Dark Star (22 page)

Being a fan of the band for all these years and in and around the scene, I was still in awe of Garcia. “Are we going to hit it off? Am I going to do okay?” This was my shot. I went in there and I had everything I needed to know about the record business just nailed to the tits. Everything he could ask me, I knew I could answer it. He didn't ask me one thing about the record business. We talked about growing up in San Francisco. We talked about what kind of music experiences we'd both had. We talked about the kind of art we liked. We talked about all kinds of music. We laughed a lot, told some funny stories, and barely got into any kind of talk at all about record business stuff. He was checking me out and hanging with me. It was a thing really of vibing out if he could work with me out of the blue.

The main thing I had going for me at that time was the fact that I'd had five years working with Don Sherwood, a disc jockey in San Francisco. From the age of fifteen to twenty, I'd worked at KSFO as his production assistant. He was notorious in his lifestyle and pretty much a San Francisco icon. He'd established himself as a Peck's bad boy, an outlaw kind of guy. My credentials for working with somebody like Jerry Garcia or the Grateful Dead were bolstered by the fact that I'd survived five years with Don Sherwood.

Alan Trist:
We had our huge wall of sound. We had our own sound company. We had our own business thing. But Grateful Dead Records was not really the model that Ron Rakow had in mind. It was a compromise. Because he wanted something much more revolutionary. He wanted to have all the records sold by ice cream vendor type people on the street corners around the gigs. I remember a meeting we all had out at Sonny Heard's place in Forest Knolls where Ron laid this out on a big blackboard. Some thirty of us were sitting there, all going, “Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.”

Ron Rakow:
July Fourth, 1972, Ron Rakow Presents the “So What Papers” at Bill Kreutzmann's home with charts and graphs. The entire project was going to be funded through MESBIC, Minority Enterprise Small Business Investment Company. I got us declared a minority by the United States government, which meant that all we had to do was come up with thirteen hundred and fifty dollars and they'd give us three hundred grand. Bonnie Parker, who was their bookkeeper at that time, said, “Small business? Oh, no. No. No. I worked for an SBIC. The government …” I could see the whole meeting going down. I stood up, reached into my waistband, took out a Puma staghorn handle knife that was sharp as a fucking razor, and I cut that part of the chart out. I said, “We're not going to do that part. Don't worry.” Jerry was my ally in this. Every morning, I would go to Jerry's house in Stinson Beach. He liked my desire to have a lot of random events going on.

Richard Loren:
Ron Rakow was very very intelligent and I never trusted him from the first day I met him. I think Jerry was very impressed with his mind and with his contacts on Wall Street. He was an action man and a gambler and that appealed to Jerry. Rakow was an outlaw and I don't necessarily say that disparagingly. That was the kind of guy he was and he filled a certain need for them there.

Hal Kant:
The Warner Brothers contract was up and Rakow convinced them to start their own record company and they started two. One was Grateful Dead Records, which produced the Grateful Dead's records, and the other was Round Records, which produced other band members and their own endeavors. I told Jerry that he should focus on the fact that what Ron was doing as president of both those corporations created a terrible conflict of interest because of commingling the band's finances with these other ventures and that the band didn't own Round Records. Jerry and Rakow did. And that wasn't appropriate.

At that point, Jerry blew his top and he said words to the effect of, “I tell you what. You don't represent the record company anymore. You represent the band but not the record company. We'll get someone else to represent the record company.” A week later, he took me aside and said, “Gee Hal, I'm really sorry for blowing up like that but Ron is such a weak guy and if we confronted him with this, he'd fall apart. I knew you could handle it but I didn't think he could.” He just wanted people who would do what he wanted them to do but frequently he had trouble deciding what that was.

Donna Godchaux Mckay:
Jerry and Ron Rakow were in the process of putting together Round Records. If the band was going to go for it, it had to be a band thing. Jerry was very much for it. Rakow was very much for it. Keith and I were for it. I didn't know where the other band members stood at that time. We were having a band meeting to discuss if we were going to go through with this record company thing. We all came to this big meeting to decide whether we formed a record company or not. It was pretty much Jerry's baby. It was his and Ron Rakow's brainstorm. Jerry didn't show up to the meeting.

