Paul Liberatore’s Lib at Large: Jerry Garcia on Jerry Garcia

Dennis McNally with Jerry Garcia. (Bob Minkin photo) 

POSTED: 11/26/15, 4:42 PM PST |

0 COMMENTS

Book cover of "Jerry on Jerry, the Unpublished Jerry Garcia Interviews" edited by Dennis McNally. 

If you go

What: Trixie Garcia in conversation with Dennis McNally

Where: Fillmore Auditorium, 1805 Geary Blvd., San Francisco

When: 6:30 p.m. Dec. 2

Admission: Free

Information: thefillmore.com

Most music fans would agree that Jerry Garcia, who died in 1995, was one of the all-time great rock guitarists. His solos were instantly recognizable, and I can only say that about a handful of guitar players. What isn’t so well known about him is that the charismatic Grateful Dead patriarch was a sparkling conversationalist. He also had an admirable ability to listen, a virtue that served him well in his interactions with others as well as in his improvisational excursions with the Dead.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Garcia a couple of times, but no writer knew him better and spent more time with him than Dennis McNally, who was hired by Garcia himself to be the band’s publicist as well as its historian and biographer.

McNally’s “A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead” was published in 2002. And now he’s edited previously unpublished interviews with Garcia, his and others, in a new book, “Jerry on Jerry” (Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, $27.99).

“Very few things have been more fun and more stimulating for me than taking with Jerry Garcia,” McNally writes in his introduction.

‘FUN-LOVING WEIRDNESS’

In her foreword, Garcia’s daughter Trixie calls the book “a rare window into both the fun-loving weirdness and more mysterious corners of my dad’s inquisitive and insightful mind.”

She and McNally will be discussing the book at the Fillmore in San Francisco on Dec. 2.

“Jerry on Jerry” features a Jay Blakesberg portrait of Garcia on the front cover and a contact sheet of eight Herb Greene photos of him on the back. Graphically, it’s laid out like a kind of family album, with snapshots of Garcia’s San Francisco childhood interspersed with his visual artwork and whimsical drawings as well as historic photos of him with the band.

McNally broke seven hours of interviews into eight chapters, including Garcia talking about film, comedian Lenny Bruce, LSD, politics and, most fascinating for me, lyricist Robert Hunter.

It’s safe to say that the Grateful Dead would not be the Grateful Dead without the songs Hunter co-wrote with Garcia on their two masterpiece 1970 albums, “Workingman’s Dead” followed by “American Beauty.” They introduced classics like “Uncle John’s Band,” “Cumberland Blues,” “Friend of the Devil,” “Ripple” and “Truckin’.” Those songs, which changed the musical direction of the band, seem written by one mind, and I’ve often wondered how they wrote them together so seamlessly. It turns out that they and their girlfriends were living together in Larkspur at the time.

“This new and ongoing proximity propelled their already fruitful artistic partnership to an entirely new level,” McNally writes.

METHODICAL WRITING

I was surprised at how methodical Hunter was in his songwriting with Garcia.

“When Hunter and I write a song together, I can tell him where I want the vowels and consonants, and what kind of vowels I want, and he can write to order like that,” Garcia explained.

McNally asked him about writing “Uncle John’s Band,” a song he saw as a classic example of Hunter’s words and Garcia’s music fitting flawlessly together.

“I couldn’t hope to work with a guy who was more perfect,” Garcia said. “Plus, he has the ability to say what I would have wanted to say. I mean, sometimes I can read things and he can write for me from my point of view so effortlessly. I’m as transparent to him as a windowpane.”

Like a lot of Dead fans, McNally loves Hunter’s lyrics in “Ripple,” telling Garcia that he thought they’re “like perfect things.”

Many people might be shocked to learn that Garcia didn’t share that opinion. He wasn’t wild about that song.

‘IT CROWDS ME’

“‘Ripple’ is a little talky even for me,” he told McNally. “Whenever I sing that song there is a moment or two when I feel like a Presbyterian minister. You know what I mean? It crowds me just a little.”

