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  Praise for Blair Jackson and Garcia

  “A fascinating and comprehensive biography.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “A definitive portrait.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “A well researched and solidly written biography of one of the most important musicians in American history.”

  —The Newark Star-Ledger

  “Garcia is distinguished by a passion for and an intelligence about the music . . . pioneering work.”

  —The Toronto Globe and Mail

  “Thoroughly researched . . . spellbinding.”

  —The Philadelphia Inquirer

  “Insightful . . . a moving tribute.”

  —Acoustic Guitar

  “An intelligently written biography.”

  —Wisconsin State Journal

  “A fascinating look at one of the more complex and influential personalities to emerge from the 1960s maelstrom.”

  —Minneapolis Star Tribune

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  GARCIA

  Blair Jackson has written about Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead for nearly thirty years. From 1984 to 1993, Jackson and his wife, Regan McMahon, published the Dead fanzine The Golden Road in their spare time. Jackson’s books include Grateful Dead: The Music That Never Stopped, and Goin’ Down the Road: A Grateful Dead Traveling Companion. He currently works as executive editor of the professional audio trade magazine Mix. He lives with his wife and two children in Oakland, California.

  BLAIR JACKSON

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

  Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182–190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

  First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. 1999

  Published in Penguin Books 2000

  Copyright © Blair Jackson, 1999

  All rights reserved

  Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint excerpts from the following works:

  Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc.: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe. Copyright © 1968 and copyright renewed © 1996 by Tom Wolfe. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc.

  Ice Nine Publishing Company: Lyrics by Robert Hunter “The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion)” © 1967 Ice Nine Publishing Company. “Dark Star” and “That’s It for the Other One” © 1968 Ice Nine Publishing Company. “China Cat Sunflower,” “Cosmic Charlie,” “Doin’ That Rag,” “Mountains of the Moon,” “Rosemary,” and “What’s Become of the Baby” © 1969 Ice Nine Publishing Company. “Attics of My Life,” “Black Peter,” “Box of Rain,” “Candyman,” “Casey Jones,” “Cumberland Blues,” “Dire Wolf,” “New Speedway Boogie,” “Ripple,” “Truckin’,” and “Uncle John’s Band” © 1970 Ice Nine Publishing Company. “Bird Song,” “Deal,” “Loser,” “Sugaree,” “To Lay Me Down,” “Wharf Rat,” and “The Wheel” © 1971 Ice Nine Publishing Company. “Brown-Eyed Women” © 1972 Ice Nine Publishing Company. “Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo” and “Stella Blue” © 1973 Ice Nine Publishing Company. “Scarlet Begonias” and “Ship of Fools” © 1974 Ice Nine Publishing Company. “Blues for Allah,” “Comes a Time,” “Crazy Fingers,” “Franklin’s Tower,” “Help on the Way,” and “Mission in the Rain” © 1975 Ice Nine Publishing Company. “Cats Under the Stars,” “Lady with a Fan,” “Palm Sunday,” “Reuben and Cherise,” and “Terrapin Station,” © 1977 Ice Nine Publishing Company. “Fire on the Mountain” and “Stagger Lee” © 1978 Ice Nine Publishing Company. “Althea” © 1980 Ice Nine publishing Company. “Midnight Getaway” and “Run for the Roses” © 1982 Ice Nine Publishing Company. “Black Muddy River” and “Touch of Grey” © 1987 Ice Nine Publishing Company. “Built to Last,” “Foolish Heart,” and “Standing on the Moon” © 1989 Ice Nine Publishing Company. “Days Between,” “Lazy River Road,” and “Liberty” © 1993 Ice Nine Publishing Company. “Down the Road” © 1996 Ice Nine Publishing Company. Excerpts from Dead Heads newsletter. By permission of Ice Nine Publishing Company.

  Ram’s Horn Music: “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” by Bob Dylan. Copyright © 1973, 1974 by Ram’s Horn Music. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Reprinted by permission of Ram’s Horn Music.

