How Jerry Garcia Made The Grateful Dead America’s Favorite Band
Small chatter dies down as the members trot onto the stage, welcomed by whistles and clamorous clapping. Fumes of incense, hookah, and loud flood the crowded listeners, dressed in liquid blue t-shirts and shawls.
A simple set, accompanied by a rugged group of men, wearing thrifty clothing while sporting their respected instruments. The dark setting of the stage accompanied by a magenta spotlight on the members set the scene for the opening song.An amalgam of folk and electric sounds emit from Garcia’s strings as he plays the first notes of “Scarlet Begonias”.
Hoots, hollers, and whistles ensue.
“Well, I ain’t always right but I’ve never been wrong
Seldom turns out the way it does in a song
Once in a while you get shone the light
In the strangest of places if you look at it right”
After a harmonious 15 minutes of “Scarlet,” the instruments flow seamlessly into another hit-“Fire on the Mountain.” This 25 minutes live song-duo, a crowd favorite, is often referred to as “Scarlet Fire.”
“The flame from your stage has now spread to the floor
You gave all you had. Why you wanna give more?
The more that you give, the more it will take
To the thin line beyond which you really can’t fake”
What else is there to love about The Grateful Dead? The band has received much acclaim for its unique concoction of bluegrass, jazz, folk, reggae, and psychedelic rock. They promptly had done what has never been done before: pushing the boundaries of what music was and could be. Becoming a name during the time of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead became a counterculture band that fused a unique blend of sounds: inspired by the Beatles’ psychedelic/spacey noises and the rock n’ roll sound of the 60's.
Apart from their distinctive sound, the band’s enticing, thought provoking lyrics have been described as “both cosmic and poignant, transcendent and heartbreaking”(Benson 74). The Grateful Dead transcend the ideals of peace and harmony unto their devoted audience which aligned with and emphasized the deadhead’s desire for freedom and the avoidance of responsibility.
“Sometimes the light’s all shinin’ on me
Other times I can barely see
Lately it occurs to me what a long, strange trip it’s been”
In the above song , “Truckin’,” the band emulates an autobiographical song that describes their journey adventuring across America, and in a deeper sense: life. The 60’s were an era of traveling and doing so to find one’s place in the world. The song depicts the “ups” and “downs” of an adventurous life, but in the journey , you must ultimately, “Just keep truckin’ on.”
Jerry Garcia, thought of as the most influential and central figure of The Grateful Dead, began his career at a young age-experimenting with sounds the same way he did in his later years. Garcia was brought up by a diverse music background; his father being a retired jazz band player. Garcia recalls,“He played clarinet, saxophone, reeds, woodwinds. He was an immigrant, with his whole family, moved out in the Twenties or the Teens from Spain.” His mother, on the other hand, was of Swedish and Irish background: “All through this time there was always instruments around the house because of my father, and my mother played piano a little and I had lots and lots of abortive piano lessons, you know….” After suffering a couple tragedies early in his life(4 and 5 years old): losing his finger in a wood-chopping incident, and losing in his father in a fishing incident, Garcia continued to be supervised under his mother and grandparents. Around the age of 15, Garcia discovered marijuana and soon after, began playing around with his first treasured piece: a Danelectro guitar with a small amplifier. “I was just in heaven. Everything! I stopped everything I was doing at the time. I tuned it to an open tuning that sort of sounded right to me, and I started picking at it and playing at it.” Jerry would later go on to say that is the day he left the “straight world,” never to return.
“Spent a little time on the mountain
Spent a little time on the hill
Things went down we don’t understand
but I think in time we will”
The above song, “New Speedway Boogie,” written by Robert Hunter with music by Jerry Garcia, was written specifically in regard to a string of unfortunate events in the late 60’s: deaths at an Altamonte concert, a surge of riots, and the deaths of MLK Jr. and Bobby Kennedy. In a deeper sense, the Dead are suggesting we must handle tragedy at a distance, allotting time to comprehend that which we do not fully understand.