Garcia went on to say that if the song had “one more cautionary moment in it, I’d have real problems with it. I personally have a real low embarrassment level.”

“Jerry on Jerry” may not be for the casual Grateful Dead fan. It takes some patience to wade through the dross of verbiage for the nuggets of wit and wisdom, but they’re there. And this book is the best thing I’ve read for anyone interested in getting inside the head of one rock ’n’ roll’s true intellectuals.

Contact Paul Liberatore at liberatore@marinij.com or 415-382-7283, follow him @LibLarge on Twitter, read his blog at http://blogs.marinij.com/marinmusicman

How Steely Dan Created ‘Deacon Blues’

Donald Fagen and Walter Becker of Steely Dan explain the 1977 hit ‘Deacon Blues’

ENLARGE

Walter Becker, left, and Donald Fagen in Los Angeles in 1975 PHOTO: ED CARAEFF/GETTY IMAGES

As midlife-crisis songs go, Steely Dan’s “Deacon Blues” ranks among the most melodic and existential. Recorded for the album “Aja” in 1977, the song details the bored existence of a ground-down suburbanite and his romantic fantasy of life as a jazz saxophonist.

Written by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen in 1976, “Deacon Blues” was released in 1977 on Steely Dan’s album “Aja,” which in the fall reached No. 3 on Billboard’s album chart, where it remained for seven consecutive weeks. The song also was a hit single in early 1978.

With Steely Dan appearing in New York at the Beacon Theatre from Oct. 6-17, Mr. Fagen, Mr. Becker, guitarist Larry Carlton and saxophonists Tom Scott and Pete Christlieb recalled the writing, arranging and recording of the cult classic. Edited from interviews:

Donald Fagen: Walter and I wrote “Deacon Blues” in Malibu, Calif., when we lived out there. Walter would come over to my place and we’d sit at the piano. I had an idea for a chorus: If a college football team like the University of Alabama could have a grandiose name like the “Crimson Tide,” the nerds and losers should be entitled to a grandiose name as well.

Walter Becker: Donald had a house that sat on top of a sand dune with a small room with a piano. From the window, you could see the Pacific in between the other houses. “Crimson Tide” didn’t mean anything to us except the exaggerated grandiosity that’s bestowed on winners. “Deacon Blues” was the equivalent for the loser in our song.

RELATED READING

• The 65-Year-Old Hipster (10/27/13)
• How to Be an Aging Rocker (1/3/13)
• New Jersey Jazz Revolution (2/7/12)
• Rock’s Reluctant Front Man (7/8/11)

Mr. Fagen: When Walter came over, we started on the music, then started filling in more lyrics to fit the story. At that time, there had been a lineman with the Los Angeles Rams and the San Diego Chargers, Deacon Jones. We weren’t serious football fans, but Deacon Jones’s name was in the news a lot in the 1960s and early ‘70s, and we liked how it sounded. It also had two syllables, which was convenient, like “Crimson.” The name had nothing to do with Wake Forest’s Demon Deacons or any other team with a losing record. The only Deacon I was familiar with in football at the time was Deacon Jones.

Mr. Becker: Unlike a lot of other pop songwriting teams, we worked on both the music and lyrics together. It’s not words and music separately, but a single flow of thought. There’s a lot of riffing back and forth, trying to top each other until we’re both happy with the result. We’ve always had a similar conception and sense of humor.

Mr. Fagen: Also, Walter and I both have jazz backgrounds, so our models are different than many pop songwriters. With “Deacon Blues,” as with many of our other songs, we conceived of the tune as more of a big-band arrangement, with different instrumental sections contributing a specific sound at different points. We developed “Deacon Blues” in layers: first came the rhythm tracks, then vocals and finally horns.

ENLARGE

Many people have assumed the song is about a guy in the suburbs who ditches his life to become a musician. In truth, I’m not sure the guy actually achieves his dream. He might not even play the horn. It’s the fantasy life of a suburban guy from a certain subculture. Many of our songs are journalistic. But this one was more autobiographical, about our own dreams when we were growing up in different suburban communities—me in New Jersey and Walter in Westchester County.

