1981: Jerry Garcia Interview

JERRY GARCIA: IN SEARCH OF THE X FACTOR

MUSICIAN: You guys have probably put out more live albums than anyone I can think of - two double live releases this summer alone. Is the mysterious "x factor" that sometimes transforms a Grateful Dead concert impossible to capture in a studio situation? 

GARCIA: I'm not sure if it can or can't be captured in the studio, though I agree that so far we've failed to capture it there. But we've never really been set up to perform in the studio. Our idea of performance is what we do live, and making records is more of a concession to the realities of the music business than a real expression of our natural flow. Let's put it this way: if making records was a thing you did as a hobby, it's possible we might have turned to it at one point or another. But I really think live music is where it's at for us.

MUSICIAN: How about playing live in the studio? 

GARCIA: Yeah, we've tried that, but it's difficult to do with the type of band set-up we have, especially the technical problem of recording two drummers at once. We can't baffle or isolate them; they have to be together, they have to communicate. So live in the studio the microphone hears them as one big drum set, and that's not something you can straighten out in the mix.

MUSICIAN: But isn't there also a psychological reason having to do with the role of the audience? 

GARCIA: Very definitely. But that's something we have to talk around; we can't talk about it directly. It's not an exact science, it's more an intuitive thing, and you're right, it does have a lot to do with interacting with the audience. But we don't manipulate them, we don't go out there and try to psyche them out or anything. It's quite involuntary.

MUSICIAN: Can you feel when it's happening?

GARCIA: There are times when both the audience and the band can feel it happening, and then there are times when we have to listen to the tapes afterwards to confirm our subjective impressions and see what really happened. That's the way we've been able to deduce the existence of this "x" chemistry. In any case, it doesn't have to do with our will.

MUSICIAN: Is there something you can consciously do to facilitate it?

GARCIA: Well, in a way that's what we're all about: making an effort to facilitate this phenomenon. But the most we can do is be there for it to happen. It just isn't anything we can control on any level we've been able to discover.

MUSICIAN: All right, if it isn't what you do, maybe it's who you are: the chemistry between you; the internal dynamics of the band; your value system; what you eat for breakfast...

GARCIA: I'm sure that's a major part of it.

MUSICIAN: Can you delineate some of the principles that you feel help maintain who you are?

GARCIA: Actually, trying to pinpoint those principles is our real work - it's what we're all about. As far as I can tell, they have to do with maintaining a moment-to-moment approach, in both a macro- and micro-cosmic sense. It's hard to maintain that moment-to-moment freedom in large-scale activities because things like booking tours have to be planned well in advance. So it's in the smaller increments, the note-to-note things, that we get to cop a little freedom. You can see it in our songs, where there's an established form and structure, but the particulars are left open. In terms of the macrocosm - the big picture - we know the tune, but in terms of the note-to-note microcosm, we don't know exactly how we'll play on any given night, what the variations might be. Even simple cowboy tunes like "Me and My Uncle" and "El Paso" change minutely from tour to tour. "Friend of the Devil" is another tune that's changed enormously from its original concept. On American Beauty it had kind of a bluegrassy feel, and now we do it somewhere between a ballad and a reggae tune. The song has a whole different personality as a result.

MUSICIAN: How much improvisational space is built into the longer, more exploratory pieces like "St. Stephen" and "Terrapin Station"? 

GARCIA: An awful lot...it depends on the piece. "Terrapin" has some sections that are extremely tight, that you could actually describe as being arranged; there are specific notes that each of us have elected to play. The melody, lyrics, and chord changes are set, but the specific licks that anyone wants to play are left open.

MUSICIAN: Would you say that this looseness, this willingness to stay open and take risks is a crucial factor in creating a space for that special energy to enter?

GARCIA: Absolutely! It's even affected the way I write songs. In the past, when I had an idea for a song, I also had an idea for an arrangement. Since then I've sort of purged myself of that habit. There's simply no point in working out all those details, because when a song goes into the Dead, it's anybody's guess how it'll come out. So why disappoint myself?

MUSICIAN: Who or what gives the Dead its overall direction, then?

GARCIA: It's been some time since any of us have had specific directional ideas about the band... The Grateful Dead is in its own hands now; it makes up its own mind, and we give it its head and let it go where it wants. We've gotten to be kind of confident about it at this point. It's becoming an evolving process that unfolds in front of us. 

MUSICIAN: As a band you guys seem to have a dual personality; on one hand there's the improvisational, exploratory material like "Anthem" and "Dark Star," while on the other there's this very structured, tradition-bound sort of music. It was generally the earlier material that was stretching boundaries, while the albums from Workingman's Dead onwards have been more structured. So I was wondering if that was because the relationship between artist and audience was falling apart at that point, and that '60s energy envelope you were tapping into was beginning to disintegrate, forcing you to resort to simpler, more formalized material that didn't depend on that energy field? 

GARCIA: No.

MUSICIAN: Darn...it was such a great little theory...

GARCIA: Let me straighten that out right now. First of all, you're right about the audience/artist communication thing falling apart, although that didn't happen to us. Let me give you a time frame that might shed some light on all this: at the time we were recording and performing the Live Dead material onstage, we were in the studio recording Workingman's Dead. We weren't having much success getting that experimental stuff down in the studio, so we thought we'd strip it down to the bare bones and make a record of very simple music and see if that worked. Time was another factor. We'd been spending a long time in the studio with those exploratory albums, six to eight months apiece, and it was really eating up our lives.

MUSICIAN: You didn't feel any aesthetic conflict?

GARCIA: No, not at all. Because those two poles have always been part of our musical background. I was a bluegrass banjo player into that Bakersfield country stuff while Phil was studying Stockhausen and all those avant-gardists.

MUSICIAN: Is that where the...

GARCIA: ...prepared piano stuff on "Anthem" comes from? Sure.

MUSICIAN: Wait a minute, how did you know I was going to ask that?!

GARCIA: (Smiles)

MUSICIAN: Okay, never mind, but what happens when you reverse the procedure and play Workingman's Dead in concert? Can you still get the same kineticism?

GARCIA: Yes, it turns out we can. For the last year or so we've been doing some of those tunes, like "Uncle John's Band" and "Black Peter," and they fit in well in that they become poles of familiarity in a sea of weirdness. It's nice to come into this homey space and make a simple statement. It comes off very beautifully sometimes. And inevitably it draws some of the weirdness into it. What's happening with the Grateful Dead musically is that these poles are stretching towards each other.

MUSICIAN: Which of your albums do you believe come closest to capturing the band's essence? 

GARCIA: I'd pick the same things that everyone else would: Live Dead, Workingman's Dead, American Beauty, Europe '72. I'd take Terrapin Station, too, the whole record. I'd also definitely recommend the two live sets that just came out.

MUSICIAN: How important is the acoustic approach to the band?

GARCIA: Not very, because we only do it in special situations. In fact, there have only been two periods in our career when we did acoustic material: first in the early '70s, and then again just lately.

MUSICIAN: Why did you come back to it?

GARCIA: It's something that's fun for us because of the intimacy involved; it brings us closer together, both physically and psychologically, and as a result we play with a lot of sensitivity. I mean, I can just turn around like this and go (swats imaginary band member) HEY, WAKE UP! Lotsa fun...

MUSICIAN: Speaking of direction: some people are wondering if you've gone totally off the experimental approach, since you haven't released anything in that vein since Terrapin Station back in '77.

GARCIA: Yeah, but '77 isn't really so long ago in Grateful Dead terms, you know. That's just a few records ago! Ideas around here take a year or so just to find their way to the surface, much less achieve their expression, which can take three or four years. We're always looking at the bigger picture. People have been hollering for us to bring back "Dark Star" and stuff like that for some time now, and we will. But in our own time.

MUSICIAN: You're not afraid of your old material?

GARCIA: Oh, absolutely not. It's partly that there's a new guy who hasn't been through all that with us, and we have to bring him up through all those steps slowly. It's not that he's a slow learner, it's because we originally spent months and months rehearsing those things that were in odd times.

MUSICIAN: Like "The Eleven"?

GARCIA: Right, that was tacked onto the "Dark Star" sequence. It's called "The Eleven" because that's the time it's in. We rehearsed that for months before we even performed it in public. Luckily Brent's a much better musician now than we were then, so it shouldn't take that long. But we've still got to find the rehearsal time to put those songs together again.

MUSICIAN: Are you ever concerned that any of you will fall into cliched patterns, either as individuals or as a group?

GARCIA: No, because the musical personalities of the various members have been so consistently surprising to me over the years that I'm still completely unable to predict what they would play in any given situation. In fact, I'd challenge anyone to check out any Grateful Dead album and listen to, say, what Phil plays, and look for stylistic consistency. You won't find it. These guys are truly original musical thinkers, especially Phil. Let me give you an example: Phil played on four songs for a solo album of mine called Reflections. Now, I write pretty conventionally structured songs, so I asked Phil to play basically the same lines on each chorus so I could anchor it in the bass. But I didn't really see the beauty of what he'd done 'til later when I was running off copies of the tape at fast forward. The bass was brought up to a nice, skipping tempo, right in that mellow, mid-range guitar tone, and I was struck by the amazing beauty of his bass line; there was this wonderful syncopation and beautiful harmonic ideas that were barely perceptible at regular speed, but when it's brought up to twice the speed... God, it just blew me out.

MUSICIAN: Considering all the improvisations you do, I'm surprised you don't acknowledge jazz more as an influence on your playing. You had to be listening to Coltrane, at least.