  Sony/ATV Music Publishing: “Sing Me Back Home” by Merle Haggard. Copyright © 1967 Sony/ATV Songs LLC. (renewed). All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing, Nashville, Tennessee.

  Warner Bros. Publications U.S. Inc.: “Morning Dew” by Bonnie Dobson and Tim Rose. © 1967, 1968 (renewed) Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp. “Dear Mr. Fantasy” by Steve Winwood, Chris Wood, and Jim Capaldi. © 1968 (renewed) F.S. Music Ltd. and Island Music Ltd. All rights o/b/o F.S. Music Ltd. administered by Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp. All rights o/b/o Island Music Ltd. administered by Island Music Inc. “Like a Road Leading Home” by Don Nix and Dan Penn. © 1971 Irving Music, Inc., Deerwood Music and Dan Penn Music. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Warner Bros. Publications U.S. Inc., Miami, Florida.

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE HARDCOVER EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  Jackson, Blair.

  Garcia: an American life/Blair Jackson.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-66406-3

  1. Garcia, Jerry, 1942–1995. 2. Rock musicians—United States—Biography.

  3. Grateful Dead (Musical Group). I. Title.

  ML419.G36J33 1999

  782.42166’092—dc21 99–28775

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This book is dedicate with love to my wonderful children.

  Kyle and Hayley.

  “Without love in the dream it will never come true.”

  CONTENTS

  Prologue: A Hopeful Candle Flickers

  Chapter 1: Another Time’s Forgotten Space

  Chapter 2: Recall the Days That Still Are to Come

  Chapter 3: There Were Days Between

  Chapter 4: I Can’t Come Down, I’ve Been Set Free

  Chapter 5: Can YOU Pass the Acid Test?

  Chapter 6: In the Book of Love’s Own Dream

  Chapter 7: Come Join the Party Every Day

  Chapter 8: Poised for Flight, Wings Spread Bright

  Chapter 9: Where Is the Child Who Played with the Sunshine?

  Chapter 10: Listen to the River Sing Sweet Songs

  Chapter 11: The Wheel Is Turning

  Chapter 12: Wait Until That Deal Come ’Round

  Chapter 13: Line Up a Long Shot, Maybe Try It Two Times

  Chapter 14: Beneath the Sweet Calm Face of the Sea

  Chapter 15: Some Rise, Some Fall, Some Climb . . .

  Chapter 16: The Desert Stars Are Bright Tonight

  Chapter 17: This Darkness Got to Give

  Chapter 18: If Mercy’s in Business, I Wish It for You

  Chapter 19: Dawn Is Breaking Everywhere

  Chapter 20: Show Me Something
Built to Last

  Chapter 21: So Many Roads to Ease My Soul

  Chapter 22: A Broken Angel Sings from a Guitar

  Chapter 23: There’s Nothing You Can Hold for Very Long

  Epilogue: Sleep in the Stars

  Acknowledgments

  Bibliography

  JG on CD: A Critical Discography

  Index

  Photographs

  PROLOGUE

  A Hopeful Candle Flickers

  was walking across the little parking lot outside the Grateful Dead’s San Rafael, California, headquarters on a beautiful late-January morning in 1993 when Jerry Garcia came roaring into the lot in his giant dark gray BMW. The tires screeched and the car came to an abrupt halt at an odd angle, blocking three other cars. Garcia bounded out of the driver’s seat with a big smile on his face, then ran around to the other side of the car to assist his passenger, an attractive woman who was also beaming. He took her by the hand and came over to me, saying, “You’ve got to meet Barbara Meier!”

  Now, this was an unexpected development. I had interviewed Garcia many times over the years—that morning would be our ninth since 1981—and we’d chatted on a number of other occasions in more casual circumstances at the Dead office and at the band’s recording studio, Club Front. In all that time, I’d never seen him quite so giddy, and he’d certainly never introduced me to a girlfriend before.

