Deadheads

August 15 - 22, 1 9 9 6 [Music Reviews]

Life after Jerry

Dead Nation one year later
by Gary Susman

Celebrating the fat man

A year ago August 9, Jerry Garcia died at age 53, ending the 30-year reign of the Grateful Dead as rock's top touring attraction. Not since the untimely deaths of John Lennon or Elvis Presley had there been such grief-stricken reactions among fans -- fans who once numbered a busload of hippies but had grown to encompass millions in all walks of life, from the president and vice-president of the US down to veggie-burrito vendors whose only home may have been in the parking lot at Dead concerts.
Yet as the mourning among Deadheads continues, the show goes on.
Most of the action takes place where it always did at Dead concerts: among the Deadheads themselves. It's not unlike the momentum-driven activity of Elvis fans after his death. (Asked what would happen now that Elvis was gone, the King's manager, Colonel Tom Parker, reportedly replied, "Why, nothin', son. It's just like when he was in the Army.") These days, for Deadheads, it's just like when a diabetic coma forced Garcia off the road in 1986. Sales of official Dead merchandise and music continue apace. Deadheads in search of the ideal version of "Dark Star" swap tapes of hundreds of Dead concerts, all recorded with the band's permission over the years. They chat and argue and post announcements over the Internet. Most of all, they're still doing what they do best: gathering and grooving, either at shows by Dead alumni -- notably, this summer's Furthur tour, featuring the new bands of Dead drummer Mickey Hart and guitarist Bob Weir -- or at shows by "fellow travelers," bands who considered the Dead contemporaries (the Allman Brothers, Santana) or mentors (Phish, Blues Traveler) and share the Dead's long-jamming, tie-dyed aesthetic and their spirit of fellowship.
Despite -- or maybe because of -- their phenomenal success as road warriors, the Grateful Dead had few hit records. The concerts were the central sacrament of the Deadhead experience. "A Grateful Dead concert is very similar to a Pentecostal worship service," says Rob Weiner, a librarian at North Texas State University who is writing a bibliography for Dead scholars and has been a Deadhead for 11 years. "Only there's no dogma preached. But people are swept up by the spirit of the music. The similarity is uncanny, as far as the structure."
That sense of transport and transcendence, which made some of the initiates regard bandleader Garcia as a messianic figure, is hard for Deadheads to explain to those who never attended the concerts or have heard the Dead's music only on studio or live recordings. You were either "on the bus" or you weren't. (The "bus" is a reference both to the tour followers and to Furthur, the bus used during Ken Kesey's legendary Acid Tests, featuring the then-embryonic Dead.)
The Dead seemed likely to spend their career as a cult phenomenon, playing 10,000-seat arenas rather than 80,000-seat stadiums. Tens of thousands would follow the band around to a handful of concerts each summer, but Dennis McNally, the band's publicist, estimates that only about 3000 of the most dedicated Deadheads followed the band full-time.
Then, in 1987, the 22-year-old band had its first hit single, "Touch of Grey," and its first double-platinum album, In the Dark. A second generation of fans discovered the band (literally, in some cases, as Deadheads started bringing their kids). The college crowd, who also began to form and listen to "fellow traveler" bands, helped make the Dead the top concert draw of the '90s. Some longtime fans regarded the newcomers with scorn, especially during the final, ill-fated '95 tour, when aggressive young gatecrashers caused numerous injuries. "It was a real tough tour for the band," recalls veteran Deadhead Joe Iudice, "and I think it hit Garcia hard. He hated being in the spotlight, and he knew that the scene was way out of control because of kids who came to the shows for the good time, not the music." By "good time," he means "nitrous [oxide] tanks, kids partying on top of their cars, lost dogs everywhere. The older generations of heads never had to deal with that in years past. The parking-lot scene turned into a frat party. And these kids ruined it for the rest of us who were there for the music. All the other stuff that went along with touring was the icing on the cake. The music always came first."
Still, the Dead seemed poised to weather the '95 disasters, just as they had weathered other crises over their long career, including a death-by-drugs rate for keyboardists (from Pigpen in 1973 to Brent Mydland in 1990) that made the Spinal Tap drummer's chair seem safe by comparison. But when Garcia died, just eight days after his 53rd birthday, the band members decided to throw in the towel.
Some Deadheads point out that the band was bigger than Garcia. "While he was the guitarist extraordinaire, half the voice, and arguably the `leader of the band,' the band was a whole lot bigger than the fat man," says David Dranginis, 36, who has seen 30 Dead shows over 15 years. "If they weren't, then the Jerry Garcia Band [a solo project] would have filled stadiums." Opines Rob Weiner, "If Bob Weir had died instead of Jerry, they also would have called it quits."
Nonetheless, Garcia's death sent many Deadheads into tailspins of grief and depression. Many can recall, as with Lennon or John F. Kennedy, exactly where they were when they heard the news. "I was in Connecticut for my dad's funeral," Dranginis wrote in a posting to rec.music.gdead, the Deadheads' Usenet newsgroup. "I called my wife back in beautiful Columbia, MO and I asked how she was doing. She said, fine, I guess, OK. She sounded down. I asked why. Haven't you heard?, she asked. Heard what?, I said. Jerry died, she said. I could not connect at all, being at my dad's funeral and all with grieving all about. I even said, Jerry? Jerry who? Turns out my brothers and nieces knew and were keeping it from me. Weird part is that I spent the day traveling from St. Louis, Chicago to NY and had my head buried in a book by . . . Ken Kesey. Weird."
Posted Brian Foote, "All the energy in me just sank into the earth and I sat there in the middle of the driveway on the edge of tears. I don't remember much after that except that evening before I went to bed, I turned off my lights lit a bunch of candles and put on the very first Dead I ever heard . . . `Dark Star' from Live Dead. . . . It just brought a lot of comfort."
"I was surprised how devastated I was," says Ed Wile, a 29-year-old psychology grad student at Yeshiva University, in New York, who saw the Dead 130 times over 12 years. "It was like a central part of me was taken away. I really wondered if I was going to be able to [finish getting my doctorate]. A turning point came when I got my first paper back from school and got an A. I realized I could do this. Jerry wouldn't have wanted me to crumble."

