recall any mention or other evidence of Jerry having ever played a Telecaster and would like to know more about that.All that talk about the pedal steel was very informative being as I had never given any thought to the tuning of the necks,that it had ten strings per neck,six pedals and a couple of levers or the various techniques required to play it.Plus I got turned on to a very trippy and unique Chuck Berry tune that is a weird mash up of blues/country/Hawaiian styles.It would have been nice to have him discuss his electric playing like did the steel.<br /><br />Something I have been noticing in reading these Garcia interviews is that he says like a lot,similar to a teenage girl and it is a bit disconcerting.jerlouvisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-8914926792897913792014-03-31T23:18:21.937-07:002014-03-31T23:18:21.937-07:00(continued)
It's interesting to hear that the...(continued)<br /><br />It's interesting to hear that the Dead had been reluctant to do a European tour (or, at least, some unnamed members were). They'd been muttering about going to Europe since 1968, but it was always called off. <br />Band manager Jon McIntire wrote to the press in '72, "We have been trying to go to Europe for several years now, with such frequent near-misses that...'going to Europe' takes on the aspect of annual management exercise. These false starts have always resulted from the contradiction between economic realities and our basic desire to do something sufficiently more than a 'standard' tour..." <br />And he later told Blair Jackson that in '70-71, "I tried to mount tours, but neither time could I get the money needed to offset the cost to do it. We thought it was OK to at least break even on a European tour...but it was not OK in our position at that time to lose money, because we were just getting out of debt." (More details in the E72 box set book.) <br />So that was the economic side, but Garcia had a more personal point of view about it. In a May 1972 interview, Garcia said, "It's been a matter of holding off until we were basically unified about going somewhere. In the past it's been a question of timing - for example we had a European tour kind of sketched out this time last year [spring '71], but the timing was poor. What happened was we'd been out on the road for two months and our plan was to then go to Europe, but we were sort of exhausted and [bored with our music]... We were just on the down end of the curve when it came time for a final decision - 'are we going to go, are we not going to go? Oh, let's not go because we just don't feel right.' It comes to that we weren't ready to come..."<br />So that's what happened to the attempt at a Europe '71 tour that Garcia mentions here. <br /><br />There are some good quotes here - his description of the Dead's "manager scene" is hilarious. And we also get Garcia's classic financial attitude: "Our debt was pretty high, but it’s all figures that don’t really mean anything to you. It was no more real the times when we were the heaviest in debt than it is now when we’re almost out of debt. So what? What debt? I’m really delighted when I have like thirty bucks cash, you know."<br /><br />I also like his statement that "our basic premise was that we were not a bunch of musicians but just a bunch of freaks that were going to try to play music. Since then we’ve become musicians. We’ve learned how to make records, and it cost us a lot of money; but at least we learned... We started out not making money, dig? We were doing well with no income. We were living well, and getting high, and being happy, and that’s really where it’s at. I know that that’s the way I can always live, and the rest of it is like incredible dream stuff."<br /><br />His final summation of the Dead playing "the religious services of the new age" is also classic, and kind of a preview of the Rolling Stone interview. And here again is one of Garcia's favorite observations: "The revolution is over, and what’s left is a mop-up action. It’s a matter of the news getting out to everybody else. I think that the important changes have already happened, changes in consciousness. It’s mostly a matter of everything else catching up to that."<br /><br />And leave it to Jerry to find a Chuck Berry pedal-steel blues instrumental B-side...the flip side of "School Day" in 1957. Garcia got his first guitar that year, and I imagine him as a teen trying to figure this single out...<br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAAT9UfI0rw Light Into Asheshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-69612792713619336842014-03-31T23:17:47.584-07:002014-03-31T23:17:47.584-07:00The precise date of this interview is unknown. Gar...The precise date of this interview is unknown. Garcia & Saunders played the Matrix a few times in February & March 1971, so no doubt it was before one of those shows.<br /><br />The first half of this interview covers Garcia's early music history, in kind of a condensed version of the Rolling Stone interview he'd do later that year. (Quite a lot of this is repeated in other interviews, actually.)<br />The second half is surprising to me because there are almost no questions about the electric guitar - instead we get perhaps Garcia's most extensive discussion of pedal-steel techniques. I wish the interviewer had pursued more in-depth electric guitar questions as well. <br /><br />The cover shows Garcia with the Fender Strat that Graham Nash gave him, which would become the "Alligator" Strat in 1972. So he was apparently playing it with Saunders in winter '71, at least briefly - that was a period when he was switching around guitars a lot. As he says, "I don’t like any of the guitars that are available. I’ve used them up... I’ve been using like a real old Telecaster lately. I’ll try any guitar just to see if it’s different in an effort to see if it will lead me anywhere. I’m trying to have a guitar built."<br />But the interviewer then drops the subject... <br /><br />Garcia makes a couple interesting comments on his playing, though - he says, "When I listen to old tapes of myself, it’s stiff." (Never happy with his playing in earlier years!) He also mentions that, hearing himself on tape a lot, he recognizes unconscious habits or patterns in his playing, and then tries to break them.<br />Perhaps one example is that "I’m into rhythmic relationships. I think of phrases as rhythmic lines first and later as melodic lines." He says he's becoming "more conscious of melody" - this is an interesting way to think of the change in his playing since the '60s (when his playing was indeed extremely rhythm-oriented).<br />This also intrigued me: "In my own musical existence I don’t feel that being a guitar player is like the best thing on earth to be. I would rather be a balanced musician. Playing in a group, I’m tending to think more about the music and less about the guitar. That’s just me getting older. I’m not interested in being a virtuoso guitar player."Light Into Asheshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.com