  As the three of us walked up the back stairs and into the kitchen of the century-old house that served as the band’s main office, Garcia protectively put his arm around Barbara and breathlessly told me the tale of how they had been lovers when they were teenagers, but her parents had forced her to break up with him. “I guess they knew I was trouble,” he said with mock seriousness, followed by a little laugh. Barbara and Jerry had reconnected recently and were now, obviously, quite in love.

  In the kitchen and surrounding office rooms, Garcia introduced Barbara to every person he saw, repeating bits of the marvelous story of their reacquaintance thirty years after their young love had been cruelly snuffed out. In no time the kitchen was crowded with people from the upstairs offices who’d come down to see what all the laughter and gaiety was about. Visits from Garcia, while not unusual, were rarely this boisterous, and his good mood was clearly infectious. Several others on hand, all of whom knew Garcia better than I did, also seemed stunned by the sight of him holding court in the kitchen, laughing and being so openly affectionate with Barbara.

  These were heady times, particularly in contrast to the dark days the previous August, when Garcia collapsed from exhaustion and serious heart and lung problems just a few days after his fiftieth birthday. Coming almost exactly six years after a diabetic coma nearly killed him, the episode was another omen, another reminder of the preciousness of life.

  As he had after his 1986 meltdown, Garcia took the warning seriously for a while. He became a strict vegetarian, adopted a strenuous workout regimen, lost sixty pounds, stopped using hard drugs and cut back his cigarette habit. His guitar playing and singing improved along with his health, and at the Dead’s December 1992 concerts his fans couldn’t help but be encouraged by his ebullient demeanor onstage.

  So things were looking good that morning in January 1993. Once the commotion in the kitchen had died down a bit, Garcia and I adjourned to a nearby office for our interview, which was to be about Pigpen, his beloved bandmate, who had died two decades earlier, at age twenty-seven, of liver disease aggravated by years of drinking rotgut wine. Garcia had enthusiastically agreed to share his memories of Pigpen for an article I was writing, and when Jerry was excited about anything, he was an interviewer’s dream—the stories poured out in rich detail and were punctuated by his frequent chuckles and guffaws. His eyes twinkled, and you could feel the intensity of the memories as the anecdotes flowed from him.

  That morning, once we were alone, he still wanted to talk about Barbara, so we did for a while longer. Finally, though, it was Garcia who got the ball rolling, saying, “Okay, man, let’s talk about Pigpen.” He leaned forward in his chair as I explained my approach to the article, which I hoped would be an upbeat memoir of the fallen singer as told by his friends. “Here’s my dilemma, Jerry,” I said. “I want to write a positive story about Pigpen, but it seems as though no matter what I say in the main body of the article, it has to end in tragedy because that’s how his life ended.”

  Without any hesitation Garcia replied, “Yeah, yeah—gotcha. I know exactly what you mean. But here’s the thing about Pigpen: He was not a tragic figure. The fact that he died was a tragedy, but he wasn’t tragic in the sense of being a doomed personality—brooding and suicidal, or any of that. He was more like a pixie; like an elf. And those of us who knew him and loved him got so much from him during the time he was with us, we can’t be too sad about him not being around anymore. And of course he’ll always be with us, just like anyone who’s been important in your life and then moves on.”

  And so it is with Jerry Garcia’s story. It must end in tragedy—a life cut short with devastating suddenness. But in the words of Bob Bralove, one of the Grateful Dead’s technical wizards, “Jerry isn’t a tragic figure because his accomplishments are so vast that it’s hard to look at him as anything other than an incredibly positive force. He changed lives; he changed my life. His death may be a tragedy, but his death in no way overpowers his life. He died young, but he did so much in his time here.”

