Dark Star (30 page)

Carolyn “Mountain Girl” Garcia:
I guess it was the winter of '81 when Jerry and I got married at Oakland Auditorium. I had decided that I would just talk to him on birthdays and Christmases and holidays and try to do it that way. That almost worked out and actually kept the thing going. We came down for Christmas and knew that he was playing with dangerous stuff. I realized that he could die at any minute. I said, “Look, you know you're going to probably croak here or something bad might happen. I would feel better if we were married.” The reason we hadn't gotten married before then was that we were still both married to our previous spouses. We also had always both thought that we didn't need a piece of legal paper to maintain our family and our relationship. He said, “You know, I'd feel better, too.” I said, “Well, do you want to get married?” He said, “Yeah, you know, I've been thinking about it for a really long time.” And I said, “Gee, me too.”

We still loved each other very much but now it was through this incredible series of impediments. I had taken the high moral ground and couldn't come back because I couldn't do what he was doing. And he couldn't step out of what he was doing because by now he was really into it. I had really wanted to get married for so long for the sake of the kids and because I loved him so much even though we were so far apart. I thought if we got married, that was going to do it and we'd move back in together. I was really hoping that this would be the thing that would set us back on the road to his recovery from the drugs but he said, “You know, if we get married, I'm still not sure if I want to live with you.” I said, “Well, okay, dear, I understand. You certainly can have all the space you need.” I was saying all these platitudinous things.

We got married in Oakland Auditorium on New Year's Eve in his dressing room. Before Jerry went out and played that night, he was warming up and he played this thing on the guitar for me, and it was so beautiful that it would have melted a stone. It was glorious and just left us all in tears. A longtime friend who'd become a Buddhist monk did the whole ceremony. In
Tibetan
. I kept laughing all the way through because it was completely incomprehensible. We did the ceremony during the break. It was quick but it was sweet. The kids and I were all back there hugging and talking and it was really nice and then he went out and played and then they did the midnight thing.

When the shows were over, we went in different directions and there was a snowstorm and a terrible flood. We were staying at Hepburn Heights with Jerry and they closed all the freeways, the Golden Gate Bridge, the tunnel, and the Richmond Bridge, and I couldn't get home to Oregon. Jerry was saying, “I don't think you should move back down here quite just yet. Maybe this spring but not right now. Not right now, you know?”

The flood was so severe that it gave me four or five days there at Hepburn Heights. Things were so strange and uncomfortable that I couldn't wait to get out of there. I remember jumping up and saying, “Oh, it's time to go. I've got to go,” and I was thinking, “Poor Jerry, he has built this for himself and it's not very nice.” Back we went to Oregon. Jerry would come through on tour or we would go down there to see him but we didn't see very much of him at all. Jerry and I got married but that didn't change a goddamn thing. We got married and it didn't make a damned bit of difference.

 

Rock Scully:
Pete Townshend called me and asked for the Grateful Dead to come bail them out of their European tour when the Who were breaking up. Pete wanted us to be the co-band with them and do London and Germany. It was such a great opportunity. We were going to go to one TV station in West Germany and play this rock TV show that went to thirty-two countries. It was like doing a whole tour of Europe in one city and with the Who. Garcia was very reluctant to go because there were no drugs and he was strung out and he didn't know what to do about that. I had to go to the rest of the band and tell them how Jerry was going to be covered. I had to have Pete call back and say he would have somebody there at the airport to meet Jerry and we didn't have to worry about it. There would be something there for him the moment he arrived. Pete was already clean but he knew where Jerry was coming from. Then we had to convince Jerry. First, I had to convince all the rest of the band that this would be a really good trip to do and then in a band meeting, everybody went, “Jerry, we've got to do this,” and then Jerry for it.

Pete Townshend:
I think it was in Germany that Jerry said to me, “I know none of this stuff is academic enough for you. Do you want to play some Wagner?” I said, “Come on, let's try.
Götterdämmerung?
What key is it in? Let's go for it.”

Richard Loren:
Jerry and I were still very very close but he was doing heroin and I wasn't. Then Rock Scully started coming into the picture. He was not helping Jerry. The last thing Jerry needed was somebody to encourage him to take drugs. Rock was the provider of that need.

Rock Scully:
We got started independently. I don't think it was about the same time. Personally, we had no idea what it was when it came up on us. We figured it was an opiate but we didn't know just how pure it was. It was a smokable thing. Jerry never did shoot it. Me neither. I never shot. We've all known junkies who shoot up. Sticking a needle in your arm is fucking yourself basically. You're into that whole ritual and you're fucking yourself. Women are no longer important and relationships don't matter and it's a very isolating thing. Doing any kind of opiate or any kind of drug secretly is isolating. You end up in a bag you don't want to be in. For Jerry, who was so outgoing, to end up that way was just really depressing. That was what was going on. I was becoming the middleman between the band and Jerry. Because he didn't want to see anybody. So if they wanted Jerry's opinion on something, I had to go and ask him. It was a very tough place. I was between the rock and a hard place. It was impossible for me.

Steve Brown:
Steve Parish was locked in as Jerry's guy. He took care of his equipment personally and subsequently he took care of Jerry personally as I did actually for a little while there, too. We shared that responsibility. We'd be out shopping at Marin Surplus getting Jerry's latest wardrobe of Levi's and corduroy pants and T-shirts. Black and blue. Although I'd throw in a few green ones occasionally just to keep him off balance. Jerry didn't shop for himself and I don't recall too many stories of him ever going to the mall. He'd been getting things taken care of for him pretty much from the sixties on. Having people procure for him and I'm not just talking about drugs. We're talking about taking care of his life. From renting houses to renting cars to paying bills. Even to the tools that he used in his trade. He had that all taken care of for him and delivered and brought up to him. He was pretty much locked into being catered to. Hanging around with other people in the business who had habits seemed to make it feel okay for him to indulge, too. That was the other part of the problem.

