Dark Star (51 page)

Bob Barsotti:
The Dead were really an American phenomenon. Could that have been developed in other places? Yeah, but it would have been like taking Wild Bill's Wild West Show to Japan. I think it was Annabelle who said, “My father was a great American.” That really made a lot of sense to me. He really was a great American and he really loved America. Because as fucked up as it is, it allowed him to be who he was. That's what America is all about, man. That's what's so great about it.

David Grisman:
Kesey was crying like a baby at the end. He said some great things. For me, his comments were the most insightful and heartfelt.

Robert Greenfield:
On the Internet sometime later, the always redoubtable Ken Kesey weighed in from Oregon with a “Message to Garcia.” The message concluded in part with:

You could be a sharp-tongue popper-of-balloons shit-head when you were so inclined, you know. A real bastard. You were the sworn enemy of hot air and commercials, however righteous the cause or lucrative the product. Nobody ever heard you use that microphone as a pulpit.... And to the very end, Old Timer, you were true to that creed
....

I guess that's what I mean about a loud silence
....

It was the false notes you didn't play that kept the lead line so golden pure. It was the words you didn't sing. So this is what we are left with
,

Jerry: this golden silence. It rings on and on without any hint of let up … on and on, And I expect it will still be ringing years from now
.

Because you're still not playing false. Because you're still not singing Things Go Better With Coke
.

Ever your friend,
Keez
.

 

Celeste Lear:
I had this dream. I was on an airplane and I looked next to me and it was Jerry Garcia sitting right next to me on that airplane. I was like, “Woo, Jerry. You're Jerry Garcia!” He was like, “Yep, I'm Jerry.” He said, “Yeah, I'm on my way to a show,” and I was like, “Oh, that's so cool,” and we started talking and I told him I played guitar too and he was like, “Oh, you should come play with us tonight.” I was like, “No, no. I'm not good at all. I'd just mess you guys up,” and he was like, “No, you should just come.” Then like a flash we were on stage. All of a sudden, I was on stage with the Grateful Dead and I was like, “No, no. I can't do this.” The crowd was cheering and they handed me a white guitar. This amazing white guitar. I was freaking out and I was like, “I can't do this,” and Jerry said, “Just do it.” I was shaking and all of a sudden they started playing and I started playing with them and it flowed. It flowed. In the dream, I remember even shredding Jerry and Jerry was like, “Damn,” and then the guitar disappeared and they handed me a trombone. A trombone. I was like, “I've never played this before in my life. What are you doing?” Jerry said, “Just play it,” and I played it and I played it good.

Laird Grant:
Jerry never laughed at the Deadheads because he'd been a soulless wanderer out there on the dark highways himself. He knew what that was. He did feel that there should have been some other way for them to get off but again they were caught up in their own drug. The Dead.

Michael Walker:
I did Summer Tour '94. Me and my friend, we hit every single show. Summer Tour '94, it was like go. It was like it was on and that was what we were doing. Some tickets we mail-ordered. Some we didn't 'cause I didn't know how to get a ticket for some show in Deer Creek, Indiana. We'd drive the bus, go to a town, and we'd kick it there.

Manasha Matheson Garcia:
The world doesn't seem like the same place anymore without Jerry and without the Grateful Dead. On a real limited personal level, I experienced the beauty. Before I was with Jerry, when I was a fan in the audience, I'd walk to one section of the crowd and all of a sudden I'd feel this gracefulness come. This beauty. There would be beautiful women and men dancing and it was just amazing. I feel really blessed and honored to have participated in that.

Alan Trist:
The Deadhead Diaspora was the way Ken Kesey put it. Because what the Grateful Dead experience was, apart from the music and Jerry as a figurehead and his liquid guitar lines and the band's driving force and the dancing, and all of that, was a meeting place, a celebration, a ceremony, a ritual, a chautauqua, a gathering. Something timeless and endless and eternal. The thing that human beings do when they're in their most holy place. What the Deadhead Diaspora means is that now they're going to do the same thing, only dispersed in smaller units. It's the going on and the gathering that is the important thing. And the constant statement that there is another way.

Michael Walker:
I was shocked the morning Jerry died. I woke up to a knock on the door really really early. It was just a couple of hours after it happened and my friend's mom told me Jerry died. That was the worst way to be woken up. It was a cold foggy morning and then that news. Jerry was gone. What a way to start the day.

We drove to the Polo Field in Golden Gate Park and we hung out there for a while. Actually, everyone went to Haight Street first. We all gathered at Haight and people were drawing on the sidewalks and everything and cops were everywhere and it was like when the Dead go to a town and Deadheads are everywhere and there are cops. Then everyone walked into the park. Some people walked together and some people kind of did their own thing and walked different ways but we all made it to the park.

When I got there, there was a big circle and flowers and somewhat of a shrine but it was still early on. As the day progressed, they were sticking cameras in everyone's face who was trying to pay their respects. People were smoking bowls and drinking whiskey. I stayed for a long time and I got interviewed. Just some lady talking. I didn't even know who she was. She came around with a camera, asked me my name, where I was from, and just basic questions. Lots of people were crying and the media was taking advantage of that. They were sticking cameras in people's faces who were crying. There was lots of different music and there was a drum circle jamming and people were singing “Won't Fade Away” for just the longest time to the drum circle. To just the beat. For a long time, people sat there saying that, just crying, and the drums kept going but I think people were trying to make it a good thing. Like pick it up by making the music and trying to keep it together.

People were writing little letters to Jerry and putting them in the shrine. I took off the necklace that I had worn like forever, forever, forever at all my shows and I took that off and I laid that across a little poem I wrote and put it in the shrine and that was it. It was a time for lament but I left there kind of bummed. But I'd paid my respects and I was really glad.