GARCIA: Oh, definitely Coltrane, for sure. But I never sat down and stole ideas from him; it was more his sense of flow that I learned from. That and the way his personality was always right there - the presence of the man just comes stomping out of those records. It's not something I would've been able to learn through any analytical approach, it was one of those things I just had to flash on. I also get that from Django Reinhardt's records. You can actually hear him shift mood...

MUSICIAN: The humor in his solo on "Somewhere Beyond the Sea" is amazing...

GARCIA: Anger, too. You can hear him get mad and play some nasty, mean little thing. It's incredible how clearly his personality comes through. It's one of those things I've always been impressed with in music. There's no way to steal that, but it's something you can model your playing on. Not in the sense of copying someone's personality, but in the hopes that maybe I could learn how to let my own personality come through.

MUSICIAN: So it's a question of imitating essence, not form.

GARCIA: Right. My models for being onstage developed from being in the audience, because I've been a music fan longer than I've been a musician. A very important model for me was a bluegrass fiddle player named Scotty Sternman [sic], who was just a house-a-fire crazed fiddle player. He was a monster technically, played like the devil. Anyway, he was a terribly burnt-out alcohol case by the time I saw him, but I remember hearing him take a simple fiddle tune and stretch it into this incredible 20-minute extravaganza in which you heard just everything come out of that fiddle, and I was so moved emotionally that he became one of my models... I mean, there I was standing in that audience with just tears rolling out of my eyes - it was just so amazing. And it was the essence that counted, none of the rest of it.

MUSICIAN: Looking back, were there any other groups or artists that were pivotal influences on your concept of the band? 

GARCIA: There have been a couple of different things for a couple of different people. For myself, I was very, very impressed by the music of Robbie Robertson and the Band. There isn't any real textural similarity between what we play; I just admired their work very much.

MUSICIAN: Is there anybody on the current scene that you feel a particular kinship or identification with?

GARCIA: The Who. I think the Who are one of the truly important architects of rock 'n' roll. Pete Townshend may be one of rock 'n' roll's rare authentic geniuses. And there's also the fact that they're among our few surviving contemporaries... I'm just really glad they exist.

MUSICIAN: I was talking with Ray Manzarek recently, and he remembered reading Kerouac describe this sax player in a bar who had "it" that night, and how badly Ray wanted to get "it" too...whatever the hell it was.

GARCIA: Hey, that same passage was important to us! Very definitely. Our association with Neil Cassidy was also tremendously helpful to us in that way.

MUSICIAN: And of course there was Kesey and the Acid Tests. That must also have been about going for the essence and not getting stuck in forms...

GARCIA: Right, because the forms were the first thing to go in that situation. You see, the Acid Tests represented the freedom to go out there and try this stuff and just blow.

MUSICIAN: Did the acid simply amplify that impulse, or did it open you to the possibility in the first place?

GARCIA: Both. The Acid Test opened up possibilities to us because there were no strictures. In other words, people weren't coming there to hear the Grateful Dead, so we didn't have the responsibilities to the audience in the normal sense. Hell, they didn't know what to expect! Sometimes we'd get onstage and only tune up. Or play about five notes, freak out, and leave! That happened a couple of times; other times we'd get hung up and play off in some weird zone. All these things were okay, the reality of the situation permitted everything. That's something that doesn't happen in regular musical circles - it took a special situation to turn us on to that level of freedom.

MUSICIAN: Had you experimented with either acid or musical "weirdness" before?

GARCIA: Yeah, we'd taken acid before, and while we were on the bar circuit playing seven nights a week, five sets a night, we'd use that fifth set when there was almost nobody there but us and the bartenders to get weird. We joined the Acid Tests partly to escape the rigors of that 45 on, 15 off structure that the bars laid on us every night.

MUSICIAN: Did you have ideas about what all this might open you up to, or was it just "let's step through this doorway"?

GARCIA: Just that: let's step through this doorway. We didn't have any expectations.

MUSICIAN: Do you feel any ambivalence about it now? Acid had a down side for some people...

GARCIA: No, I loved it. I'd do it again in a second because it was such a totally positive experience for me, especially when you consider that we were at the tail end of the beatnik thing, in which an awful lot of my energy was spent sitting around and waiting for something to happen. And finally, when something did happen, boy, I couldn't get enough of it! When we fell in with the Acid Test, I was ready to pack up and hit the road. We all went for it.

MUSICIAN: How did that evolve into the whole Haight-Ashbury scene? 

GARCIA: What happened was that the Acid Test fell apart when acid became illegal, and Kesey had to flee to Mexico. We ended up down in L.A. hanging out with Owsley in Watts, then moved back to San Francisco three or four months later.

MUSICIAN: Were psychedelics really the main catalysts in initiating the Haight scene?

GARCIA: I think it was a very, very important part of it. Everyone at that time was looking hard for that special magic thing, and it was like there were clues everywhere. Everybody I knew at least had a copy of The Doors of Perception, and wanted to find out what was behind the veil.

MUSICIAN: What closed that doorway?

GARCIA: COPS!!

MUSICIAN: Just cops?

GARCIA: That's it, really, cops... It was also that this group of people who were trying to meet each other finally came together, shook hands, and split. It was all those kids that read Kerouac in high school - the ones who were a little weird. The Haight-Ashbury was like that at first, and then it became a magnet for every kid who was dissatisfied: a kind of central dream, or someplace to run to. It was a place for seekers, and San Francisco always had that tradition anyway.

MUSICIAN: Sort of a school for consciousness.

GARCIA: Yes, very much so, and in a good way. It was sweet. A special thing.

MUSICIAN: Sometimes I think that whole scene was a chance for our generation to glimpse the goal, and now we've got to find out how to get back there.

GARCIA: Right, and many people have gone on to reinforce that with their own personal energy. It is possible to pursue that goal and feed the dog at the same time, it just takes a little extra effort.

MUSICIAN: Can you talk about your relationship with the Hell's Angels? I played in a band backed by them in Berkeley and it was, uh...an ambivalent experience.

GARCIA: Well, that's it. It is ambivalent. I've always liked them because they don't hide what they are, and I think all they require of you is honesty - they just require that you don't bullshit them - and if you're out front with them, I think you don't have anything to worry about.

The Angels are very conscious of their roots and history, so the fact that we played at Chocolate George's funeral way back during the Haight-Ashbury was really significant to them. They didn't have many friends in those days, and so anybody who would come out for one of their members was demonstrating true friendship. And with them, that really counts for something.

MUSICIAN: What do you feel attracted Kesey to them in the first place? The noble savage concept? 

GARCIA: No, I think Ken saw them for what they are: a definite force of their own which you can't hope to control. When they come around, it's reality, and you go with it.

MUSICIAN: What about Altamont?

GARCIA: Horrible.

MUSICIAN: It sure was. But having been in the Bay area at the time, I can understand how you might have thought it a good idea to recommend them as security people...

GARCIA: We didn't recommend them!!

MUSICIAN: I thought the Stones people said you suggested it?

GARCIA: Absolutely not! No, we would never do that. The Angels were planning on being there, and I guess the Stones crew thought this might be a good way to deal with that fact.

MUSICIAN: The Angels aside, as soon as you entered that place you could feel this incredible selfishness - the complete antithesis of what went on at Monterey and Woodstock.

GARCIA: Yeah, that's what it was: an incredibly selfish scene. Steve Gaskin pinned it down best when he said that Altamont was "the little bit of sadism in your sex life the Rolling Stones had been singing about all those years, brought to its most ugly, razor-toothed extreme." Kind of ironic, since they were the ones who started that "Sympathy for the Devil" stuff.

MUSICIAN: You guys have avoided falling into the darker side of things. Did that require any constant vigilance on your part?

GARCIA: It did for me at any rate. During the psychedelic experience, the fear and awfulness inherent in making a big mistake with that kind of energy was very apparent to me. For me, psychedelics represented a series of teaching and cautionary tales, and a lot of the message was "Boy, don't blow this!" Back in the Haight there really were some Charlie Manson characters running around, really weird people who believed they were Christ risen and whatever, and who meant in the worst possible way to take the power. Some of them saw that the Grateful Dead raised energy and they wanted to control it. But we knew that the only kind of energy management that counted was the liberating kind - the kind that frees people, not constrains them. So we were always determined to avoid those fascistic, crowd control implications of rock. It's always been a matter of personal honor to me not to manipulate the crowd.

MUSICIAN: Did that temptation present itself?

GARCIA: Yeah, sometimes we'd discover a little trick that would get everybody on their feet right away, and we'd say let's not do that - if that's going to happen, then let's discover it new every time. Let's not plan it.

MUSICIAN: Back in those days there was a real bond between the audience and the musicians. Something changed around '71, and it became a spectacle, with the audiences sucking up your energy and the band falling into egotistical superstar routines. It was entertainment rather than communication, and something special was lost. Were you aware of this change, or am I crazy?

GARCIA: Yeah, it was obvious, because in spite of all that talk about community, we knew it couldn't happen among the musicians, because each wanted to be the best and overshadow the others. A truly cooperative spirit was not likely to happen.

MUSICIAN: Was it the record companies and the materialistic orientation they represented that spoiled it? 

GARCIA: I don't think so. To me, the record companies have never been a malicious presence...they're more like a mindless juggernaut.

MUSICIAN: I didn't mean that it was intentional on their part. I just feel they represent a set of values and a means of organization that are at odds with the goals of music. They created an environment in which the soul of music couldn't survive...

