Dark Star (23 page)

Justin Kreutzmann:
When I was born, my dad was touring nine months out of the year and so I would never recognize him. He'd come home and I'd wonder who this guy was until he'd say, “I'm your father, man.” And I'd say, “Oh, yeah! That's right!” Because when you're a kid, little blocks of time like a month seem like forever. Annabelle Garcia and I were talking recently and rehashing the old days. In the same year, our parents both went off to tour in Europe. On the night that both our parents got home, we had almost the exact same identical dream. We both remembered the exact same night they came home from this tour when we were both four years old. I woke up to the sound of the front door opening and I ran down in my pajamas and my dad was coming home from Europe and light was coming through the trees and she remembered the exact same thing from the same tour. As a kid, you'd get used to life. For a while, he was the guy on the phone. Then all of a sudden he was back home and everything changed.

Carolyn “Mountain Girl” Garcia:
As far as Jerry was concerned, it was license to play around. Right around that time, he began to stray pretty heavily and I wasn't able to do anything about it because I had set myself apart from the group to the point where I wasn't in the loop any more. No information didn't get me anywhere. I can look back on that and say that I took my eyes away from stuff I didn't want to see or hear about. I didn't want to hear about it and I didn't want to see it.

Jerilyn Lee Brandelius:
Mountain Girl told me one time that in order to get a point across to Jerry when they were having an argument, she would have to turn her back on him. She couldn't argue with him and look him in the face because she loved him so much. When she was looking at him, she couldn't remember why she was pissed off. So she used to turn away from him to try to get her point across.

Donna Godchaux Mckay:
Keith and I and Jerry and Mountain Girl lived probably a quarter of a mile apart in Stinson Beach for a couple of years. Mountain Girl and I got to be very close friends and we would hang out. When we weren't on the road, Jerry would come over and Keith and Jerry and I would sing and play old gospel songs. Jerry would play acoustic guitar. I would sing and Keith would play the piano. We were very much into that for quite a while.

He and Mountain Girl had a very unique relationship but it was hard for her because she could never have Jerry all to herself. Of course she was very defensive because it was like all the women in the world wanted her husband. I was at her house one day and Mountain Girl said, “Now, Donna. I want you to tell me about you and him.” And I said, “Mountain Girl, I'm so pleased to be able to tell you that there never has been a thought, much less any action on my part, and I would be very surprised if there was any on Jerry's part toward one another physically or sexually. It's just never been there. Never.” She said, “Well, that's good.” I could tell something in her didn't want to believe me but she knew me well enough to know that it was the truth. I wouldn't have lied about it. To lie to my friend about it would never have even entered my mind.

Jerilyn Lee Brandelius:
Really way early in the game, I was Jerry's girlfriend. I was his girlfriend for years. On the side. I was one of his sweeties. Garcia always had sweeties. I would just hang around and wait for him till he finished at the studio. He'd drive me home, come up to my house, whatever.

Donna Godchaux Mckay:
Jerry was one of those people who learned late in life how to have real relationships. It took him a long time. Sometimes with people like that, because they do have so much natural ability and they have so much just naturally, it usurps the place that relationships should have in their life. I think there was a part of Jerry that was very inaccessible because of some of the tragedy that he had early on in his life that affected him. I think it went back to his childhood. Doesn't it for all of us?

 

Richard Loren:
I was booking the Grateful Dead and I was also booking Merl and Jerry and all of a sudden, Old and In the Way started up.

David Grisman:
We just got together one time in Jerry's living room and started playing bluegrass and Jerry said, “Wow, we ought to go play some gigs.” Me and Pete probably needed the bread. Not that we didn't enjoy playing.