Richard Loren:
What happened quite frankly was that I was basically aced out of the picture. I was doing all the work and during the night when I wasn't working, the Rock Scullys and the others were telling the band what a crook I was. On the Europe tour they did in March '81, I got fired. One night, five in the morning, coke-fueled. “Boom, boom, boom” on my door. “Wake up.” I woke up and Bill Kreutzmann walked into my room. He grabbed me by the collar, slammed me up against the wall, accused me of stealing from the band and this, that, and the other thing, and fired me. When they returned from the tour, they apologized and rehired me. Six months later, I resigned. I had never been in it for the money. I was in it because of Jerry. I would have done anything for him because I loved him more than I loved anything. I loved him because he was such an almost perfect person. He was unpretentious. He was compassionate. He was humble. In a way, he was a Buddha.

Steve Brown:
Jerry was very much a catered-to person. Which was not to say that he wouldn't stop off at times at either the Whole Foods on Miller Avenue in Mill Valley or subsequently at the 7-Eleven, depending on which mood was hitting him at that moment. Sightings at both places in the same day were known to have occurred. In the daytime, you'd see him at lunch eating organic. After the gig, you'd see him at night at the 7-Eleven with the Häagen-Dazs and a chili dog. That was him exactly. The guy who would give you the black and the white, the yin and the yang. He could be the pure guy going for the coolest hippest thing to be. He could be a slob like all of us, going for the really easy, not-good-for-you life. He thought he could get away with having both. He was an artist at it. To me, it's pretty much how the true American really is. We have these high goals of the lofty idealistic way that things should be and we go in that direction and he did, too. But when reality sets in, there are a lot of bad things and cheesiness and funkiness.

Sat Santokh Singh Khalsa:
We used to have arguments about why he was destroying himself. He used to argue in a way that I could never really penetrate, “Why live?” Jerry's worst period was when he lived downstairs from Rock. At that time, I lived right down the street. I saw him many times in Hepburn Heights. Jerry was living like a badger. Rock had the upstairs and that was when Nicki was with him and their two girls.

Sage Scully:
Jerry could also be a bear. He could be very scary. He scared me a lot also. Because he was moody. He never barked at me but he had a bark. He definitely had a bark. My room was right above his and I used to listen to him try to go to bed. I used to like taking these hangers and I'd write little notes on them and stick them out my window and lower them to him if Rock was down there or I'd go get a broom.

Sue Swanson:
Mountain Girl said to me that they had a conversation where Jerry said, “Isn't it weird that I would pick the one drug that you absolutely will not tolerate?” They had a Christmas up there. After Christmas, Annabelle said to MG, “God, wouldn't it have been nice if Dad had been here?” Dad had been there.

Steve Brown:
By the middle part of the eighties, it was getting funky. I didn't enjoy being around and hanging out during that period. Jerry was not physically healthy and there was a certain attitude of protection that was starting to be reinforced more strongly by the palace guards who were sensitive to his condition and trying not to let it be too well known or too well exposed to outside people. All of a sudden, it was, “Why do you want to see him?” Then there was the kind of shallow pleasantness that wasn't the real Jerry. It was like he was struggling with something and so he smiled at you with this kind of “Leave me alone, just be kind” smile. “I'm acknowledging you and being nice to you but that's all I can afford.” There was a gulf that didn't used to be there. Before, there was a lot of talking and laughing and it was easy and free. Now it was like if you had to say something, you better make it cool and if you didn't need to say something, you better not even say anything. You better not even be there. So it felt a lot different.

John Perry Barlow:
At one point in 1984, I went over to Hepburn Heights. I don't think anybody in the scene besides possibly Steve Parish had been there in a year and a half or maybe two years. Nobody dared go in there. But being how I am, a willful fool for treading where angels won't go, I went in there just to see what was going on and I spent the afternoon with Garcia. He was in terrible shape. Finally I said, “Sometimes I wish you'd flat die so we can all mourn you and get it out of our system.” He gave me this incredibly dark look and he got up and he padded down the hall. He went into his bedroom, closed the door, and put a
DO NOT DISTURB
sign on it.

Jon Mcintire:
One time, again when I wasn't manager, I was living in St. Louis and I came back to California and I called Jerry at home and said, “I'd like to come by and see you and talk to you.” He said, “Great, come on over.” So I went over and it was the first time we had basically seen one another since he had started doing a lot of heroin. He opened the door and said to me, “I've been a stone fuckin' junkie for the last two years. What you been doin'?” Those were his first words to me. In other words, “Let's pop this bubble right now.” He was not at all judgmental. He wasn't saying, “I regret it.” He was just saying, “Here's who I am now. Who are you now? What's been happening?” He knew I was going to know this. So let's just bypass the bullshit and go right to the heart of the matter and really talk about what was happening with ourselves in life. That was what he meant. I was there to be intimate. I was there to talk turkey. I wasn't there to be judgmental or to do an intervention or anything like that.

Justin Kreutzmann:
He called that his vacation. His new way to take a vacation for a while. It was a long vacation. Maybe it finally got to him or maybe he just got tired. He described it as just trying to take a break the only way he knew that he could. Because in his mind, with all the pressure from all the overhead, he couldn't stop playing. It must have been a fantastic amount of pressure to have. To be supporting that many people and have everything be so dependent that when he blew a tour, they basically were in financial chaos. That would really bum me out or piss me off. I don't know how you would react to that or towards those people. You'd either probably feel really sorry for them or you'd want them to all fuck off because you were tired of having to be the guy to support everybody. But I don't know.