GARCIA: Yeah, I agree it was the music business and entertainment as a whole that killed it, because in entertainment there's always this formula thinking that encourages you to repeat your successes. All that posturing and stuff is what show business is all about, and that's what a lot of rock became: show business. It's just human weakness, and I guess it's perfectly valid for a rock star to get up there and...

MUSICIAN: But wasn't what happened in San Francisco a few years earlier on a much higher plane of experience? Audience and performer were meeting and interacting in a real way...

GARCIA: That's true, but that was something that just happened in the Bay Area, you know. It never made it to the East Coast, and it definitely didn't make it to England. And so those people were coming from a much more rigorous model of what it meant to be a rock 'n' roll star. That came from their management and business levels, as things were lined up for them in advance and they were given those models as the way to do things. When we met English rock stars at the time, it was like meeting birds in gilded cages; they really wished there was some way of breaking out of what they were into, but they were trapped. 

MUSICIAN: What happened to the energy field you'd established with your audience when you went to, say, New York or London?

GARCIA: We found that we'd brought it along with us, and the people who came to see us entered right into it. And that's what's made it so amazing for us, because our audience, in terms of genuineness, has been pretty much the same as it was back in the '60s. And so has our own experience.

MUSICIAN: Including your new generation of fans?

GARCIA: Sure. The 16-year-olds coming to see us now are no different than they were in the Haight; they're looking for a real experience, not just a show.

MUSICIAN: Going back to the idea that there was an opening for a while to a different quality of experience that gave people a taste of something other, it seems - and I don't want to sound mawkish - that you guys are one of the guardians of that experience. On a good night, anyway. It's as if you guys serve as a touchstone for some people.

GARCIA: Well, that's the way it's sort of working out, but it isn't something we decided or invented. In fact, it's inventing us, in a way. We're just agreeing that it should happen, and volunteering for the part.

MUSICIAN: I wonder how many people really believe this is a bona fide phenomenon you're talking about, and not just a purely subjective impression.

GARCIA: Deadheads already know, but they disqualify themselves just by being Deadheads. We try to measure it all the time, but it's hard to communicate to people. But that's okay, 'cause it probably isn't everybody's cup of tea. But it ought to be there for those who can dig it.

MUSICIAN: This conversation keeps bringing me back to something I heard in an interview a few months ago. It was the idea that maybe music is looking for a musician to play it...

GARCIA: There's more truth in that than you can know. It just chooses its channel and goes through. And you may be able to spoil it in other situations, but you can't spoil it in the Grateful Dead.

MUSICIAN: But couldn't you destroy that matrix by egotistically closing yourselves off from each other and the audience? Lots of other bands have.

GARCIA: Certainly, but luckily for us the music has always been the big thing for the Grateful Dead, and all that other ego-oriented stuff is secondary. I mean, we've had our hassles, who doesn't? But all of those things have only added more and more into the experience. Nothing has made it smaller. It's been a fascinating process and...

MUSICIAN: ...a long strange trip?

GARCIA: (Laughs) Yeah! And it still is.

(by Vic Garbarini, from Musician, October 1981, pp.64-74)

A companion piece to this Grateful Dead article: 

deadsources.blogspot.com/2024/03/1981-grateful-dead-interview.html

gdsets.com/magazines/mu10-81.pdf 

1981: Grateful Dead Interview

IN SEARCH OF THE GRATEFUL DEAD  

He's a 35-year-old happily married father of four - the respected director of a research institute in Washington, D.C. But Jerry Toporovsky has a secret obsession, and on this cool All Hallows Eve he's about to drive six long hours to New York's Radio City Music Hall to indulge it. 

"Sometimes I try to reason with myself," explains Toporovsky. "I'm pushing 40, I've got a family and a full-time job - I've gotta be crazy to be doing this. But then I think of the last time I saw them and realize it's going to be worth it. It always is." Yes, friends, it's sad but true: Jerry Toporovsky is a confirmed Deadhead. 

There is no known cure. 

There are thousands like him who follow the Grateful Dead's moveable feast around the country like medieval pilgrims pursuing some mobile Canterbury. They range in age from 16 to 60, and some have been "on the bus," as Ken Kesey might put it, since the band's inception over fifteen years ago. What is it that attracts them? Certainly not nostalgia. The Grateful Dead are not the Beach Boys - a traveling oldie show cranking out sentimental favorites for aging hippies. No, the Dead are a living, evolving phenomenon who are still capable of acting as channels for the special quality of energy that can transform an ordinary concert into a transcendent event. Unfortunately, very little of this magic (what Garcia refers to as their "x chemistry") finds its way onto vinyl, making it difficult for the average un-Deadhead to understand what all the hoopla is about. 

"There are a few passages on 'Dark Star' and some of the other material from the live albums or old concert tapes that capture that 'otherness,' but they're the exception," explains Toporovsky. 

"We just don't play with the same fire in the studio," concurs guitarist Bob Weir. "We've even toyed with the idea of taking the time off from touring to learn how to make records in the studio; desperation being the mother of invention, we'd have to come up with something!" 

Well, maybe. 

True, Workingman's Dead and American Beauty came close, but those were albums of simpler, more concise material that sidestepped the real problem of how to deal with the more free-form exploration of a "Dark Star" or "Saint Stephen." It's not simply a question of capturing the spirit of the jam; there's another dimension that emerges when the Dead walk into their free-wheeling improvisation, a quality that seems impossible to recreate in the studio.

"It's not just a question of jamming - it's a little bit like jazz, but that's not it either," says Toporovsky. "It's a question of really connecting on a higher level with each other." 

Since a principal difference between the Dead live and the Dead in the studio involves the presence of an audience, it would follow that interacting with said audience is an indispensable part of the Grateful Dead experience. "Sure, we can get that magic on a record," laughs drummer Bill Kreutzman, "just cram about 5000 people in a studio with us while we record!"

Considering the band's early involvement with psychedelics, some have claimed that this "x chemistry" is entirely dependent on drugs. "Not true," argues Toporovsky. "Acid can give you a headstart in getting to that 'other' place, but it's not required in order to plug into the experience. I haven't taken psychedelics on over five years, but I still get the same high at a Dead concert now without drugs as I did on acid in the beginning." 

In addition to having an audience to work with, the other indispensable factor in the Grateful Dead equation is their commitment to taking risks. Not just propositional and conceptual risks, but a willingness to step out over the edge every night in concert. 

"That spirit of adventure is crucial," claims Weir. "We're dedicated to pushing everything a little further each time. Every time another verse comes up, even if I've played it a thousand times before, I try to play it a little differently, to understand and make it a little better each time...and then when we've really loosened up, we go for something we've never played before."

In short, nothing is allowed to ossify into a predictable pattern - everything is kept alive, fresh, and evolving: the Rolling Stones may be content to gather moss, but not the Dead. They have firmly grasped the idea that the only way to maintain their connection with the ineffable is through constant growth and change. 

As the band's newest member, keyboardist Brent Mydland discovered just before his first Dead concert two years ago, living with the unexpected can be a bit disorienting at first. 

"The day before the concert I asked what tunes we'd be doing, so I could concentrate on those songs, but no one would tell me. It freaked me a bit, but then when we got on stage, I realized that nobody knew what we were going to play. Keeps you on your toes..." 

Once into those swirling, birth-of-the-universe jams, almost anything goes; even long forgotten songs may emerge from the maelstrom like time travelers popping out of a black hole: "'Cold Rain and Snow' just reappeared after six years in the middle of a jam 'cause Garcia realized he could superimpose it over what we were doing," reflects Weir.

Band members encourage each other to step out at any point; if somebody states a theme emphatically enough, the rest will inevitably follow. "Well, almost always," corrects Weir. "Sometimes only half the guys will come along - but that's rare."

Of course the same is true of the mysterious "X factor": "We can prepare ourselves to be proper vehicles for it, but we can't guarantee it'll happen on any given night," explains the Dead's other drummer, Mickey Hart. "We can raise the sail, but we can't make the wind come." 

Toporovsky agrees: "Out of any five given concerts, one will be mediocre, one or two will be very, very good, and one or two will be utterly incredible."

In the old days the Dead would often come into an area for a sustained engagement of half-a-dozen shows, guaranteeing compulsive Deadheads at least one or two transcendent performances. Today, engagements are generally limited to two or three per city, and the faithful often have to catch the band in at least two different towns to secure their cosmic hit. 

But the amazing thing is that those moments do happen. In the course of interviewing all the band members (except Phil Lesh, who wasn't available), I tried to get them to articulate what they'd discovered about the principles that sustained this matrix, that kept the cosmic dance between performer, audience, and the music itself from collapsing into a chaotic jumble. This was more than a matter of mere curiosity on my part; the problem of longevity is one that must haunt every band as their youthful passion and energy wanes. Any group that's been around for 15 years and can still call down that illuminative power has something to teach all of us. Maybe something that could even save somebody's life. 

I can't help but think of a Bruce Springsteen concert a few weeks back. The magic just wasn't happening during the first set, and Bruce knew it. But being Bruce, he insisted on pushing himself and his band with a harsh urgency bordering on desperation, as if he hoped to break to the other side on sheer bravado alone. It hurt to watch him struggle like some beached swimmer, who thinks he can bring back an ebbing tide if he just continues to flail away hard enough on the sand. "My God," said a voice in the next aisle, "if he keeps that up, he'll kill himself." It was a frightening thought, and one that came back to haunt me the other day when I heard that Springsteen had cancelled a series of midwestern dates on account of exhaustion. 