Mr. Becker: The protagonist in “Deacon Blues” is a triple-L loser—an L-L-L Loser. It’s not so much about a guy who achieves his dream but about a broken dream of a broken man living a broken life.

Mr. Fagen: The concept of the “expanding man” that opens the song [“This is the day of the expanding man / That shape is my shade there where I used to stand”] may have been inspired by Alfred Bester’s “The Demolished Man.” Walter and I were major sci-fi fans. The guy in the song imagines himself ascending the levels of evolution, “expanding” his mind, his spiritual possibilities and his options in life.

Mr. Becker: His personal history didn’t look like much so we allowed him to explode and provided him with a map for some kind of future.

Mr. Fagen: Say a guy is living at home at his parents’ house in suburbia. One day, when he’s 31, he wakes up and decides he wants to change the way he struts his stuff.

Mr. Becker: Or he’s making a skylight for his room above the garage and when the hole is open he feels the vibes coming in and has an epiphany. Or he’s playing chess games against himself by making moves out of a book and cheating.

A mystical thing takes place and he’s suddenly aware of his surroundings and life, and starts thinking about his options. The “fine line” we use in the song [“So useless to ask me why / Throw a kiss and say goodbye / I’ll make it this time / I’m ready to cross that fine line”] is the dividing line between being a loser and winner, at least according to his own code. He’s obviously tried to cross it before, without success.

ENLARGE

Larry Carlton in 1979 PHOTO: CLAYTON CALL/REDFERNS/GETTY IMAGES

Mr. Fagen: By the mid-‘70s, we were using session players in the studio. Steely Dan became just Walter and myself. We’d handpick musicians for the sound we were looking for on each song. We tended to go through quite a few musicians looking for the results we wanted.

Sound-wise, we were influenced by the jazz albums of engineer Rudy Van Gelder, the engineer who recorded many of those legendary Prestige and Blue Note albums in the 1950s and ‘60s.

Mr. Becker: The thing about Rudy’s recording technique is how he got each instrument to sound intimate, with musicians playing close to the microphones. The way he recorded, you had the continuity of lines and the fatness of tone that made solos jump out. We wanted all of our recordings to sound that way.

Larry Carlton: When I met with Donald, he gave me demos of him singing and playing “Deacon Blues.” I transcribed the chords and built an arrangement for the rhythm section that was tight but left plenty of space for other layers—like horns and background vocals that I knew they would add later.

The song’s famous opening is my guitar and Victor Feldman’s Fender Rhodes electric piano playing the exact same chords and voicings, plus drummer Bernard Purdie’s cymbal figures. To keep the song’s rhythm-section arrangement from sounding stiff, I added guitar ad-libs here and there to create contrast after Donald’s vocal was in place. They were there to frame his voice.

Mr. Fagen: Once the rhythm track and my vocal were set, horns were added to give the song a dreamy, reedy sound. We brought in saxophonist Tom Scott to write the arrangement. We told him we wanted the horns to have a tight, romantic “Duke Ellington cloud” feel.

ENLARGE

Donald Fagen of Steely Dan at Coachella in April PHOTO: ZACH CORDNER/INVISION/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Tom Scott: When I arrived at the Village Recorder in West Los Angeles, where Donald and Walter were recording, they played me the rhythm track. Donald said he wanted to add four reeds, two trombones and a trumpet—but not a high-note trumpet. I heard right away how I’d arrange the horns—adding 9ths and 11ths and other jazz dissonances that were implied but not there.

I had about a week and a half to write arrangements for all the songs on “Aja” where they wanted horns. For “Deacon Blues,” I used a sound that mirrored Oliver Nelson’s orchestral style. I wrote in these “rubs”—two notes close together in the middle register played by the tenor and baritone saxophones. This produces a really thick, reedy sound.

Mr. Fagen: When everything was recorded—the rhythm section, the horns and the background vocals—Walter and I sat in the studio listening back and decided we needed a sax solo, someone to speak for the main character. We liked the sound of a tenor saxophonist who played in Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show band, a cat who blew like crazy when the show went to a commercial. He had this gutsy sound, but we didn’t know who it was.