Jon Mcintire:
He didn't like business meetings. At one point, Garcia and I were alone and he said, “You know what I'd like you to do for me, Jon? I'd like you to be my personal representative and attend band meetings and be my voice. I don't want to be there for them.” I said, “Man, I can't do that for you. That wouldn't work.” He said, “I just can't handle it. I'm telling you, I can't take it. I can't play and do that. So you gotta do it.” It was not that I refused. I just couldn't do it. But Jerry didn't like being the leader and he didn't like taking care of business. To put it mildly.

Donna Godchaux Mckay:
If there was something that Jerry did not want to get involved in, he would just be absolutely absentee. On a certain level, Jerry was very out front and aggressive but then when it came to certain things, he was very much a coward. I called him the Cowardly Lion and I would say that to his face.

Steve Brown:
Jerry really had that outlaw side to him. That dark side. And he liked Rakow the phone screamer. Vicariously, he was getting off on it. Because Jerry was not going to get on the phone and yell and scream at people. It would have been very very rare for him to get uptight like that. He'd have to be beside himself. But here was Rakow, this wheeler-dealer. He was our Bill Graham and he was our record company weasel and Jerry would sit in that office and watch Rakow perform on the phone and just laugh and laugh, loving it.

Ron Rakow:
Not on the phone. They would bring them in. They liked it when Bill Graham and I were face-to-face. Jerry wasn't the only one. Phil loved it. Phil would sit next to Bill and Bill would lay out all the numbers for a tour and I would do them so fast in my head that Phil would only say one thing, “Bill, what the fuck are you doing? Listen to Rakow.” I was the family barracuda. Everybody knew it.

Steve Brown:
Jerry liked having this guy whom he knew he couldn't trust but he trusted. It was another one of those “thought he could get away with it” kind of deals for Jerry.

Hal Kant:
Jerry was one of the most insightful people into human nature and character I've ever known and again, that was why he could enjoy and work with people like Rakow and protect them. He wasn't fooled by them. He just dealt with them on the terms he thought worked for him.

Ron Rakow:
Clive Davis sat with the Grateful Dead and me and we had a debate. Should they sign with Clive Davis who was the man in the record business or with Ron Rakow? We were sitting around this phenomenal oval table in thirteen hand-carved Gothic chairs which themselves were a fright trip. Owsley sat down next to Clive. As Clive was trying to score the Grateful Dead, Owsley was talking in a monotone in his ear, saying, “I really have the greatest respect for you but I don't think you really fully understand what this music means to our lifestyle. For example, there are references in Janis Joplin's live album which you put out about her being a loose woman and drinking a lot …,” On and on and on he went like this gnat buzzing inside his ear. He was getting Clive crazy. Clive went on a diatribe about Miles Davis and how his relationship with Clive was a stabilizing force and the linchpin in the life of Miles Davis. Finally, I said, “Clive, if you're going to brag about how you take care of your family at a business meeting, that's ridiculous.” Miles Davis/Clive Davis. I told him Miles was his brother and everyone went nuts. Then Bob Hunter passed around a little note that said, “Shiva Devil C.” Hold it up to a mirror. Except for the “h,” it's “Clive Davis” spelled backwards. I had never sold a record in my life and I won.

Jon Mcintire:
Jerry had such a generous spirit to everyone and he would forgive so much and not judge. But all you had to do was disagree with something he felt deeply about and he would go after you ruthlessly. The first time he really dumped on me irrationally, I thought, “Oh, God, I guess I'm really close now. I've just been dumped on.” There were certain things I felt very strongly about and I would go to bat for when I felt that the Dead were being foolish. I don't remember what it was about but I do remember him jumping up out of his chair and saying, “Well, you're not in the band, man,” and he stormed out and went down to Bonnie Parker's office. He felt I was forcing my ideas too much and that he knew better and I felt that whatever it was I was standing up for was in their best interest and it was really important so it was worth a try.