After a decade and a half of experimentation, the Dead are convinced that sheer force alone isn't the answer. "It is not even a question of concentration," insists Weir. "You've got to let go and surrender to it; drop your cares, and be there for it." 

Okay, but who calls the shots? "Nobody calls the shots," counters Weir. 

"The Dead is bigger than the sum of its parts," adds Garcia. "We go where it leads us." 

Sounds simple enough, but how the hell do you keep everybody's egos from tearing apart the delicate balance needed to keep things open? According to the Dead, the answer involves standing the normal traditional Western attitude towards music on its head: concentration and individual assertiveness give way to a more diffuse awareness and the commitment to ensemble playing. 

According to Weir, "You have to reverse gears from the way you originally learned things. For a musician to master his instrument requires excruciating concentration; each note has to be conquered, then strung together to form riffs and passages. For ensemble playing you've got to let all that go and be aware of others. The key here is listening to what everybody else is doing. You can always tell when somebody's not listening, because they play too much and spoil the chemistry." 

So you divide your attention between what you're doing and what the group is doing? 

"No," insists Weir, "that's not it. Dividing your attention implies a separation between yourself and the music where none exists. Actually, I am the music and all that's necessary is to maintain a little concentration, just enough to articulate my part so it blends with the whole."

The Dead are guaranteed to consistently confound your expectations: every time you think you've got them pegged they toss you another curve. On their debut album they were cleverly disguised as an electric jug band, progressive-minded, but obviously tied to their blues and folk roots. Then came Anthem of the Sun - an about-face if ever there was one. It was an acid-drenched psychedelic garage sale that owed more to Stockhausen and Coltrane than Kweskin or Seeger. Next came Aoxomoxoa, a noble if not entirely successful attempt to compress all that weirdness into traditional three-minute segments. 

It wasn't until the double Live Dead that the record-buying public got a glimpse of what all the excitement was about. Although it remains for many, including most of the band members I polled, the quintessential Dead album, the fact that it's simply a taped concert performance served to highlight the Dead's inability to produce a studio recording that reflected their essential nature. They decided to shift gears once again, this time abandoning their complex improvisational material in favor of simpler musical forms whose spirit might be easier to capture on tape. The resulting albums, Workingman's Dead and American Beauty, are the musical equivalent of the Gothic flying buttress: slender, delicate structures that somehow support a cathedral of sound and feeling. 

About this time the Dead were presented with a challenge of a different nature, with the death of the lead vocalist and keyboardist, Ron McKernan (alias Pigpen). Mickey Hart remembers: "A lot of people may not realize it now, but Pigpen was the boss in those days; it was his band, he was the leader, not Jerry or Bob. When he died, his responsibilities fell on everybody else's shoulders." 

It was also a time when rock bands were undergoing fundamental changes in their relationship with their audiences. The sense of communion, of oneness between player and listener, was disintegrating as musicians became unreachable superstars, and the audience in turn chose entertainment over communication. Instinctively, the Dead opted out of the whole mad game. They gave up the chance to become superstars, but it didn't matter. They had discovered how to keep that inner dynamic alive within themselves, and there was no way they could commercialize that without crushing its essence. They had something that money couldn't buy (besides, the very thought of Jerry Garcia in a gold lame jumpsuit is too painful to bear). 

Compelled by what Garcia refers to as "the call of the weird," the Dead returned to experimental themes on albums like Blues for Allah and Terrapin Station. The latter album's orchestral sweep, pristine production values, and superb ensemble playing qualify it as probably the most successful attempt yet at a studio rendering of their concert persona. Producer Lowell George brought a taste of funk to Shakedown Street and in the process showed the band how to take greater advantage of the rhythmic dynamics inherent in their two-drummer configuration in the studio. Last year's The Grateful Dead Go To Heaven was disappointingly tame AOR fare, though Garcia's peppy "Alabama Getaway" was the closest thing they've had to a hit in years.

This summer the Dead have presented us with a double-dose of what they do best: two double live albums, one acoustic and one electric, both recorded last fall in New York and San Francisco, the twin capitols of Dead-dom. (The band jokingly refers to the N.Y.-Long Island area as "The Grateful Dead Belt.") These releases are being heralded as the "definitive" Dead albums, and on the evidence presented by the acoustic set, which is the only one available now - the electric record should be coming out by the time you read this - that may be a fair assessment. Dan Healy's recording and production are state-of-the-art, and the performances are among the best I've ever heard from the band. 

Is the Grateful Dead satisfied enough with these live efforts to give up their eternal quest for perfection in the studio? Are they finally willing to concede that it can't be done without the help of an audience? 

"Well, maybe," says Garcia, sitting like a Buddha in a black T-shirt in his San Rafael home, "but I feel it's time for another wave of weirdness to hit, and I was thinking about trying a few ideas in the studio..." 

During a break in the interview, I buttonholed Brent Mydland, figuring as the new guy in the band maybe he'll give me some tips on dealing with the Ancient Ones. 

"I'll tell ya a funny thing," says Mydland. "When I first joined these guys I had the feeling I was on the outside of a massive inside joke, but I think I'm beginning to catch on." Gee, Brent, can you toss me any clues? "Of course not!" he replies in mock anger. "Are you trying to get me in trouble or something?" 

That's what I like about the Dead: they never preach or proselytize. Instead, they quietly go about constructing a working model of what might be a brave new world, based on openness to change and risk, diffusion of ego, sensitivity to the needs of the moment, and receptivity to higher forces. Rather than mere relics of a mythic past, Garcia and company may yet prove to be touchstones for a viable future.

(by Vic Garbarini, from Musician, October 1981, pp.60-63)

* * * 

A TALE OF TWO DRUMMERS

Bill Kreutzman's music career did not begin auspiciously; his teacher tossed him out of the school band because he couldn't keep the beat. His revenge was twenty years coming but well worth the wait. Encouraged by a sympathetic high school music instructor, Bill eventually wound up teaching drums in a Palo Alto music store, where he and another instructor named Jerry Garcia got the idea of starting a band. The Warlocks soon metamorphosed into the Grateful Dead, and a debut album was cut for Warners. 

Shortly after its release, Kreutzman faced a crisis when the band invited Mickey Hart to join as a second percussionist. "In my darkest moments," admits Kreutzman, "I was sure he was trying to get me out of the band so he could take over. But in the end I saw it wasn't so, and that spirit of conflict served as a catalyst for getting me off my duff and deeper into the music." Thus began one of rock's most successful double-drummer combinations. 

Both drummers soon discovered that their styles were naturally complementary. "I tend to play the more rudimentary, straight ahead stuff," explains Kreutzman, "while Mickey handles the embellishments, tom fills, and other exotica." 

Hart agrees: "Usually Bill winds up doing the straighter, rock 'n' rollish stuff, while I'm turning it in, out and around. But there are no rules." 

How do they determine their respective responsibilities on any given tune? 

"Normally we just attack it and see what happens," says Mickey. "We might then discuss it, but we find the best work doesn't come from our minds, but from somewhere deeper. We actually breathe in the same time. It's not just two good drummers playing together; something is different between me and Bill. We feel our pulses before a show to get in common time, and we really are beating together." 

"You can never be afraid to take chances," says Kreutzman. "We may play the same song a lot, but it's different every performance. If you try to hold on to something you inevitably kill it." 

Hart takes it even further: "It's more than just an option - we have to take risks. I go up there every night hoping that someone will have a great idea that will take me away, that'll really make me understand what music is about after all these years. But you're part of an ensemble, so you wait for a good idea to come up, and if it's right, something makes you do it and it inspires the rest of the band." 

Sometimes this creative risk-taking spills out beyond the boundaries of the songs to fill in the spaces between tunes. "Call it rhythmic modulation," offers Bill. "Instead of a sudden modulation or key shift between songs, we try to establish a rhythmic relationship so we can slowly amble from one to the other. It's one of my favorite exercises, but it's damn tricky to pull off." 

Both Kreutzman and Hart are deeply involved with Asian, African and American ethnic musics. For Hart, interest centers on what he refers to as "pre-entertainment music": "It's music that's not based just on entertainment; it deals with activities such as making work easier or chasing away demons or washing clothes."

One incident that helped Hart develop a healthy respect for the innate power of this kind of music involved a gift from his friend, Airto Moreira, the noted Brazilian percussionist. "Airto gave me this Brazilian stringed instrument called the berimbau. He gave me a quick lesson in how to play it, and I took it home to practice on. Well, I wound up just staring into the fire and playing this thing for weeks. It just took over; I wouldn't accept phone calls or anything," laughs Hart. "Three weeks later I called up Airto and asked him what the hell was going on! He explained that in Brazil the berimbau was used to induce an altered state of consciousness for practicing the martial arts." Hart pauses. "The weird thing is that I've been into the martial arts for years, but had let it go for a while, and then got back into it when I started playing the berimbau... And there was Airto talking about how this jungle instrument could take you without you even knowing it!" 

Both Hart and Kreutzman cite Sudanese oud player Hamza El Din as a major source of both musical and spiritual inspiration. "It's so great to meet someone who could be so damn strong and yet not exude even a trace of evil, meanness, or fear." A few years ago, Hart accompanied Hamza on a journey up the Nile to visit his ancestral village in the Nubian Desert. "The first thing those Nubian drummers taught me was that Bo Diddley didn't invent that beat," said Mickey. Not speaking Arabic, Hart utilized the univeral language of music to exchange ideas and converse with the Sudanese, who were impressed with his dexterity. "Hamza had taught me to play the tar, a single-membraned African drum, and his people were really blown out by the rhythmic exercises I'd worked up." 