Garcia remains a controversial figure, even among Deadheads, not only because his own drug abuse seemingly gave tacit approval to emulators in his audience, but also because it hurt his family and ultimately deprived them and his fans of his presence. The official cause of his death was a heart attack, but he had used heroin days before, according to the coroner, and then checked himself into a rehab clinic to break free of his addiction. Garcia was also a cigarette smoker and an overweight diabetic fond of sugary snacks.
Some Deadheads react with bitter antipathy toward anyone who portrays Garcia as less than saintly. Fans all but excommunicated former Dead manager Rock Scully when he revealed the seamier side of the Dead's backstage life in his book Living with the Band, published shortly after Garcia's death. Similar accusations of exploitation greeted this month's publication of Robert Greenfield's Dark Star, a warts-and-all oral biography taken from reminiscences of people close to Garcia -- friends, employees, ex-wives and ex-lovers, but significantly, none of the band members or primary lyricist Robert Hunter. Rolling Stone was also taken to task for publishing the most lurid parts in an advance excerpt of the book last month.
Former Dead drummer Mickey Hart dismisses Dark Star, saying he hasn't read it, but then goes on to detail his objections. "It's all very self-serving," he says. "There was a secret world even way deeper than that. These people think they knew Jerry really well. They only have a piece of it. It's all these women fighting over Jerry's memory. It's a footnote." Still, he acknowledges Garcia's human frailties: "What do you think he was, a god? He certainly didn't lay that on himself or on me. He was just a guy who played guitar beautifully. He was a friend. He was also sick and had his problems. But they certainly weren't anybody's business. There's a word for what these people are: P-A-R-A-S-I-T-E-S."
Ed Wile thinks it was actually therapeutic, for him at least, to see Garcia's faults trumpeted. "A lot of us were idealistic," he says. "I believed he was some sort of saint or godlike figure, and, as this year went on, it became clear that he wasn't. A lot of people wanted to write off the Rock Scully book as scandalous. Then the Rolling Stone article came out. It made me sad. If you fuck around with heroin, you're going to pay.
"How could someone so loved and talented also be so self-destructive?," Wile asks. "It was comforting to me to know that he was just a guy. He was a victim of his humanity, as we all are. That was important for a lot of us to realize. I needed to be disillusioned a little. I was a little extreme in my belief in the goodness of the Grateful Dead. The guy was mortal. And that's fine. He sure as hell gave a lot to us. He must have loved the music and cared about the band and about us because he was there pretty much every night he was supposed to be for 30 years."
"Contrary to popular belief, Jerry was not the Messiah," says Aaron Stolz, a 19-year-old fan and physics student. "He was an irresponsible, coke-snorting smack addict, and we still loved him like he was our uncle.
"I miss him every day."

