by Steve Heilig [Photo above: Kaiser Auditorium, late ’80s, courtesy of Steve Heilig]
PART 1
Half a century ago, way back in 1974, the Grateful Dead announced they were retiring, and going out with a five-night run of final shows at Winterland in San Francisco. They’d been at it and on the road for nearly a decade already and were broke and burnt out. Understandably so, but as a Southern California high school fan, it seemed we’d better do anything we could to catch at least one of those last concerts. I’d only seen them live once, with their legendarily massive Wall of Sound system, and that couldn’t be all, could it? So off we headed up to the big city in my 1969 VW camper van, hopefully bound for glory or something like it.
Winterland was in what was then a sketchy neighborhood for clueless suburban surfer boys who showed up after dark with no tickets, so the merciful doorman ushered us in, shaking his head at our naïveté. The New Riders were playing the Stones’ “Dead Flowers.” The hall already reeked of pot and sweat. My friends and I were soon separated and I spent the evening wandering on my own, or rather, as part of a mass moving gathering the likes of which I’d never experienced before. The music was enthralling. Beautiful older (20?) hippie girls madly twirled about. The whole vibe was utterly cool, even cosmic. I felt I was experiencing the last of the fabled Sixties at their finest, just in time before everything ended, including the band.
Fifty-one years later, of course, that “retirement” was a bit premature, and the Dead soon reappeared and carried on for another 20 years. But I faded from the ranks of the faithful, only catching them in person about a dozen or so more times, some of those in a work or volunteer capacity. And then Jerry Garcia was gone. Some would say he’d been largely gone for some time already.
Garcia was both the musical and spiritual center of the band, even though he hated being deified as some sort of guru figure. “I’m just a guitar player, man,” he was known to say. The times I met him, briefly, he was humble, humorous. But still. “Ninety percent of their songs were just there to show off Garcia’s playing,” opined keyboardist Tom Constanten, part of the band during one of their early peak adventurous phases (see: Live Dead). Garcia’s folk roots and leanings soon took them into another peak, the era of Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty albums. When the other original leader Pigpen bowed out with the fabled Europe ’72 tour/album, and then died, they put out a couple more decent studio albums and then that aspect of the band was basically kaput. They soldiered on as a live band so revered that when they finally had a hit song in the late ‘80s they became the biggest touring act of all.
PART 2
But for those not fully part of the true faithful, the shows were very hit or miss. The main factor seemed to be what kind of shape Garcia was in. As he declined, with hopeful resurgences, the juggernaut rolled on, the money too big, too many family and friends and staff dependent on them, too much of everything, until Garcia’s prematurely aged body just gave out. “Success” killed him, because it wouldn’t let him stop, or even take a real break. I’ve long felt he could have been still be alive today, happily playing bluegrass and whatever else in smaller venues only when he felt like it. But no.
It’s a true American tragedy, and still saddens me, 30 years later, so much so that I’ve never wanted to catch one of the ongoing legacy bands, even those of the late great “lead bass” player Phil Lesh. I’ve listened to lots of it since but it’s just not for me. If tens of thousands want to spend big money to see whoever’s on offer, fine. It seems to me a mere shadow of the actual group. So be it, but I just wish they might project a bit more of the original spirit with, if not free shows, some benefits for worthy causes in these perilous times, when the whole “‘60s dream” is under severe attack. But when I raised that modest idea regarding the impending Golden Gate Park shows in a San Francisco Chronicle letter, my proposal was met with silence from the band and corporations presenting the shows, and a bit of “how dare you” blowback from the ever-faithful. An elder Deadhead advised “Nice try, but Jerry and the Sixties are long gone and Dead & Co is just that: a company.” Ouch.
However, having lived in The Haight for 42 years now, I know firsthand that their still-living legacy lives on in countless hearts and memories and jam bands. The only tie I wear is the official beautiful Jerry Garcia one he gave me. And “Dark Star,” well, that will always be the Holy Grail of psychedelic music.
What made the Dead different? I think one key is that they never completely severed their roots in blues, country, folk — American roots music, in other words, even when steeped in LSD. They started as a “jug band”, in fact. The legendary founder of “country rock”, the doomed Gram Parsons, strove to make what he termed “Cosmic American Music.” The Dead made that vision real. Garcia found a perfect lyrical partner in Robert Hunter, (“Wharf Rat” is an Americana literary marvel) and a twangier foil in Bob Weir. They covered Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Chuck Berry, and outer space, sometimes in the same sequence. I still listen to their 1969-74 peak period with pleasure, with careful forays into later years.
Bruce Springsteen, initially unimpressed, has said this about the Dead: “I don’t know if they were great but I know they did something great. Years later, I came to appreciate their subtle musicality, Jerry Garcia’s beautifully lyrical guitar playing and the folk purity of their voices…. They had a unique ability to build community and sometimes, it ain’t what you’re doing but what happens while you are doing it that counts.”
Indeed. So while I don’t expect to be at the upcoming Golden Gate Park shows, I do intend to catch the August “Meet Up At The Movies” theater showing of The Grateful Dead Movie, filmed at those 1974 retirement shows. It’s yes, a “community” thing. Plus after all, somewhere in that footage is the teen version of me, utterly and thankfully amazed at the splendor of it all.