The Nubians would often hold the same rhythmic groove for hours, with different sectons of the ensemble coming forward to improvise over the basic pattern. But when Hart's turn to solo came up, he met with an unexpected reaction from his hosts. "My polyrhythms startled them at first. I asked Hamza why they were staring at me, and he explained that when they heard the off beat and polyrhythms they felt I was forcing the drum. They feel the drums should tell you what to do, and not vice versa, which they see as artificial. They say, 'Excite the drum and it will tell you what to play,'" reflects Hart: "It's a great concept, and I've found it works if you approach the instrument with the right attitude." 

Both Hart and Kreutzman were afforded an opportunity to draw on their work with African and Brazilian musics when they, along with bassist Phil Lesh, Airto, Flora Purim and others, accepted a commission from Francis Ford Coppola to compose the score for Apocalypse Now - The Rhythm Devils Play River Music. Hart's marching orders from Coppola were short and to the point: "All Francis said was 'you know what I want - you know how to make magic. Do it!'" recalled Hart. "I watched the film constantly. I had it on video cassette in my kitchen, in my bedroom, and in the studio. It played continuously for three months." 

Their task was complicated by the fact that the battle sound effects Coppola brought back from the Philippines sounded unconvincing. In the end they were asked to find a way of simulating the cacophony of war in the studio. "Try reproducing the sounds of a napalm attack using wooden instruments and bells," suggests Hart wryly. "The artillery sounded like cheap firecrackers, so we had to reinforce that, too, with steel drums I had built, and other percussive devices. We had over fifteen hours of material!"

For all their inventiveness, both drummers are surprisingly self-effacing about the Dead's success. "It's the audience that's the key," reveals Kreutzman. "They're really the eighth band member. There is some power, be it God or whatever, that enters the Grateful Dead on certain nights, and it has to do with us being open and getting together with the audience. If we can do that, then it comes...and spreads everywhere."

(by Vic Garbarini, from Musician, October 1981, p.68)

A companion piece to this Jerry Garcia interview: 

deadsources.blogspot.com/2024/03/1981-jerry-garcia-interview.html

gdsets.com/magazines/mu10-81.pdf 

March 1981: Mickey Hart Interview

MICKEY HART: RHYTHM DEVIL

CL: Tell us something of your background up until you joined the Dead.

MH: My mother and father were both rudimental drummers and they were involved in the drum corps scene on the East Coast in the 30's and 40's.
My mother taught me how to play the drums - the rudiments. I went through High School on Long Island and played in the school band, and I started to play rock and roll at the weekends in small clubs. The first combo I had, I thought it was a rock and roll combo, I was playing drums and we had an accordion and a valve trombone! That was the trio. Then we got into guitars but we still didn't know what we were doing.
Then I went into the Air Force because they have the best rudimental drummers in the world. I figured that was the only way to get next to drummers of that calibre. Spent a lot of time playing - clubs at night and in marching bands during the day.
Afterwards when I came out I started a drum store on the Peninsula, Jerry was teaching guitar out there - and everybody was hanging out in Palo Alto. I was hanging out with this guy called Sonny Payne who was the drummer with the Count Basie Band. I admired that big band style and once in a while I got a chance to sit in with them in rehearsals and things.
I met Kreutzmann one night and we just started drumming on cars and things. It was with Sonny I think, yeah that's right, I'd taken Sonny to see Janis who'd just started at the Matrix. It was her first gig there or something. It was so loud, James Gurley picked up the guitar and raped it. If you're talking about where punk rock came from - there was nothing like James Gurley. He took that guitar, turned round and embraced the amplifier, turned it right up, shook it, did a little dance with it and rapped it on the floor and it was magnificent. It was the best solo I'd ever heard. Sonny got a headache and walked out of my life that night.
Anyway I met Kreutzmann and he told me about the Dead. So I went to hear them, couldn't believe them, sounded great. He asked me to play for the second set. So I brought my drum set, started playing. Yeah, that was probably at the Straight Theater and we really did play Alligator for two hours.
In those days we'd take a lot of psychedelics and play for long periods of time and we'd get into really monstrous jams. Truly monumental, they had a life of their own, never lived again. That night was really inspired I think, it had to be in order for me to play with the band forever. You knew you were one of the Grateful Dead. You couldn't follow that stuff, there was no way you could academically, technically or mathematically keep up with the Grateful Dead. It would be impossible. Especially then, we didn't know as much as we do now, so it had to come from another place, it was magic.

CL: Tell me about Mickey Hart and the Heartbeats. Were there just the 3 nights at the Matrix?

MH: Was that all there was, I have more tapes than that I think. Someone gave me a whole set of those tapes. He took cassettes right off the masters. Jack Cassady played one night and so did Elvin Bishop. The Heartbeats were really the Dead without Pig Pen and Weir. It wasn't a blues band - it was very experimental music. There we were in the Matrix, this tiny coffee shop. We were set up in there looking at the wall which was only 8 or 10 feet away. There were people coming in off the street, they didn't know who it was. They thought it was a coffee shop, we'd come on and we'd kill them. There was virtually no singing, we played for hours. The only rule was that there were no rules.
I was sick one time at the hospital and somebody slipped the whole set of tapes under the door. That whole period was very far out. It was like trying food for the first time.

CL: Like the Carousel?

MH: The Carousel was amazing. It was our own place, the familiarity of it was an asset musically. It was home. Musically speaking it was like a creative laboratory. Doing one-nighters you're exposed to various elements, there's an uncertainty to your existence. It's like me, I don't live a normal life, it takes me four hours to psyche myself to get up there and do what I do and 3 or 4 at the other end coming down.
Anyway at the Carousel we were in a really important developmental stage musically and technically. We were children in an adult world, and like children we were doing really desperate things and it paid great dividends.
I used to hitch-hike to the Carousel, I didn't have a car, we were making $50 a week, for years! There was a time when we weren't even getting salaries! We were literally hunting for our food. It wasn't hardship, we were all having fun, smoking lots of dope. Me and Bobby and Phil were living not far from 710 Ashbury on Belvedere Street, Kreutzmann lived there for a time too. It got too small at 710. I lived in this closet, had a stairway in it. All I had was an Ali Raka record, a bed, and a candle. Some of the best times I ever had were in the closet.
San Francisco's a creative city, I get the chills just thinking about it. I'm alive there. It's like sticking your musical self into this great plug.

CL: I believe you once played bass with Country Joe & The Fish around that time?

MH: Oh that one! Me and Barry [Melton] were hanging out, working on some project or other, and Joe called him up as something had happened with the bass player and I was learning then. I didn't know any chords, didn't know what changes were or anything. Melton took me down to the gig. I brought my Ring Modulator and Olympic fretless bass and plugged in. I thought it was great. It flipped Joe out. He couldn't believe it. I wasn't concerned with the changes so much as the colour and the intensity. But then Joe used to go up there and sleep for 45 minutes. I don't know about Joe, but it was like comatose music. Same fucking songs, same fucking way. He's not what I call inspiration, musically speaking, let's put it that way - I know he didn't like my bass playing, I sort of like him for it. Over the years I'd say, 'If you need a bass player - call me up', and he goes into a frenzy.
God - that was a long time ago. Barry loved it, but Dorothy Moscowitz came up to me and said, 'Mickey Hart, you know you're random!' and I said 'Yes, I know, thank you. That's the nicest thing you could have said to me,' and she went to pieces and walked away. There is a certain randomness to me and there is that to music.
I never lacked balls especially when it comes to exploring new music. Just before we came over I played this gig with the Rhythm Devils. [Feb 13-14, 1981] Me and Kreutzmann, Airto and Lesh and Flora Purim. We performed at the Marin Veterans Auditorium, recorded direct to disc, sounded great - and that was new music. That was my 1981 version of new music, I let Lesh play bass on that one, but the percussion was all the percussion I'd assembled over the years. Anyway, new music, that's what I'm into, that's what I'm after.

CL: How did the New Riders come about?