Peter Rowan:
Vassar Clements, David Grisman, myself, John Kahn, and Jerry, we all had these nicknames for each other. Because I'd written “Panama Red,” I was “Red.” For some reason, Grisman was “Dog.” Garcia gave him that name. Vassar Clements was “Clem.” John Kahn was “Mule” and Jerry was “Spud Boy.” That was how we referred to each other. We wouldn't say, “Hey, Jerry.” I'd say, “Hey, Spud, how do you like this one?” It was like a world within a world. Just the way that Jerry would walk to his front door and let us in with a banjo on, we couldn't wait to get our instruments out and pick. I remember Garcia's first solo at our first gig at the Lion's Share in San Anselmo. I don't know if it was a sight gag or what but he was looking for knobs to turn on his banjo. This was before volume pedals. He was standing there turning knobs on his banjo that he did not have.

David Grisman:
Jerry wanted me to be the leader because I was always more of a disciplinarian, wanting to get things tight. Bluegrass is a tight music. It's a precision music. Pete was kind of on the other end of it.

Peter Rowan:
I look at bluegrass music like this sort of glowing ball. The point is to relax the technique around the glowing ball of feeling. Really, that was what Jerry did. He let the skin of his music settle over the burning fire of feeling. When it got fine, when it got right, and the intensity and the burning sensation of really energetic music was on, Jerry would just gasp with laughter and go, “Oh, my … heart.”

David Grisman:
You make music with people. If they're loose and you're tight, you get a little looser. They get a little tighter. We were all having a good time. It was like nobody wanted to take charge. We played these gigs and Owsley was there recording them. He had just gotten out of prison. When he left, he was the soundman of the Grateful Dead. When he came back, he was unemployed. He was trying to reattach himself to the scene and Jerry just didn't want any of it. He would go out of his way to make it hard on him to even set up his microphones. He'd bump into him. He didn't make it easy for him but he allowed him to come there. Owsley had a stereo Nagra. He followed the band around and taped everything because I guess that was the only thing that he could do. And he made some real good recordings.

Owsley Stanley:
They started doing shows and I had a Nagra tape recorder and I said to them, “If you cover the tapes, I'll do it.” I loved that music. I'd grown up in rural Virginia and that was the music I had listened to back there.

Peter Rowan:
We were playing up in Berkeley at that old club, the Keystone. We were standing on stage as usual with Old and In the Way, having a nonintroduction. Nobody had said who we were. A lot of people were out there nodding their heads and going yeah and the big yeah wanted to happen. The big yes was ready to be heard. We were ready but every time we'd approach a microphone, it would feed back. We wouldn't say anything. We'd step back and turn to the other musicians and tune a little more and then approach the microphone, thinking that it would go away. The microphone kept feeding back and I was standing next to Garcia when he nudged me. He said, “Hey, man. Look up in the sound booth. Look at Owsley.” And there was Owsley in the sound booth like Lucifer. He had patch cords around his neck. He had wires in his teeth. From way down below, we could only see this maniacal grin on his bottom-lit face. Garcia said, “He really loves his job, you know? He really loves it, man.”

Richard Loren:
It was just the band and me. There was no road crew. Bear [Owsley] took care of the equipment and recorded them. I was road managing and booking and there were the five musicians and that was it. It was unencumbering. It was just a lot of fun.

Peter Rowan:
We never stopped playing. In bluegrass, there's a sort of fanaticism about picking. It's because the techniques are so hard. From the day you all get together, basically you don't stop playing until the end of the whole thing. We'd show up at the Boarding House at four-thirty or five in the afternoon and Garcia would already be there with his carton of Camels and his roadie. Garcia would just be sitting there, puffing and playing. The only thing we could do was unpack, tune up, and get with him. He'd look up and say, “Where's it go from here?” and then we'd jump in with material. Jerry had this quality of reciprocal enthusiasm and the ability to give off a kind of a light. If you tickled his fancy, he would just come forth with so much loving energy that everyone would do better. When you played with Garcia, he could make you rise up to your full capacity. He could make you do that and I think it was reciprocal. He felt he could jump to his full capacity surrounded by the players he loved to play with. I never experienced any ego when he played. He was against any discursive criticism of the moment. He could make every player feel that whatever part they had to contribute was part of the overall experience. He was generous.

