Paul Liberatore’s Lib at Large: Jerry Garcia on Jerry Garcia
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 And now he’s edited previously unpublished interviews with Garcia, his and others, in a new book, “Jerry on Jerry” (Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, $27.99).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
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