MH: Jerry wanted to learn the Pedal Steel. We had Marmaduke, Bob Matthews, and Dave Nelson, and we set up in my barn. I wanted to learn about country and western music, so we set up a workshop.
Being in the Dead was like wearing a spacesuit and being in the New Riders was like wearing a pair of jeans. I couldn't go back and forth in one evening. It was the New Riders, then the Acoustic Dead and the Dead. I loved it, but do you know how many hours a night that was? Dryden had left the Airplane. (I venture that I'd heard he couldn't keep up with their long sets.) Yeah. He didn't really work at being a drummer. I have to keep myself in shape, I did even then. Dryden never did. [line missing] All good drummers but they never thought of their art as physical. They just saw it as practicing the drums. I have to run 8 or 10 miles a day or I go nuts.
Actually, talking of Dave Getz, he is one of the few drummers that really knocked me flat out. He was at Winterland, Janis and Big Brother. Jerry and I were sitting at the top. In those days we could just go out and dig it, unheard of now. All of a sudden, it's the last number of the set and he plays this monstrous drum solo. On the last note he hits the floor tom tom and as he did so he just got up in the same movement and walked off. I was a Dave Getz fan from that day on. Spencer Dryden did it for me at the Fillmore once.
Ginger Baker did it once at the Winterland with Cream, we'd just finished mixing Aoxomoxoa or one of those, and we walked in just as he was getting into his solo. It was amazing, I turned to Jerry and said, 'They have to be the best band in the world' and he said 'Tonight they are the best band in the world.' They were that night.
We invited them to play with us. We played in Sacramento [3/11/68] and Kreutzmann and I get really up for it. We got there and we played and we were the best band in the world that night, no one could play like that. Ginger got crazy and they went out there and I really felt for them because they blew out every speaker on the first note. They were trying to reach our intensity. We were sitting in the front row and we thought about it and so we got our equipment guys, Ramrod and Heard to roll all our equipment out. They played through it and it was so clear it scared the shit out of Clapton, they were used to feeding back through all their Marshalls.
But Ginger was great, there aren't many drummers that can do that to me. Of course Ali [Rakha] does it to me, a lot more. They only did it to me once in their lives. They have to be really inspired. I went to see Billy Cobham last night, mediocre. A great drummer and he's a friend of mine but mediocre. I'd say that if he was here.
He played with us at Radio City (New York, last November) [10/30/80] and afterwards he said to me 'I had no idea. Do you know where this is?' and then he said, 'I guess you do, you're doing this all the time'. He answered his own question, I didn't have a chance to reply. He got turned on to the place that I've taken percussion, what I consider percussion to be. I mean you can't stay in Buddy Rich land forever, that's nowhere.

CL: Why did you leave the Dead?

MH: There was something in my mind that I wanted to do. Also I didn't like touring and the Road was getting a little much for me. I'm into the outdoors. There were minor inner squabbles but mainly it was my own quest to find out what I sounded like personally, instead of just in the Grateful Dead. At that time I built a studio at my house with Dan Healey and learnt about electronics. I didn't just drop out, I went straight into working on Rolling Thunder. I hadn't been able to work on it on the road, it took so much thought. But one good thing about the Dead is that you either are the Grateful Dead or you're not the Grateful Dead, so when I came back I was just back. There was no asking. It was just a matter of 'now it's time, I've finished what I had to do - now I'm ready to play'. I just brought my drums down one night and played and that was it - that's pretty much the way it went.

CL: I've seen it suggested that part of the reason you left was that the Dead's music was getting less complex and your role as ace percussionist was becoming less essential?

MH: That was part of it certainly, but the biggest part was wanting to find out what I sounded like. If I had wanted to be there, I would have been there. I would have made a situation, played percussion, done something to make it musically feasible for me to stay. My leaving was definitely a positive thing, I was just after something else. I knew they wouldn't forget me. I knew that some way, when the time was right it would all come together again. It's a great example of their flexibility that it could happen like that.

CL: Tell us some more about the Barn.

MH: Over the years since it was built up it has become my college. I do things in there that most people wouldn't do, for many reasons. It's my laboratory; it's where I discover stuff that I want to use. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I don't. It's also available to some of my friends, like Barry Melton, his is about the most mainstream music that we've recorded there. Most of my work is electronic or high level percussion. I reproduce it my own way and I learn about stuff, you can study all that forever.
The Barn became an Oasis for a large number of people. Now I also go out and record remote - which I call MERT. I don't charge for that because if I make a mistake, ok well it's an experiment, but I do it pretty well and mistakes are rare. All I ask them for is a copy of the tape. I want to be able to get to my locker in the middle of the night and be able to pick out a vintage Ali Akbar Khan from 72 that I've recorded, it's like my wine cellar. I study the world's music, I've been to the Arctic Circle, Cairo, Tokyo, wherever and bring it back. That's my joy. Having the Barn has enabled me to become an engineer.
We recorded just so much stuff there, including my second and third solo albums which have never been released. Fire on the Mountain (the 2nd one) wasn't released because Warners wanted me to go out and tour and I wouldn't. They were looking for a pop oriented thing. There's another example of 'new music' - it may sound great now but back then, can you imagine. When I played it at Warners they all walked out - Joe Smith walked out. I'll never forget it. I realized I had succeeded, I thought 'Wow I must be onto something'. The third record really flipped them out. I'm into new music at almost any cost - as a desperate man should. That's my future.

CL: What about Diga? I believe it's possible to trace their origins back to a Dead gig at the Greek Theater in Berkeley in 68.

MH: That's right. It was Vince Delgado on Dumbeck, Shakhar Ghosht, me and Kreutzmann. It was in the middle of Alligator, we rolled the amps apart, brought the risers forward and played, for a very long time. [9/20/68]
Anyway I went on to study with Shankar Ghosht, I studied tabla and I taught him traps. Also I was working with Ali Raka, we stayed together for days around the time we were recording Aoxomoxoa. I went back and studied at his school and he introduced me to his son, Zakir Hussein - Zakir had a bunch of tabla students, there was also a conga player, a vibe player, and a marimba player, and we all got together and worked out those incredible ornate compositions, for over a year or so. We put it together in the back room.
Anyway one day Grace Slick called me up. Oh right. Grace and I were working on Kung Fu movie scores. I played her a tape of the new percussion band and she loved it. She said 'we're playing at Winterland, would you like to open for us'. [May 16-17, 1975] So I took all these kids down there and it was great, Ali [Rakha] was in the audience. He loved it. Owsley was doing the PA. Then we played in the park. [5/30/75] But there were 14 people and it was too cumbersome to keep it together or take it on the road. So that was Diga.

CL: The Rhythm Devils?

MH: Rhythm Devils are the bastard son of Diga. In the second set we take our solo. When Coppola came and asked me to do the score, I put together Airto, because he's the jungle man and Flora and we did that record. I wanted to take it out live to play new music with old instruments. We had all my things plus Airto's 'sound sculptures', these large metal sculptures that you play. He's a magician. He plays traps really well now and his percussion is superb. Where else do you find out about these jungle things. You have to go to the real thing: Airto. Kreutzmann has become addicted to talking drums. Mike Hinton is a former student of mine when I had the drum store in Palo Alto, he's played with Sinatra and Liza Minnelli, all those Broadway shows. He's a doctor of percussion from Julliard - not too shabby. Phil Lesh on 'unusual' bass. A very unusual ensemble.

(by John Platt, from Comstock Lode magazine #9, 1981)

* 

 

Here are some excerpts from the interview Mickey did with Swing 51 during the same visit to London, March 1981, printed some years later.

 

MICKEY HART: THUNDER ROLLING  [excerpts]
 

From the editor's introduction:
This interview dwells on fairly esoteric subject matter as far as standard Grateful Dead interviews go. This was deliberate as the interview was originally going to appear in the now defunct Dark Star magazine and the focus was on some of Hart's less mainstream activities. Dark Star's Grateful Dead special issue never appeared which was a shame because for its time it would have been out of the ordinary. Nowadays - with the standards set by that excellent Californian magazine Golden Road - people would probably not even bat an eyelid...
The primary focus to the interview was on Hart's many side-projects and the wealth of material that has never seen any commercial release. This subject matter not only included Hart's 1972 solo album Rolling Thunder and its unreleased follow-ups such as Fire On The Mountain and The Silent Flute, but also work with some of the transitory spin-off bands. It also delved into Hart's own original forays into ethnic or world music...

[The questions weren't printed in this interview.]

I was hanging out with Sonny Payne, who was the drummer with Count Basie. I played jazz. I played with Gerry Mulligan a little bit; I played some gigs with him in Europe. I was into big band. I read. I read music - I say that past tense but I probably still do. I haven't read in a long time. I was schooled in concert band, in dance band, in jazz band, in rudimental drumming. That's where I came from, from the rudimental side. Then I learned the dance drums, the trap set, because I had to make money after-hours to put myself through anything I wanted to be put through - school or whatever. And that's how I made my way when I was younger - by playing 'casuals', we call them, affairs, lame little functions with odd bands. Live musicians playing odd music for odd people! But it was a living and I was young and it was the only way you could do it. There was no rock'n'roll then, or rock'n'roll was just starting.

I had this fascination with Indian music because it was so rhythmically articulate and so developed; it was muscular rhythmically speaking. Mostly in the West it's harmony and melody, which is not very familiar in Indian music. Which is melody. But it was rhythmically so developed that I was naturally attracted to it. My teacher was Alla Rakha, Ravi Shankar's drummer, who I sought out years before. I studied at the Ali Akbar Khan College of Music, so I guess that was the beginnings of Diga when I studied classical Indian music. I studied time, tabla, and just your way of going about Indian music, and because it was so sophisticated rhythmically I could wallow in it. Then it worked its way into my style and my thought and I started composing with the added attraction of having all that experience in Indian music.

The beginning of Diga was actually in '68 when Vince Delgado, who was part of the Ali Akbar Khan College of Music, and Shankar Ghosh, the tabla player, sat in with us - me and Kreutzmann - on 'Alligator' at the Berkeley Community Theater and we played for about an hour.
Then I met Zakir Hussain. Alla Rakha introduced me to his son, Zakir, who played with Mahavishnu and Shakti and all those things. A master musician. He's one of the few really talented percussionists in the world. He got all his tabla students together. We got a conga player, a marimba player, a vibe player, and we practiced for a year or so in the back rooms. We learned all these compositions which were very heady and we composed. I put them in The Barn for three months and recorded it. That's where Diga came from. It certainly came from the rhythmic density that I learned from Alla Rakha. [ . . .]