Richard Loren:
When Jerry was doing Old and In the Way, he would take the banjo on the road with him on Grateful Dead tours. I'd go into his room and he'd be practicing banjo for upcoming gigs with Old and in the Way. Because he cared. He didn't want to bomb. He wanted to play well. David Grisman's playing always inspired Jerry to play his very best.

Peter Rowan:
I remember Jerry at one gig during this supercritical phase of Old and In the Way. After every set, there were players in the band criticizing what we had done and how it wasn't this and it wasn't that. I remember going into the dressing room after a show one night. Jerry turned and looked at everybody. His eyes were glaring and he said, “No thoughts!” He was like a Zen master. No slate. We don't want to talk about it. In other words, he had a faith in things holding together of their own energy. If it was worth holding together.

Richard Loren:
I loved Old and In the Way. The thing that amazed me most about them was that they were a unique entity. They weren't bluegrass. They weren't rock 'n' roll. Jerry wasn't playing guitar. He was playing banjo. It was so unique because they played some gigs on the East Coast in front of Deadheads. They filled up massive auditoriums and whatever Jerry did, it was great. The mistakes, whatever it was, they loved it. Then right after that, we'd go play at a bluegrass festival where nobody knew Jerry. “Who's that guy with the banjo?” They knew David Grisman. They knew Peter Rowan. They knew Vassar Clements. But who was
that
guy?

Peter Rowan:
During the Old and In the Way time, Jerry would stand in the hallway and those fans of his would be standing there and he'd be looking at 'em and there was a relationship there. Once the Dead were so huge and Jerry was into his habits, I don't think he ever had that kind of contact with the audience again. Old and In the Way was the last time that Garcia could look up on a hill in Virginia and see this hallucination of a herd of buffaloes in cut-off blue jeans and T-shirts running over the top of the hill and waving at Jerry. That was what it looked like to me. That was what I saw.

David Grisman:
When Vassar Clements came into the group, he really energized the whole scene because he was a hero to the three of us and a legend in his own right. Vassar was at the height of his powers then. It was like being next to Charlie Parker in his prime. We were all in seventh heaven but particularly Jerry because unlike Pete and myself, he had never worked with “real” bluegrass musicians.

Peter Rowan:
Jerry would do a night with the Grateful Dead and then do a night with us. He loved his chops being so up that the transition was effortless. We'd be at the Dead gig hanging out backstage and the next night we'd go play at this concert hall and then he'd do two more nights with the Dead and three nights with Old and In the Way. From the Dead standpoint, I got the feeling that this was not exactly approved of. With the Dead, it was like being in the engine room of a rocket ship. It was like, “Duck or you'll get stepped on.” It was very intense. One night, I remember Garcia turning around during the Dead's set. I was standing beside his amp and he looked at me. He looked right
through
me. I was scared. It was the volume and the electricity and the energy and who knows what else in terms of chemicals and stuff. He was
fierce
. With Jerry and the Grateful Dead, I always thought it was like a sailor who had the best gig on the best ship. When he was ashore, you could have a great time with the guy but then it was, “Hey, the ship's moving, pal.” No matter how much you felt a part of his life, when the ship went, he went. The ship was the Dead. And if you weren't on that ship … you know what I mean? With the Dead, that sense of destiny from the inside must have been fierce. All I can say is they were fierce.

Dexter Johnson:
Old and In the Way did a concert at the Corvallis High School auditorium up in Oregon. There was a guy who'd seen me with all these instruments and he was a Deadhead. I didn't know about Deadheads. This was Old and In the Way. This was bluegrass. This was my dream come true—Jerry playing five-string banjo with an all-acoustic hot bluegrass band. Jerry opened the door and the guy immediately threw himself on Jerry and made an ass of himself and I was horribly embarrassed. The guy said, “I live in a dormitory and we play all your music. We only play Grateful Dead and we sing along with all the songs …” I was like, “Oh my God. What a geek!” He'd used me to get in. Jerry just kept saying, “Hey, that's
plush
, man. That's really
plush
.” I was so relieved. He didn't say, “Hey, what's this, man? Why did you bring this geek around? Get out of here.”