ENLARGE

Walter Becker of Steely Dan at Coachella in April PHOTO: ZACH CORDNER/INVISION/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Mr. Becker: We had our producer Gary Katz ask around and he found out it was Pete Christlieb. Pete had invented any number of cool harmonic devices that made his playing sound unique. He just sounded like a take-charge soloist, a “gunner.”

Pete Christlieb: I went over to the studio one night after the Tonight Show finished taping at 6:30 p.m. When I listened on headphones to the track Tom had arranged, there was just enough space for me to play a solo.

As I listened, I realized Donald and Walter were using jazz chord changes, not the block chords of rock. This gave me a solid base for improvisation. They just told me to play what I felt. Hey, I’m a jazz musician, that’s what I do. So I listened again and recorded my first solo. We listened back and they said it was great. I recorded a second take and that’s the one they used. I was gone in a half-hour. The next thing I know I’m hearing myself in every airport bathroom in the world.

Mr. Fagen: The song’s fade-out at the end was intentional. We used it to make the end feel like a dream fading off into the night.

Mr. Becker: “Deacon Blues” was special for me. It’s the only time I remember mixing a record all day and, when the mix was done, feeling like I wanted to hear it over and over again. It was the comprehensive sound of the thing: the song itself, its character, the way the instruments sounded and the way Tom Scott’s tight horn arrangement fit in.

Mr. Fagen: One thing we did right on “Deacon Blues” and all of our records: We never tried to accommodate the mass market. We worked for ourselves and still do.

Couple treats guests to 13 different weed strains at their wedding

WEST LINN, Ore. — Guests attending John Elledge and Whitney Alexander’s August 8 wedding were surprised to find a familiar, pungent aroma coming from one of the tents—marijuana. The happy couple had set up a smoke tent with an open bar and 13 different strains of marijuana for guests to sample with the help of a budtender, according to reports.

Guests were thrilled. According to Elledge, “The oldest person in the tent was an 81-year-old woman who hadn’t smoked weed since the ‘60s. She loved it.”

Perhaps the wedding treat wasn’t that surprising given that Elledge works by day as a professional marijuana grower in California.

John Mayer, Bob Weir Talk Dead & Company; Mike Gordon Sat-In on Rehearsals

August 05, 2015

In a new interview with Billboard, John Mayer, Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart expanded on their forthcoming Dead & Company project, which will make its debut on Halloween at Madison Square Garden.
"It was a matter of who wanted to get back out on the road and keep doing it," Weir said, also noting that John Mayer's enthusiasm was the "cherry on the sundae that made this project look like a good idea." The piece revealed that Mayer has been jamming with select band members since March, even halting production on his next album to devote time to learning the Dead's catalog. "It's gratifying to see somebody discover our work and it's also fun to have someone who's cranked up about it -- a new initiate into our way of doing things," Weir said of Mayer.
Kreutzmann expanded on the selection of Mayer, saying, "When we first started playing years ago, it was with Pig Pen, and he was nothing but a blues guy. We took that and made it into the Grateful Dead and we're doing that with John. And John gets to open up to many styles and doesn't have to be locked into any one genre. And I think that's why John is excited to play with us because we offer up a whole new cookie. He's told me that he’s been at home working on our material like crazy. He'll be one of us."
Also noted in the report is that Phish bassist Mike Gordon joined the sessions briefly, before ultimately deciding to bow out. Weir noted that Gordon "has way more stuff on his plate than he can manage now" and that Oteil Burbridge was a "natural go-to."
Mayer also praised Trey Anastasio for his performance at Fare Thee Well, calling his performance "brilliant." He added, "Trey was such a tasteful player. He did something incredible to the legacy -- and didn't leave it any easier for me to pick up the baton."

Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth photographed on Aug. 31, 2007 in London.

Marc Broussely/Getty Images

• 0 
• 0 
• 0 

"I was ready to climb back aboard the bus one last time."