[On leaving the Dead]
We never really split up. I was building my studio and making my records, learning what I sounded like, developing Diga. It didn't seem like taking a backseat. I was quite active, more active than the Grateful Dead. But I didn't go on the road and that's what made a difference.
[Rolling Thunder] was a year of my life. That's what my life sounded like for one year. I really wanted that record to represent somebody's life - mine particularly. It's a true representation because that's where I lived. The rain on the roof - it was the rainy season. I still have 16 tracks of rain! I have boxes of the most beautifully recorded rain in the world.... And there was music and that was the kind of music I was into. I was writing the soundtrack to 'Mickey Hart' that year.
The Shoshone invocation at the beginning of Rolling Thunder is by a medicine man, a Shoshone, a friend and a doctor, the Grateful Dead's doctor. He performs ceremonies and picks his herbs there. He was a certain spiritual inspiration to me and he had a spirit which, I think, embodied the spirit of Rolling Thunder - the studio as well. The invocation is a little prayer thanking the Great Spirit for the music. [ . . . ]

Here's what happened to Fire On The Mountain: it's in a locker somewhere and Warners has it. They signed me up for a few albums and Rolling Thunder was one of them. That was very well received and it was a fine album. Then I went with a second one called Fire On The Mountain which a magnificent version of 'Fire On The Mountain' appears on. I bring it down to Joe Smith and those people at Warner Brothers and they canned it. They wanted 'rock 'em, sock 'em', something to take on the road. I don't think they knew what they had. I don't think they understood it, that fire was in there. They could have been selling fish. They actually walked out on me while I was playing it for them.
A lot of it is me and Jerry at the Palace of Fine Arts. [11/28/73] We got on the stage with our synthesisers and drums and just met and played for four hours. I put some of those tapes on Fire On The Mountain, and there was some stuff that I did with Melton.... All kinds of great, adventurous songs. And also space. Great music, I thought. [ . . . ]
Anyway, I thought those guys [at Warner Brothers] really can't see, so I went into the studio and made the third one - which was not released either - called The Silent Flute.
You haven't heard of that one! That's obscure and that's my best work. A very strong piece of work in a locker someplace in Warner Brothers... I did it all in two weeks and it never saw the light of day. I've never talked about it. [ . . . ]

We live in 415 area code and all my friends like Jim McPherson, John Cippolina, Barry Melton, and David Freiberg were from that area. We got together and played things like 'Ghost Riders In The Sky' and Jim McPherson's songs. Jim McPherson is a great musician and songwriter; he played in Copperhead with Batwang. Cippolina's Batwang....all his guitars've got batwings on them. [ . . . ]
So, we put together this loose, fragmented group of musicians and that's why we called it 415. We never released the material. We just stuck it in the locker. That seems like my life story. Our output is so much greater than our releases. We're pretty prolific.
Most of the big companies aren't really interested in these recordings and I'm not into hawking them. But a lot of them are really worthy. It's just laying there, man. I don't know what's going to happen to it. We play it all the time.... Jerry plays a magnificent solo on 'Fire On The Mountain'. I think the rights might have come back to me [for] Fire On The Mountain. We only leased our records to Warners. After five or seven years those things come back to us. I think I may own it. When did I do it? 1972, and I did Flute right after. It's in limbo.
Maybe Fire On The Mountain will be released some day, if somebody cared to do it, but doing battle with a record company or hassling with a record company is my least favourite occupation, because I'm not very compatible with record companies. We don't see eye to eye on many things. I haven't found one I can even sit down and talk with. Oh, we'll sit down but so far I haven't been able to find a good business relationship with any record company. I wish I could say with Arista it wasn't like that, but it is. When you're a record company all I really need is great distribution... [line missing] the work or its artistic control. Or even any comment on any of the music - it's none of their business. So there are some rules to the way I look at my music, and that's probably why some of it hasn't been released. For example, the advertising has to be sensible. I won't go for pigeons being released or some lame bullshit rap. They wanted to do that with Fire On The Mountain. The Warners guy came up with an idea, saying, 'Let's use doves or something. Release a thousand doves.' I said, 'Pssst. Out! Forget it! Good-bye. You've got the wrong boy." [ . . . ]

A couple of weeks ago [Feb 13-14, 1981] we performed the Rhythm Devils live at Marin Veterans' Auditorium. We went direct-to-disc. It's the first live recording direct-to-disc in concert. It was a milestone album and the tapes sound beautiful. We're talking about deep space, deeeep space. You can see into that record for twenty miles.
It was Airto, Flora Purim, Phil, me and Kreutzmann, and Michael Hinton from Julliard, a doctor of mallets. We rehearsed and we all lived in The Barn for a week, then we went and played. Owsley did the P.A. Crystal Clear are the people on the lathe and I think they'll be releasing that. They have their own distribution. It'll be a limited edition. The Bear also has Nagra tapes, of course. 

We did another Crystal Clear recording with Zakir Hussain and Alla Rakha - the three of us. A live concert. We're building up a library of Crystal Clear recordings. They are exquisite. They sound so good and we're getting better at it.
[ . . . ]

(by Ken Hunt, from Swing 51 magazine #13)
 

 

[Other sections in this interview discuss recording world music, writing songs with Barry Melton on acid, writing 'Ariel' with Hunter, rare recordings with Melton, Hunter & Cippolina, and wearing the white Go To Heaven suit.]

 

Some links: 

http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2015/05/circular-on-mickey-hart-and-rolling.html (Mickey bio) 

http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2009/07/pre-august-1967-mickey-hart.html (Mickey pre-Dead -- see comments)  

http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2016/03/march-11-1968-civic-auditorium.html (Cream) 

http://hooterollin.blogspot.com/2012/08/album-projects-recorded-at-mickey-harts.html (The Barn)  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzUrJDncZ5k (Fire on the Mountain/Area Code 415 sessions)

https://archive.org/details/gd73-11-28.sbd-seastones.finney.968.sbefail.shnf (11/28/73 Jerry/Mickey/Phil/Ned, various tracks -- also more complete here)  

http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2013/01/september-20-1968-berkeley-community.html (Diga origins)

http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2016/05/may-30-1975-speedway-meadows-golden.html (Diga Rhythm Band) 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiRgGU7JK0g (Diga 5/30/75)

http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2010/01/rhythm-devils-marin-veterans-memorial.html (Rhythm Devils, Feb '81) 

https://archive.org/details/rhythmdevils1981-02-14.aud.flac16 

Mickey is still playing with Zakir Hussain to this day. Here's some recent work: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dr85GrjKeBc (Sound Consciousness: Drones for Sonic Bathing)

 
 

And here's a bonus anecdote from the interview I couldn't leave out:

The Silent Flute has an interesting story. Here is The Silent Flute story.
OK, I'm into martial arts. Grace Slick is into this kung fu stuff too. We're hanging out watching them making kung fu movies. Bruce Lee had just died and they were making these movies in San Francisco at this big house. I was interested in doing the score. I was interested in doing action movies. This was my first look at how it could be.
Then one day Grace says, 'Come on over. I've got something to show you.' She hands me this screenplay. She puts me in this room and closes the door and says, 'Read it.' I started reading this thing and it was called The Silent Flute. What it was was a screenplay by Sterling Silliphant, James Coburn, and Bruce Lee, and it was written for Bruce Lee's next movie. And they canned it! Bruce died. [July 1973] I was just totally taken by the imagery. It's about a guy in his quest for knowledge and he's put to all these tests and these trials. It was magnificent, so well written. I couldn't believe the first draft. So I just said, 'Thank you, Grace.' I'll never forget.
I went home, locked myself in my studio for 2-1/2 weeks. I never left the studio. I had my food put in underneath the door. I didn't change my clothes for a week-and-a-half or two weeks. Serious composing, man! I'd never done that. I probably never will again. I didn't have the script, I just remembered it. And I wrote the score to The Silent Flute. The movie wasn't even in production yet. Grace loved it. Everybody I played it to thought it was just like the movie should have been. I have the ability to do that. Now I can make music and it sounds like what it looks like.
I gave it to Warner Brothers. Jerry was on it too. It was all space. It was gorgeous. Piano. Low frequencies. It was my best work, the best I ever did.
Five years later - this was a couple of years ago, three years ago - I see in a paper that The Silent Flute is going into production with David Carradine with this Richard St. Johns fellow producing it. Warner Brothers were putting it out! Warner Brothers didn't even know that I had written the score years ago. I went to Richard St. Johns and told him and he said, 'What are your qualifications for it? What is your resume?' I've never done a resume in my life! What can I say? 'No, I've not done a movie.' I don't think he took me seriously.
It was made as The Circle of Iron; it was called that eventually. Totally raped by Carradine in Israel. The Circle of Iron was released a year ago and flopped totally. It was awful. They raped it. But originally it was really well done. That's the story of The Silent Flute. Basically I made this music to the imagery of the movie. Of course, what turned out was nothing like what I had seen. That first draft was beautiful. They turned it into a 29-cent special. Bruce Lee would've turned over in his grave.

March 1981: Phil Lesh Interview

PHIL LESH: REDDY KILLOWATT SPEAKS!

CL: There's a quote in the Harrison book that says, 'After the second Acid Test the Dead started playing dragon music, esoteric, asymmetrical music unable to be conceptualized except by a few,' or words to that effect. However all the early Dead recordings from that period, good though they are, sound like slightly psychedelic r n b.