But it was really devastating being dumped on by Black Cloud or Blackjack Garcia. I mean,
whoo
. He was extraordinarily powerful. After I composed myself and pulled it together, I walked down the hall and went into Bonnie's office. I think he already knew that he had just blown it way out of proportion because when I walked in the door, he looked sheepish. I kind of squatted down beside him, my knees not touching the floor, and I said, “Look, man. I know I'm not in the band. I know that. Can we just talk a little more?” And we talked rationally about what it was I was really trying to say and why I thought it wouldn't work.

Robert Greenfield:
Jerry Garcia and I spent the last night of 1972 together. He was up on stage playing at Winterland in San Francisco with the Grateful Dead while I wandered through that cold and cavernous, incredibly funky hall, wondering what the hell I was doing there. New Year's Eve with the Dead then was not yet the elaborately staged ritual it would eventually become. It was more an unofficial town meeting for long-haired freaks from up and down the coast, all drawn from their little post-hippie enclaves by what they hoped would be the transformative power of the music. Shoving forward, they fought for space right at the very front of the stage, trying hard to get closer to Jerry and the band so that when midnight came, they would not all be turned back into pumpkins and mice again.

Bill Graham:
There is no space on this planet that is better than the period of five minutes to midnight until ten minutes after midnight when the balloons come down and the lights go on and the Grateful Dead play to bring in the new year. There is no better energy. Anywhere on the planet.

Jerry Garcia (1988):
New Year's Eve was usually our worst show of the year. It's the night when everybody you've ever known is there and you can't even say hello to most of them and everybody's also partying their asses off. So everybody's drunker than shit or wired or whatever. It's NEW YEAR'S EVE! and we're working. You would love to be able to party but you can't get too fucked up because you can't play. There'd be times when all the balloons would fall on stage and then everything sounds like
“VVRRRRVRRRRRVRRRR.”
You can't hear anything. It sounds awful. I just have real mixed feelings about the New Year's Eve things. They're great parties. Everybody loves 'em but we've never played worth a shit on New Year's Eve. Just passable, you know? Passable is usually the way it goes
.

 

Joe Smith:
When I sent them to Europe, I wanted to write a book, “How We Did Europe on Five Thousand Dollars a Day.” We sent them on Air India because we had a lot of Air India due bills and we couldn't get our money out of India. I was thinking, “Holy shit. They'll turn on the whole cockpit crew. They'll get 'em crazy.”

Ron Rakow:
The Grateful Dead came back from Europe and I met them at the airport in New York. They had a four-hour layover so I got TWA to give us a private executive lounge. I had a couple hundred slides, a projector, and a screen. They loved Rakow slide shows. While they were looking at the slides, I gave them an item-by-item business report about the record industry. Essentially, I was talking to Jerry, who was the most interested.

Two days before, I had gone to Albert Grossman and I'd pumped him dry. Finally, he got mad at me. He said, “What the fuck are you doing this for? I've been to Grateful Dead shows. I don't get it.” I said, “I'm doing this because Garcia is a great guitar player.” Grossman said, “That's where you're wrong. Not only is Garcia not a great guitar player, Garcia is not a good guitar player. In fact, he can hardly play at all.” I was sitting in the dark at the slide show telling this to the entire Grateful Dead family. In the most childlike voice coming out of that dark cave, Garcia said, “Jesus, Rack. I may not be a great guitar player. I may not even be good. But Rack, I can play a
little
.”

Carolyn “Mountain Girl” Garcia:
After the trip to Europe in 1972, I decided that I wasn't going to tour with them again. In retrospect, that was a momentous decision. I had two little girls and they were going to school. After the trip to Europe in 1972, I could not make myself leave them again. Because I'd left them and it was tough coming back. They weren't sure who I was. It only took a little while for things to come back on-line but there was a moment when I could feel I was skidding a bit. For a few minutes, it was very shaky and it was a terrible feeling. I never wanted to have that happen again.