Upon entering Chicago's Soldier Field, the first thing that I -- and 70,000 grateful others -- were presented with was a single long-stemmed red rose. An American Beauty, dig? The Grateful Dead always had their iconography down pat. Nice opening touch...

My second impression was of the massive size of the place. The group played its last shows here in 1995, and ended with the death of Jerry Garcia shortly afterwards. Last Friday night they picked up again in this same spot, in fact opening the show with the beloved Phil Lesh/Robert Hunter song "Box of Rain," the same American Beautysong they ended that last show in ‘95 with. The band had obviously thought this whole finale deal through, as would be evident by their set lists and song choices across the whole run.

I suppose a large percentage of their audience -- the massive throngs that they attracted from the mid-80s on -- saw them mostly in places like this, huge outdoor venues (there were plenty of kids at these shows who weren’t old enough to have seen them at all). By then, I’d long left the fold, swept up in the tide of punk and beyond. But I saw them quite a lot in their 70s heyday (first show: Nassau Coliseum, March 1973 -- the same month original lead singer Pigpen checked out), back then before the darkness began creeping into their scene, both onstage and off. Recently I’ve renewed my acquaintance with their story a bit, and I was ready to climb back aboard the bus one last time.

Grateful Dead 50th Anniversary: All Our Coverage

I was attending these shows with my three dear high school buddies, now scattered across the USA. We cut our teeth together on Grateful Dead music in the early 70s, and decided to meet in Chicago for the shows and an extended hang together. We talk about life, love, youth, aging, music, art, world affairs, and our evolving hopes and desires for ourselves and our families. In some ways The Dead and their music had a hand in shaping our world-view about so many of these things, so these Chicago shows seemed the perfect confluence to meet up and continue our ever-evolving conversation.

The festivities started, for me, at Newark Airport on Thursday. It was easy to spot the Heads among the passengers on my flight. From about 17 to about 70, the spectrum was wide and, uh, high, everyone flyin’ their tie-dyes one last time -- face-painted, Merry Prankster-costume’d, Uncle Sam top-hatted, barefoot, guitar-strumming, scarves and bandanas, rings on their fingers and bells on their shoes. Sweet smelling smoke wafting from every corner. The circus was indeed in town.

Courtesy of Lee Ranaldo

Every aspect of the Grateful Dead concert experience was on display in Chicago. Freaky conversations with crazy-eyed folks from all over the country, the “too high” guy who has to be helped out of the crowd, etc. An aging blonde Cali beauty from Humboldt managed to fly in with her homegrown stash intact. These shows were too important to leave some things to chance! A nice man near us up close to the stage told us he’d been taking “huge quantities of drugs” all weekend (he was tripping at the time) and hadn’t really felt a thing -- the whole atmosphere was already so high!

Entering the arena on Friday, red rose in hand, a guy coming in beside us quipped, “When have you ever been among 70,000 people who were all this happy?" That statement stayed with me all weekend, because it was true. There were no hassles, no impatient lines, no pushing or shoving. Everyone was super-mellow and pretty much on their best, most polite behavior -- including the stadium security and ushers (also in tie-dye). The vibes were very high.

Grateful Dead Weekend in Chicago: How Many People Were Arrested for Marijuana Infractions?

The band was amazing and exactly as I remembered the Dead: brilliant and inspired one minute, dragging tempos the next, spot on then completely out of sorts. The two drummers shuffling furiously and poly-rhythmically. Vocals as always ranged from pretty nice to kinda shot in spots. Just like always. But their fans have always managed to overlook the vocal shortcomings in hopes of some exploratory instrumental brilliance, and The Dead delivered. All three shows were incredibly exuberant in every way, If certain spots dragged, they also pulled out a whole handful of very early wow-zers like "Mountains of the Moon," "New Potato Caboose" and (in Santa Clara, Calif. the previous weekend) "What’s Become of the Baby?" Crazy! Their songbook is so vast and chock full of so many fantastic classic songs that they really couldn’t go wrong.