PL: It's hard to differentiate because Hank was not at the Acid Tests. He wasn't welcome as far as I know. He had been our manager, for a short time, he got us one gig and then we moved up the ladder, professionally speaking, and we were working with an agent. After that we had our first major gig, a month long stand, 6 nights a week, 5 sets a night.
So this is all post Harrison having anything to do with the band, anything other than as a friend of mine. So anyway he wasn't at the Acid Tests, the only reason I think he might say that, is because - well he and I took acid together and [he] naturally assumed the rest. The way I remember the Acid Tests is that we played normally except we were stoned. It was kind of easy, strangely enough, it may not seem so.
The way the music developed from 65 to 68, let's say, it was like one long breath, long and slow. But I would say that your description of the slightly psychedelic r n b band was pretty correct up to the Anthem of the Sun period.

CL: In fact that description sounds more like...

PL: Hank Harrison!

CL: Well that too. But musically it sounds like the Anthem/Carousel Ballroom period.

PL: That's right. That music lasted about two years from the end of 67 to early 70, whenever we went in and recorded Workingman's.

CL: Do you remember the demos the Warlocks did for Tom Donahue?

PL: What are the cuts, can you remember?

CL: There's a thing called 'Can't Come Down'.

PL: God. That's a song that I can't remember. I know that we wrote a song called 'Can't Come Down' but I can't remember it [at] all.

CL: There's also 'Early Morning Rain' with you singing.

PL: Yes it is. I never did that much lead singing, cos I never felt comfortable with it, especially live. For some people it's easy, but for me to play the bass and sing - almost impossible.
It's curious that Jerry and Bob now play in the same place that we auditioned for the live gig with Donahue. It was Mother's then but it's now called The Stone. It's still a piece of shit place.

CL: The other thing about the demos is that in some ways they sound more interesting than the 1st Warners album.

PL: Well, for the album we had a producer - Hassinger. He went on to produce Seals and Crofts.

CL: Can we just talk a a bit about your days in Palo Alto before the Dead started.

PL: It was a guy called Mike Lamb who got me into all of that. That's how I met Kesey, Pigpen, Garcia, Alan Trist, all those guys. Mike was in a band later, he had the most amazing voice, sounded like a contra bass trombone that could speak. He was about 6'4" but slender. Good looking dude, man. I had to fight to keep the women away from him. He turned me on to about 3 of my first best girlfriends.
The folk scene in Palo Alto was all there was at that point. The jazz scene was so introverted. There was no local jazz scene at all and when anybody great came to town it was just too overwhelming. Later on we had to follow Miles Davis - the Bitches Brew band - 2 nights in a row. I don't ever want to hear anybody snivel about following anyone else. Because I got the one, man, right there. Made me feel so dumb. I thought, 'what the fuck am I doing here, why aren't I at home digesting what I just heard?'
Anyway to go back. I was going to college at San Mateo, studying music, of course, learning big band jazz charts. Sucking up as much music as I could - trying to find out about Stockhausen, because I'd read about him in the library. Actually one of the best breaks I ever had was a job testing records at the library.
I've always been a book person as well. My grandmother taught me to read at the age of 3, so that I could read the Bible to her. How convenient, says I 37 years later. She was also the one to turn me onto music. She discovered me with my ear against the wall during the Sunday afternoon symphony concert on the radio, my room was next to hers. The next week she said, 'Would you like to come in and hear the nice music?' It was the Brahms 1st symphony conducted by Bruno Walter. I'm four years old and thinking 'this is it. I don't know [how] or why but this is it.' Ah yes, the good old days. Seems like as soon as you turn 35 you start remembering.

CL: (One of the more interesting Dead tapes I have is from the Carousel Ballroom. 14th February 1968. At one point on the tape they move from Born Cross Eyed into a weird Spanish sounding thing that has overtones of Quicksilver. I played it to Phil and asked him what he thought about it.)

PL: I wish we still played like that. That was our Sketches of Spain take, it was part of our act at the time. Sketches of Spain was one of those classic albums, at one time you could walk down any street in a college town and hear it floating out of almost every window. Bringing It All Back Home was the same later on.

CL: Although he wasn't on that, I was going to ask you about Tom Constanten, since he was definitely part of the Dead's exotic period.

PL: It was late 68 that he finally joined. He helped us with Anthem of the Sun with the prepared piano piece. He just brought the tapes over and overdubbed his part. I think that's all he did on Anthem. Later on he joined as an addition, not replacing Pig Pen. He never quite got over a certain stiffness, he couldn't swing or at least at that time he couldn't. That was the big problem. He only stayed just a little over a year. We always had a problem with keyboards. Pig Pen was always a soloist with his harp and voice and his personality, but he wasn't really much of an organ player. So when we started getting into spaces that were more extended he would lay out, which was for the best, I guess. On the other hand, during the Other One he'd play little parts which was always helpful for the texture. But we always had that problem even up till 72 when Keith joined.
Tom Constanten is doing pretty well for himself. Pretty soon I expect to see his name on a movie score. He has a lot of contacts in Europe so it could come from there. He's gone back to performing his own work and lecturing. I met him when he was 17 years old, god he was a weird guy.

CL: That was my favorite period of the band.

PL: Mine too. Although we've become quite proficient at pulling out imitations of that style. But as that time fades into antiquity there are nights when I feel like a parody of myself. But that's got to be natural, because that is a very large part of music, to parody. I find that when we do the feedback stuff I have less and less to play. I have less and less ideas, not a lack of ideas per se, just that they don't seem to relate the same way that they did in the past. To me it's getting to be a mistake to do that every night. Back in 68 we did it every night because that's what we did, by God. In those days we used to say that every place we played was church and that's what it was like. A pretty far out church but that's how we felt.
Back in the early days some nights were amazing and some were terrible, but now we've reached a level of professionalism where we can almost always make it good for the audience, but the chances of the amazing nights [have] been dramatically reduced. But we did learn how to play and we can now stumble through a whole 3 hours and 15 minutes and it will still get the crowd off.

CL: To backtrack again, why didn't you use the complete version of St. Stephen and The Eleven on Aoxomoxoa? (The original has bagpipes, telephones ringing, etc. as well as The Eleven which wasn't used at all.)

PL: I forget, but I'd love to hear it.

CL: OK. There is also another interesting track - the Barbed Wire Whipping Party (possibly the weirdest thing the band ever did).

PL: God! As far as we knew there was never even a mix of that - so some slick sucker did make a mix of it. 'Meat, meat, give me my meat. Hump snippet, lump snippet.'

CL: What was it all about. Why did you do it.

PL: Why not? Well Hunter had this lyric, well it wasn't a lyric, it was just a rave which went something like 'The Barbed Wire Whipping Party in the razor blade forest,' that's the first line I think. 'Last week I went to Mars and talked to God, and he said 'tell 'em to cool out and not to worry, cos the end of everything is death!'' It was so great. Hunter himself read it, which was great because we never got him to perform on our records, so that was cool.

CL: Let's jump to some of your side endeavours like Warp 10.

PL: Well we never really called it that. That was more or less Mickey's term for it. It was kind of an offshoot of the feedback trip and my involvement with electronic music as a student and with Ned Lagin who we met at MIT when we played there in 70.
The thing took several forms, mostly Ned and I, sometimes Ned and I plus Mickey. Once it was the three of us plus David Crosby and Jerry. At one point it was Ned, myself and Crosby, and then finally Ned and myself. We actually went on the road and while we didn't make a lot of money, we drew people and they liked it. It was a lot more coherent with just the two of us, with five of us it was too thick for any real interplay. Then came the Seastones fiasco which was a horrible bummer for Ned both aesthetically and financially - it was a rip off. It was the lowest priority project for Round Records. Ned went his own way after that, although we still communicate. He's into video now with his computer. We essentially did a benefit for him and got him a computer and a synthesizer.

CL: There has been a subtle change of image for the Dead in the last few years. Particularly the slicker production of the albums and the white suits on 'Go To Heaven'.

PL: I think we can lay that in Clive Davis' lap. That's what he demanded. He didn't actually demand that we use producers but he did demand that we acted professional and got commercial.
The guy is a fool, he wanted the Grateful Dead because it is something that had always evaded him. I think the whole thing is dogshit, I hate producers, if I ever have to work with one again I'll probably kill myself. We still owe them another studio album. I'm going to put it off as long as I can. We still have another electric double album coming out from the Warfield and Radio City gigs.
Clive Davis actually went round the producer and made edits! I was thunderstruck. I can't tell you how much I hate the idea of 'Go To Heaven', I can't tell you how much I hate the white suits, although it was my idea. Not the white suits, but putting our faces on the cover for the first time. I could go on and on.
The new album is beautiful I think. It sounds very far out. The way that Dan and Betty put it together is that you can be sitting in the room and the audio image is bigger than the area covered by the speakers. If you are sitting in a certain position it sounds like you're sitting in the sound booth, if you move forward it sounds like you're in the front row, move back and it sounds like you're in the balcony. It's amazing.
The mixes are beautiful too. This is the first album I liked since Blues For Allah.

CL: I liked aspects of that album, especially the experimental quality, but really didn't like the sound of Keith Godchaux's electric piano.

PL: After a certain point Keith never wanted to play. He was so brilliant at the beginning. I heard some tapes from '71, wow that guy had it all, he could play anything. By 75 Donna had joined too; I don't know if you know how difficult it is having husband and wife in the same band? Well that didn't help either, but that's all in the past. Donna's doing well now, got a band called the Heart of Gold Band, singing her heart out. She sings like a goddess and she never sang that way with us and I cussed her out for it. She couldn't say anything.

(from Comstock Lode magazine, issue 9, 1981) 

Thanks to jgmf.blogspot.com