Friday, November 20, 2015

Harrington $treet

On  January 19, 1994 Hal Kant, under Legally Dead cover, sent Jerry executed copies of the contract for what would become Harrington Street. Kant had negotiated a $550,000 advance for the volume, enough to net Jerry a cool half-million after the lawyer's 9% came off the top. Kant told Jerry he'd put the money in a separate trust, providing him with a "much-needed rainy day fund", and urged him to feel "relieved of any undue pressure" to complete the book, since he could just return the money to Dell if he changed his mind.

Source: a copy of Kant's letter is in the Jerry Garcia Estate probate files at the Marin County Recorder's office in San Rafael. I did not note the folder, alas.

Deborah Koons Garcia managed to put enough material together from snippety "auto-apocrypha, mistruths - half lies" that Jerry left behind to cash in, here as in so many other instance, the book's November 1995 release copyrighted to the Estate of Jerome J. Garcia.

4 comments:

  1. Here's another Hal Kant story, from Kreutzmann's book:

    "Talking of bad business decisions, our lawyer, Hal Kant, convinced us at some point to sign a contract that activated a Last Man Standing policy. I don't know if anybody's ever talked about this before, but the idea behind the Last Man Standing was that the last living member of the Grateful Dead would get everything. Under that policy, when a musician [186] died, his rightful royalties wouldn't go to his estate; instead it would be put back in the pot until, eventually, there was only one man left standing. And that person would get it all. Now, how do I say this? Let's start with: "What the fuck kind of idea is that?" We've since changed it and made it fair for the families, but over the years there's been some black humor about that policy. (The Grateful Dead's licensing arm, Ice Nine Publishing, still has an active version of the Last Man Standing clause.)" (Kreutzmann 2015, 185-186).

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  2. There was alot more content and art that Jerry created for the book but it seems Deborah withheld it.

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  3. That is such a shame. It's actually charming - his drawings are just so distinctive and interesting.

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