Deadheads continue to help each other grieve and simulate the sense of community via a technology they helped pioneer: the Internet. Deadheads have been communicating on-line since the early '70s. Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow heads the Electronic Freedom Foundation, protecting civil liberties in cyberspace. Famed Deadhead Howard Rheingold founded the WELL, the best-known electronic bulletin-board service. And rec. music.gdead was the first newsgroup devoted to a specific band. It continues to receive some 300 posts a day. On the World-Wide Web, in addition to the official Grateful Dead site (http://grateful.dead.net/), there is a Deadhead forum called Deadbase (http://www.deadbase.com/) and hundreds of fans' home pages. There is also well-traveled Dead Forum on America Online.
Garcia's death seems to have spurred Internet activity. "Before Jerry died, I wasn't on-line," says Wile. "Immediately after he died, when I was still acutely upset, I wanted to know what was going on in the Deadhead community all the time. AOL kept me plugged into what was going on out there. It let me know that people out there were going through similar things as me. I've developed on-line relationships. I've never met anybody [in person] through it, but I will, at Light the Song." (See "Celebrating the Fat Man," facing.)
"I have purchased this computer to keep in contact with others in the Deadhead community," says Robin Wirick, a 38-year-old nurse who lives near Pittsburgh and has seen 200 Dead shows since 1978. "Part of touring for me was meeting fellow Deadheads from around the country. I've been able to meet many of those people on-line and even in person from time to time. I am a `bus driver' [chat-room supervisor] in the AOL Dead Forum, and this allows me to not only be in touch with other long-time heads, but to teach the kind and peace-loving nature of us to the newbies."
The Internet also provides a way to trade concert tapes. "In March, when I was starting to feel a lot better, I got really into taping," says Wile. "That happened to a lot of people in the spring, when there were no shows. A whole bunch of people became tapers. There was tons of taping activity on AOL. That boom lasted about three months. That's also gone back to just the real hardcore tapers." One of those is Joe Iudice, who used to sit in the taping section at Dead shows. "I've got over 700 DATs [digital audio tapes] to listen to for the rest of my life, and believe me, I'll listen to every one of them." He continues to tape at concerts by fellow travelers, including David Grisman, Widespread Panic, and Neil Young.
Much as they may enjoy attending shows by fellow travelers, few Deadheads find them a substitute for the original. "No, no, no!" asserts Shannon Nicholls, a 22-year-old fan from Huntington Beach, California. "The mantle is way too big to fit anyone but Jerry -- anybody else wearing it would look like a child playing dress-up in their parents' clothes." As for Phish, the Vermont band whose mercurial set lists and extended improvisations have earned them pride of place among fellow travelers, Nicholls says, "It's just not even the same ballpark."
"Do NOT confuse Phish with the Dead." says David Dranginis. "The Dead were a living, breathing organism for 30 years which shed and brought on in concert with millions of fans a transcendence singular to itself in all of popular culture, not verging on the religious, but of the religious. Phish, while a helluva good band, even a great band, do not compare beyond a similarity of style and of fans."
Heather Kellogg, a 25-year-old fan, was disappointed by Deadhead Heaven, an all-day festival in Purchase, New York. "The bands were really good, but I didn't like the whole organized-vending aspect of that or of the Furthur festival. It doesn't feel like the vendors are part of the crowd, like it used to in the parking lot. I think that's the crux of it -- I don't feel like I'm as much a part of the whole `show' with everyone else, as I used to."
Nonetheless, the one concert tour this summer that did, by and large, satisfy Deadheads was Furthur, a seven-hour festival featuring Bob Weir's blues band Ratdog and Mickey Hart's world-beat-pop combo Mystery Box. Though neither band sounds much, if at all, like the Dead, the fans continued to dance in the aisles as they used to. The fundamental reason for the tour was to give something to Deadheads, says Dennis McNally, who served as Furthur's publicist. "Musicians gotta play, Deadheads gotta dance." Says Hart, "Considering they never heard the songs before, the fans are on their feet all night. They're getting it. It's all a little strange at first, but after a few minutes they get into the groove and go for a ride. They depend on the succession of the notes. It's a habit for them. It's a healing process for me too to get out and play again. It felt good to get back in the familiar groove. It was like revisiting an old lover, like good sex with an old girlfriend."
"I attended a Furthur Festival show in St. Louis and found that the beat was very much alive," says David Dranginis. "It was like the old days," raves Joe Iudice. "The scene was mellow -- you got in and out of the parking lots easy, everyone was having fun. No drunks, just a fun day of music with friends we've toured with for years." Robin Wirick, who attended four Furthur shows, says, "The vibe has been very similar to that which I have experienced at Dead shows, and I can feel Jerry's spirit there. Also, I love the festival format, like the rock festivals of the '60s and early '70s."
The 3000 hardcore Deadheads who attended every Dead show have not done the same at Furthur. "Maybe 200 people are following this tour the way the hardest core did," guesses McNally. "I don't know where they are. They all moved to Santa Cruz or Eugene.
"The fact of the matter," he continues, "is the great majority loved the Grateful Dead. It enriched their lives, it was their instant summer vacation. Some would do two or three shows for a while. But they're getting on with their lives. They're going to listen to the tapes and CDs for the rest of their lives. It's going to nurture them. It was a good time. But the assumption that there's nothing left in their lives is condescending. Those friendships are not going to end. They may not see each other as often. The community is there. It's in the heart."

Celebrating the fat man