After spending 6 months in the army, Garcia moved to Palo Alto at 18 years old in 1960. Here he met one of his lifelong friends, Robert Hunter, who is recognized as one of The Grateful Dead’s lyricist. Influenced by the music of Chuck Berry and Ray Charles, Garcia started to mess around and further experiment with sounds-being heavily invested into rock n’ roll, then became interested into fine folk music sounds and bluegrass . “I spent about three years playing blue-grass banjo, that was my big thing and I almost forgot how to play the guitar during that period of time.” In 1964, Garcia formed a jug-band with his future Dead musical partners: Bob Weir and Rob Mckernan. Around this time, Garcia took up to try LSD for the first time, claiming it changed his life, as he began to experiment outside of the folk genre and incorporate more rock and roll. “It was Pigpen’s(Rob Mckernan’s)idea. He’d been pestering me for a while, he wanted me to start up an electric blues band.” After adding a drummer, Bill Kreutzmann, the band had a name: The Warlocks. This name didn’t stick around for long, until one day Garcia was flipping through a dictionary and found their current and ever popular name: The Grateful Dead. “I didn’t like it really, I just found it to be really powerful. Weir didn’t like it, Kreutzmann didn’t like it and nobody really wanted to hear about it. But then people started calling us that and it just started, it just got out, Grateful Dead, Grateful Dead….”
In 1966, the band released their first singles: “Stealin” and “Don’t Ease Me In.” Soon after, the band signed with Warner Bros. Records for the release of their first album, called “The Grateful Dead.” This kickstarted the Dead’s career, becoming a recognized name in San Francisco as being an offset, rock n’ roll, bluegrass, folk band full of misfits. During this time period, Garcia experimented with extended guitar improvisations, something the band would become recognized for in later years. On the side, Garcia started to be involved in multiple side projects, co-founding a psychedelic country-rock band, New Riders of the Purple Sage. Robert Hunter, Garcia’s friend from after the military, became an official lyricist for The Grateful Dead, co-writing with Garcia some of the Dead’s most popular hits.
Garcia, the lead guitarist and songwriter for The Dead, composed lyrically meaningful songs with Robert Hunter, which changed the game of music-not only can a band sound great, they can have thought-provoking lyrics as well. The duo made it into the prestigious Songwriters Hall of Fame. Garcia notes, “He(Hunter) was into the magical thing of words, definitely far out, definitely amazing. The early stuff he wrote that we tried to set to music was stiff because it wasn’t really meant to be sung. After he got further and further into it, his craft improved, and then he started going out on the road with us, coming out to see what life was like, to be able to have more of that viewpoint in the music, for the words to be more Grateful Dead words.” Some of Garcia’s and Hunter’s most notable pieces are “Touch of Grey,” “Friend of the Devil,” “Casey Jones,” “Eyes of the World,” “Ripple,” “Box of Rain,” and “Scarlet Begonias,” among others. “Hunter’s stunning lyrics are littered with aphorisms, historical easter eggs, and off-hand observations that ring true with an almost childlike innocence. Garcia provided the unforgettable melodies that made such lessons go down smooth, almost unnoticed” (Hauser). For example, the song “Ripple,” written by Garcia and Hunter, is a hippie child classic that features a seventeen syllable haiku chorus designed to guide the listener to enlightenment .
“Reach out your hand if your cup be empty
If your cup is full may it be again
Let it be known there is a fountain
That was not made by the hands of men.”
This song in particular reflects The Grateful Dead’s peaceful and ethereal outlook on life, while hinting at an underlying force of supremacy-one that controls the world. The Grateful Dead’s songs are consistently “etched with the notion that life consists of paradoxes, unanswerable questions, and the kind notion that all will be okay”(Benson 22). The Grateful Dead philosophy, beyond this song, “eventually surpassed ‘it’s cool to get high’ and spread to matters of humanity, benevolence, charity, unity, and spirituality”(Benson 73). Garcia, in particular, believed music was an energy to be channeled, and that it was the duty of the band to make the existential ideals audible. The Dead’s duty was merely to, “Snatch the music out of the Ozone and blast it out of their speakers”(Benson 95).
“Come hear Uncle John’s Band
Playing to the tide
Come on along or go alone
He’s come to take his children home”
The above Garcia/Hunter song, “Uncle John’s Band,” has numerous theories as to who Uncle John was. Whether it’s referencing Jesus or Jerry John Garcia, the song acts as an invitation to escape the trials of modern tribulations and release your troubling thoughts for a few moments. “Uncle John’s Band” is guiding the listener toward a path of salvation, while alluding to the social progress being made at the time. Taking “his children home,” is the band encouraging listeners to drive social progress during the 60's and consider their place in the universe.
Looking back on Garcia’s life, Robert Hunter reflects on Jerry’s apparent duality-balancing his carefree demeanor with the trauma accumulated during his childhood and teenage years(death of his father, joining the military, etc.). “You think Jolly Jerry, and that’s fine when he’s singing but that man had an agony he almost had to fight.” This darkness about him bled into his music, and therefore the Grateful Dead’s music. While all of the songs have lighthearted qualities(folk style and cheery voices), the lyrics delved into troubling subjects-influenced by the Dead, and more specifically, Jerry’s dark side. Hunter states, “The darkness came into his music a lot. And without it, what would the music have been?” The dichotomy of The Grateful Dead’s music, greatly influenced by Garcia, became a trademark for the band.