It hadn’t occurred to me that the group would not repeat songs across the 5 nights of these shows, but of course they wouldn’t! Only TWO songs repeated over 5 long nights of music ("Cumberland Blues" on July 4 and one last what-a- long-strange-trip-it’s-beenversion of "Truckin’" to open the final second set). Amazing ...

Courtesy of Lee Ranaldo

"Box of Rain," with Phil handling the vocals, opened the first set Friday night. I thought he was singing great and it was somewhat unexpected for him to be such a strong vocal presence, unexpected and great. Next Bob Weir dropped a pretty awesome "Jack Straw" on adoring ears. His voice, like Phil’s, would come and go throughout the run, and to me it was sometimes hard to hear him sing some of his youthful-cowboy songs as a now-old man. Plus, what’s Weir doing playing a Strat?? Mostly he sang quite well, and belted out a whole range of his best songs across the evenings, from "Estimated Prophet" and "Cassidy" to "Throwing Stones" and an excellent, growling "Samson and Delilah."

Lettuce Covers Grateful Dead's Classic 'Shakedown Street' As 50th Anniversary Tribute: Listen

The "core four" -- Phil, Bob, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart, were augmented by organist Jeff Chimenti and their old touring buddy Bruce Hornsby on piano, who also capably handled some vocal turns (hey, he got "Casey Jones!"). There was obviously a massive hole to fill stage right where Garcia often stood... and there was....Trey Anastasio! I’d heard reports about how in Santa Clara he was maybe too respectful of the legacy, not stepping out enough, but I saw none of that in Chicago. He may not have realized it immediately, but everyone in the crowd was rooting for him. I mean, who else was gonna do it, really? Trey took the third song on Friday, a rocking "Bertha" and I think our collective heads kinda exploded as he sang the line “Test me test me / Why don’t you arrest me?” with a gleeful grin, and everyone in the crowd laughed and relaxed but also roared as if to say: 'Yes, motherf---er, we ARE testing YOU!’ 

The entire stadium made it clear that he’d passed his own acid test of sorts with flying colors. His vocal turns were among my favorites across the three shows, probably because they were Jerry’s songs and his voice is intact. His guitar playing took the band out into the nether regions just like the old days. He had Jerry’s feel down without being slavish or imitative, and incorporated his own sound too, honed from decades of playing with Phish. His melodic language is different from Garcia’s, perhaps a bit less lyrical, but he soared high and the band right along with him. I had to wonder what it must have been like for the original band members to be in the middle of several jams that felt SO much like the best of the old days, and then look to their right and go “...now wait a minute, who’s THAT guy over there?!?” A re-creation of the original sound and spirit of the music was happening in front of our eyes, and it was superbly done.

Grateful Dead's Fare Thee Well Run Estimated to Earn Over $55 Million

Sunday night’s last first set opened right out the gate with "China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider" and the place went nuts. But there was also a bittersweet quality all night. The Grateful Dead hadn’t played for 20 years, and this reconstituted version wasn’t built to last more than these 5 final shows. But I sensed that many in the crowd had, like me, rekindled their love for this quintessential American band and every aspect of the crazy collective trip we took with them. It was unexpected that they’d do this sort of victory lap at all, but the days in Chicago and, I expect, those in Santa Clara, were celebratory in the most exuberant sense of the world, allowing us to send them off properly, with a sense of closure. The band is now truly finished, but the music will most certainly never stop. I’m #stillhigh from the whole thing. But I’ll admit to shedding an unexpected tear or two as they played the encore, "Touch of Grey." The last live Dead song, it seemed. The actual ending had come up almost out of nowhere, just like that. But... not quite yet. "Attics Of My Life" would be the final song, and with Weir playing an lone acoustic guitar to minimal accompaniment, Trey, Phil, Bobby and Bruce raggedly harmonized those well-worn, much loved Robert Hunter Lines:

I have spent my life seeking all that's still unsung
Bent my ear to hear the tune and closed my eyes to see
When there were no strings to play, you played to me
When there was no dream of mine, you dreamed of me

Bottom line: I would not have missed this for the world! What a blast it was!! There is still nothing under the sun quite like a Grateful Dead concert. And like that they bid us goodnight, and goodbye