Celeste Lear:
I went to a memorial at Griffith Park in L.A. and there were about a thousand people there. It was by the carousel up on the hill and people were holding candles. The whole hillside was lit up with candles and people singing and playing drums and guitar and there were people down by the altar. People were crying and I saw a lot of my friends there and everyone was like, “Can you believe it?” Like, “Oh my God, this is the end.” That day, I played myself. Just in front of my amp. I played for Jerry and I was totally flowing. It was so good.

Bob Barsotti:
Everyone was talking about the memorial. On one hand, it was Jerry the icon, the Grateful Dead, all that. On the other hand, the city was also coming from a public safety standpoint. If something didn't happen, they were afraid these kids were going to camp in Golden Gate Park and not leave for months. Phil Lesh and Cameron Sears and Dennis McNally and I started talking. Phil said, “I hope you realize that none of us will be there. None of us are going to go.” I said, “You know what, Phil? That's not a prerequisite. You guys don't have to come.”

In my mind, I was thinking that without them, why bother? But he was having a hard time with it being based on his participation and I knew these guys. If it was all up to them and the whole pressure was on them, they wouldn't do it. I said, “If you want to just sanction it and not come, then I'll set up the music and we'll do something and it will be fine.” He said, “Okay. Under those circumstances, I think it's a good idea.” I was going on the premise that they were not going to be there so I got everything all set and then I got the call from Mickey Hart's guy, Howard. “Bob, I think Mickey wants to participate.” I said, “Fantastic.” Then I got the call from Cameron Sears, their manager. “I think they all want to come down.”

I got there about midnight and nothing was working right but it didn't matter. We were all there. All the people who had been doing this for Jerry for all these years. Tom Howard and his crew started setting up the stage in the middle of the night. There was a gathering of a couple of hundred people over on the other side of the ball field who had been there for a couple of days and they saw what was going on. It was pitch-black. Three o'clock in the morning. Guys climbed up to the top of the scaffolding to get this big picture of Jerry we were using as a drop up there. When they unfurled it, the whole crowd applauded. “Yeah, Jerry!” People were taking flash pictures and the picture of Jerry was popping into light because there was no other light. All the work lights had broken. They'd set this thing up in the dark.

The next morning, people started to arrive slowly. Just before it actually started, the numbers doubled. I think over the course of the day, over a hundred thousand people came through there. Nobody stayed very long. They came, they paid their respects, they left. There was a constant crowd of somewhere around twenty or twenty-five thousand people but it was come and go. It was like a neighborhood memorial or a wake. I told the Dead, “You shouldn't perform. You should just come and talk. This is your chance to be there with your audience and put the whole thing to bed.”

We had the Grateful Dead Chinese New Year's dragon, which only comes out of the warehouse on Chinese New Year at Dead shows and it came out and it did the circle behind the mourning procession. Then we got all the drummers together. I got Deborah down there and all the band was there, all their wives, and we all picked up a drum or a cowbell. We were with some of the best drummers in the Bay Area, Michael Shrieve and Armando Peraza and all the Cuban guys and all the Talking Drum guys from Africa. Mickey Hart had arranged for them all to be there. They had their incredible drums with them and we did this procession led by Olatunji. Baba Olatunji led us through the crowd and the crowd parted to let us through.

We got up on the stage and then all the different band members and the family members spoke. Paul Kantner was there. He came up and read a poem. Wavy Gravy spoke. I got Barlow up on the stage. He was standing down in front and he said, “I don't want to be up there.” I said, “No, you're going up there. Get up there.” On stage, he said, “They asked me to come up and speak and I've only got one word and the word is ‘love.'” And he turned and walked away. It was a pretty emotional moment. Then Annabelle thanked the crowd for putting her and her sisters through college and making it so she didn't have to work at the Dairy Queen.

We had a line the entire day going up to the altar. People could go and stand in the center spot right in front of the picture of Jerry. The thing that always drew me to this business was the human energy that happened when groups got together focused on one thing in this euphoric state. For years, when I would go up on the Grateful Dead stage and stand behind the drummers, I could feel this focused energy there. It was really strong.

This day in the park when I went to that same spot on the back of the stage behind Jerry's backdrop, there was nothing there. But when I went to the altar down in front, that was where it was. Every person who wanted to pay their respects to Jerry got to go stand in Jerry's spot and feel the energy that Jerry had felt for all those years. They would go up and face the altar and it was coming in from behind them. It was like being on the rail in front of Jerry. Getting your last chance to be on the rail. Only this time, the energy wasn't focused up over your head. It was focused right on you. They'd go up and stand there for a minute and it would just overcome them.

Michael Walker:
I went back up to that one too of course and hung out. There was a microphone and they gave people a chance to go up and talk if they wanted to say anything. By turning around and seeing all the people out there gathered for one cause, you could like see what Jerry had seen whenever he played. There was a reason everyone was there. It was to go and pay their respects and show their love for Jerry.

 

Robert Greenfield:
And so it was that after Jerome John Garcia died, both the Volkswagen and Levi Strauss corporations felt compelled to take out full-page ads to note his passing in the Jerry Garcia memorial issue of
Rolling Stone
magazine. Although Jerry himself had done a folksy little Levi's 501 radio ad back in the eighties, did the folks at Levi Strauss and Company really consider him a member of their corporate family? As for Volkswagen buses, the man never drove one.

Much like the snowstorm of media coverage after his death (including tabloid headlines like
I HAD JERRY GARCIA'S LOVE CHILD
and
WE SOLD JERRY GARCIA DEADLY DRUG COCKTAIL
at which he himself would have roared with laughter), the ads had far more to do with the legend Jerry had become than the person he had always been.