“We will get by
We will get by
We will get by
We will survive”
In the song, “Touch of Grey,” the band harmonizes on the battle associated with getting older: while one gains wisdom through experience, they also have to accept physical deterioration. One must accept there is always some cons(“touch of grey”) associated with an optimistic outlook. The chorus switches from “I will get by…I will survive,” to the end chorus of “We will get by… We will survive.” The narrator has come to terms that he is not alone in his struggle to see the optimism in every situation, and must continue to embrace the flaws in life. When Jerry Garcia endured a diabetic coma in July 1986, the Deadheads expressed their resilience with the mantra: “I will get by…I will survive.” When Garcia returned to the band in December, the band opened with “Touch of Grey,” to remind fans that they will in fact, “get by.”
In his book, Garcia: A Signpost to New Space, Jerry said, “Music has infinite space. You can go as far into the music as you can in a million lifetimes.” Jerry was often referred to as the band’s spiritual guide-a conduit of life energy. While Garcia would refute this, the band and audience saw clearly the representation of a higher level of thinking in Jerry. Benson writes, “Jerry had long associated the music he made with his immortality, that when his physical form went away, his song… linger on”(159). In truth, Jerry was the icon of the Grateful Dead-the cover face for the carefree, spiritualistic side of the band. That’s why when Jerry died of a heart attack on August 9th, 1995, the music stopped for a day. His ashes were cremated and sprinkled upon the San Francisco bay and the Ganges River in India- a homage to his upbringinings in California and his spirituality at the latter. Garcia’s deterioration had been recognized by his band and his fans; the only thing left to do was wait. “Garcia had made of his instruments a means for direct expression of his soul. In his last year of his life… his nimbleness became a lost thing, and the lyrics no longer arrived- the pain was audible in his music”(Silberman).
The impact the Grateful Dead had on its fans would only continue to grow, however; proving the music really never stops. Jay Blakesberg praises the band saying “They [The Grateful Dead] represent the freedom that is America, they are not just an American band, but what it means to be an American in a good way’’(Benson 106). Reaching its prominence during the counterculture movement of the 60’s, The Grateful Dead spoke to the hearts of many-defining the era of freedom, love, and spiritual awakening. The Dead are especially aware of their influence; Drummer Mickey Hart saying, “If The Grateful Dead did anything, we gave you the power. You take it home and do something with it. We didn’t do this for nothing.” The continued growth of the fanbase continues to be seen across America in today’s age. The famous “Dancing Bears” and “Steal Your Face” logos are ubiquitous among millennials and baby-boomers alike. Regular users of cocaine, marijuana, and acid hail some of the Dead’s trip songs, such as “Casey Jones,” which sings, “Ridin’ that train. High on cocaine’’- while reminiscing on a time when drug use was not as criminalized. The Grateful Dead connected with individuals; fans attest the music is being played directly for them. The band was not comprised of elitists- on the contrary, they represented the average slum dog American, full of mistakes and aspirations. Garcia in 1987: “We are in reality a group of misfits, crazy people, who have voluntarily come together to work this stuff out and do the best we can….and just struggle through life.”
“Wake now, discover that you are the song that the morning brings
But the heart has it’s seasons, it’s evenings and songs of it’s own”
In my personal favorite Grateful Dead song, “Eyes of the World,” Garcia/ Hunter ponder one’s purpose and importance in the world. The lyric, “Wake up to find out that you are the eye’s of the world,” is suggesting the importance of our individual thoughts on the world. While we as individuals may not view our thoughts as significant enough to influence the world, the narrator is asking that you trust in the vastness and complexity of your own thoughts, and thus their ability to influence society.
A question you must ask is if The Grateful Dead would be the illustrious band that they are without Garcia. What sounds would the Dead make if it weren’t for his teenage fixation on rock n’ roll, folk-style, and jazz? What would the lyrics be without the duo of Garcia and Hunter, who together produced thought-provoking, catchy, and meaningful verses? The answer is nothing. While each Dead member is significant, there’s a reason the band broke up after Jerry’s death. Garcia is the one that made The Grateful Dead what it is: America’s favorite hippie-loving, eclectic, and psychedelic band. Despite his death, however, the band lives on in Garcia’s name; “So this is where we are left with Jerry; this golden silence. It rings on and on without any hint of letup. And I expect it will be riding years from now”(Kesey). And we shall all nod our heads to Jerry: the hero behind America’s favorite band.
“And the fields are full of dancing
Full of singing and romancing
The music never stopped”
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