Jon McIntire, manager of the Grateful Dead in the
1970s and 1980s, died of natural causes yesterday, February 16, 2012, in Stinson
Beach. He was 70.
Once a promoter really screwed up in front of Jon,
and asked how he could demonstrate his sincere regrets. “Pheasant under glass
would be nice,” said Jon. He got it, and sat backstage in some dumb coliseum
catering area thoroughly enjoying himself. Another night, in the mid 1980s, the
Dead traveling party went to an extraordinarily high-class restaurant called Le
Bec-Fin in Philadelphia. Dinner – and wine, lots of wine - cost $10,000. As
various somewhat cruder members of the entourage got louder and wiggier – party
favors were ordered from somebody on the wait staff - Jon presided over the
scene like a tall, blond, handsome and benign prince, charming to the core and
always terribly civilized. He was a very special part of the Grateful Dead.
He was born August 13, 1941, in Mt. Vernon, Illinois, and grew up in
Bellville, across the river from St. Louis. He was a charter member of the Early
Music Society of St. Louis, performed as a child pianist, and acted at the
Gateway Theater there. He attended Washington University. Joining the
early-sixties procession to San Francisco, he attended San Francisco State,
concentrating on the history of ideas, studying things like German phenomenology
and expressionist poets. He met a fellow student named Rock Scully. “It seemed
strange to me,” said McIntire, “that Rock, to me a serious scholar, should be
into rock and roll bands.”
McIntire, it turned out, got into Rock’s band too. With his partner Danny
Rifkin, Rock was dropping out of State to manage the Grateful Dead. Jon
described himself as having a Taoist view – he tended to follow things, and the
Dead just “sort of swept me in.” “We were all psychedelic revolutionaries, and
we all became great friends during that time,” Jon told
The Golden Road
magazine much later. “We were willing to try anything.”
Jon had been working as a systems analyst at the Fireman’s Fund insurance
company, but then one day in early 1968 his life changed. He’d been anticipating
having to return to St. Louis to deal with a court case about a car accident,
and then got a telegram saying he didn’t have to go. Suddenly free, he wandered
down to the Dead’s brand new venue, the Carousel Ballroom, to help chef Annie
Corson clean the kitchen to prepare for opening the place.
He’d just begun when one of the Dead’s many managers at that time, Jonathan
Riester, walked in and said, "McIntire! What are you doing?" "Well, Jonathan,
I'm going to take this fry grill and I'm going to put it in that water, and I'm
going to scrub the fuck out of it." "No no no no no, you can't do that, that's
not a job for you." "Why?" "Because you're going to manage this ballroom with
me." "Jonathan, I'm an actor. What do I know about managing a ballroom?"
"McIntire, I'm a cowboy, what do you think I know?" "I don't know." "Besides,
what do you have to do for the rest of your life?" "Well, as of a few hours ago,
nothing." "My point exactly."
“At this point,” Jon recalled, “Annie's staring at us with daggers of hate,
knowing she's being left in the lurch. We walked out, and I told Jonathan that
the only condition was we had to find her two guys to help, no bullshit. And he
did.”
And so Jon became one of a number of managers, and by 1970, after the
departure of Lenny Hart, the manager. With Rock Scully doing the promotion, he
guided the Grateful Dead through the era of
Workingman’s Dead and
American Beauty. He was sweet, civilized, a little proud of his
intellect, and very different from the rowdy crew that set the tone around the
Dead, but his graceful intelligence paved the way for much of their success.
When the Dead notified Warner Bros.’ Joe Smith that they wanted to call their
1971 live album “Skullfuck,” it was Jon who told Joe. When Joe cried out “How
could you do this to me?” it was Jon who replied, “No, Joe, it’s
all of
us who are doing this to you.” The result was a meeting in which the entire GD
community went down to Los Angeles for a meeting with Joe to discuss it. In the
end, they changed the name and got a promotional budget that paid for many live
radio shows and made that record,
Grateful Dead, their first gold
album.
By 1974, as the band grew burned out with their giant sound system, The Wall,
and decided to take a hiatus, Jon did too. He worked with Bob Weir’s solo
projects, like “Bobby and the Midnites.”
In 1984, Danny Rifkin, who’d been managing things for a while, decided to
take a sabbatical in India. Jon returned as manager – cumulatively, he probably
ran the GD circus longest of all the managers -and was on board as they found
their greatest commercial success with “Touch of Grey” and
In the Dark.
In the process he’d brought in Cameron Sears to be road manager, and after a
period of training, was glad to hand over the reins to him and leave rock and
roll. He returned to St. Louis where he acted, and also worked as a counselor
for women who were victims of domestic violence. In later years, he worked in
the theater in Newport Beach, California and New York City before returning to
Northern California in 2011.
“He would always light up a room when he walked in,” said Cameron Sears. He
had a sunny, funny, fussy disposition that made him unique in the Dead scene,
and he brought a dignified, civilizing elegance to the mix that had a very
special impact. When the Dead’s biographer asked him what books would explain
the intellectual sources of the Grateful Dead, he listed Friedrich Holderlin,
Thomas Mann, Martin Heidegger, Georg Hegel, James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, an
unfinished novel in three volumes by Robert Musil,
The Man Without
Qualities, and what he called “the surrealist bible,”
Les Chants de
Maldoror, by the Comte de Lautreamont (Isidore Lucien Ducasse). He said they
“taught us to start from the point of unlimited possibilities. We have not gone
into the modern age.”
If
you're married and under the age of 45, there's a 50 percent chance your union
won't last. But despite that fact, most people tie the knot with 'forever' in
mind. Sure, they might not realize the heft of 'forever', but usually, the
intention is: till death do us part.
Abbat
Bunyarit Leemahamad: What do u look for in a guy?
Jessa: Being spanked or my boob grabbed.