  Indeed, Garcia packed a lot of living into his fifty-three years. He was a perennial noncomformist and outsider, always fording unpredictable tributaries that branched off the American mainstream. Had he been born ten years earlier, he almost certainly would have become a beatnik; as it was he rode in the wake of the Beat wave and learned more than a few life lessons from reading Kerouac, Ginsberg and other rebels and malcontents. In his late-teen and early-adult years Jerry learned that he wasn’t really cut out for school, the military, marriage, fatherhood or steady employment—all traditional avenues to the American dream. But he had a passion for playing music, and that love would eventually take him to the pinnacle of American celebrity. Along the way, he and his friends helped shape a part of America in their own image by obliterating traditional notions of freedom and liberty, and by questioning and ignoring the mores and social structures that had evolved through generations since colonial times. The hippie counterculture of the late ’60s would have flowered without the Grateful Dead, but Garcia and the Dead came to symbolize the best and worst aspects of that libertine movement, from the communal spirit and healthy disrespect for the capitalist paradigm to the dangerous hedonism and unconscious self-absorption.

  That Garcia became a true icon—and likely will remain so for decades, if not centuries, to come—is both surprising and ironic. Surprising because he had few of the traits we normally associate with entertainment stars. Ironic because he constantly tried to disavow his celebrity, insisting that he was just a guy who played guitar and wrote and sang songs. Which is why people loved him: There were flashier guitarists and better singers, but there was something about the way he played and sang that affected hundreds of thousands of people deeply enough that they wanted to hear him as often as they could. His fans offered him the ultimate gift: total artistic freedom. They supported every move he ever made and followed him down every twisting, turning road, every strange left turn, every cul-de-sac and lonely byway.

  No modern popular musician ever worked so deeply in so many different styles as Garcia did. A true musical omnivore, he was equally enthralled playing old English ballads or completely formless improvised pieces. He thought nothing of playing Chuck Berry and Hoagy Carmichael songs in the same set, or of juxtaposing a Miles Davis tune with some ageless sea chantey. His guitar style was the sum of a million influences, yet it was distinctive enough that his playing was instantly recognizable, no matter what the genre. There was nothing he liked more than playing music in a band in front of dancing people. He didn’t care if the group was acoustic or electric or
if the audience was large or small—it was all about hearts and souls coming together through music; ecstatic communion and transformative epiphanies. “Magic is what we do,” he once said of the Grateful Dead. “Music is how we do it.”

  He wrote melodies to another man’s words and rarely spoke onstage, yet the people who came to see him play night after night felt they knew him intimately, as one knows a family member. A few put him on a pedestal and believed he was a god. But he had the frailties and the life of pain that are an unmistakable part of mortal territory.

  He was well-read and street-smart; quick, funny and articulate when he wanted to be; hipster and prankster, skeptic and optimist, pragmatist and dreamer, philosopher and fool. A keen and voracious intellect, he was interested in almost everything, could speak knowledgeably about most things, yet he made his most profound statements with his fingers.

  “I’ve prefaced interviews in the past by saying that I can’t really do anything but lie, all talking is lying, and I’m lying now,” he said in 1975. “You can go hear me play—that’s me, that’s what I have to say; that’s the form my thoughts have taken, so I haven’t put that much thought into really communicating verbally. It’s all open to misinterpretation, just like the songs are.”

  And so is a life as portrayed in a book. The biographer chooses what to emphasize and what to ignore, chooses the voices that tell the tale, and interprets events that were lived by others. Objectivity is a fiction; writing is as subjective as listening to music. And writing a biography is by definition presumptuous.

  I should state up front that I am not a dispassionate observer when it comes to Garcia and the Grateful Dead. I am a fan; a Deadhead. I first saw the band in the spring of 1970 when I was a junior in high school, and over the next twenty-five years I went to more than 350 Dead concerts, and dozens more by Garcia’s various solo groups. I’ve been writing about the band since I saw my first show, though as often as not trying to explain the ineffable and mysterious qualities that make them so special ends up being an exercise in futility—like capturing lightning in a bottle. I suppose I persisted through the years because I felt that Garcia and the Dead were badly misunderstood and had never earned the sort of critical respect I always felt they deserved. Instead, they were routinely dismissed as lazy, aimless hippies playing for an army of burnouts and would-be flower children bent on recapturing the lost spirit of the ’60s. But take away the colorful hippie following and the counterculture baggage that is so much a part of their history, and what’s left is one of the most extraordinarily creative ensembles in twentieth-century music.