Garcia Interview by Ben Fong-Torres, ca. fall 1975

jg1975-xx-xx.interview.ben-fong-torres.gdao-379555

Garcia, Jerry, 1942-1995, "Ben Fong-Torres interviews Jerry Garcia. Interview recorded circa 1975 for the documentary radio program "What was that?" broadcast on KSAN-FM in San Francisco [radio broadcast]," Grateful Dead Archive Online, accessed November 10, 2013, http://www.gdao.org/items/show/379555.

The interview is given as 1975, at least some of it takes place at His Master's Wheels, and there's a snippet with Nicky Hopkins. I have Jerry and Nicky et al. there working on what would become Reflections mostly in September-October 1975, so this seems the most likely timeframe.

Sketchy notes below the fold.

acid test talk

0100 one time we went to France for the weekend. We went with Bill Ham. They were having this festival there. 0118 chateau lovely place that Chopin used to live in … art scene .. baronial trip … so we stayed there near that little town of Auvers Van Gogh painting Church of Auvers … so we played outdoors for the townspeople mayor chief of police families … a lot of people got high … that was nice … little special treats …

0340 but for sheer unmitigated all out total craziness you couldn't beat the Acid Tests

more Acid Test talk

04:55 who's in charge here

05:30 Kesey semi patriotic slogans Weir and Phil singing Star Spangled Banner

0639 there's no law against being weird

0738 it almost looked like something you'd seen before

0809 Babb's expansive style

0833 cops going around in this "official knot, inspecting"

0857 everything is real pale compared to that stuff

couldn't do it today 0907 the fear of getting busted permeates. To go out when I hear a siren it's a chill, it's a cold flash. The world is very wary.

1049 the only word for it was fun

out of tape

Ramrod is there

1155 BFT what kind of music are you hearing today in SF when you go out to the clubs?

1200 I usually go out to see guys like Joe Pass or George Benson, someone who's special who's an older player. They are interesting to me right now. The younger players are either like me or … derivative, in that same sense that I'm derivative. Unless it's something like the Wailers, something hot or something good that's coming to town, I don't know. The club scene I like it here because everybody gets to work a lot. There's enough places and enough good stuff happening. I think SF's still got the hottest music scene anywhere. NY doesn't have the gigs that they have here. Neither does LA. -1300

Q 1305 distance from the business side of it

1310 Yeah. As far as the GD goes, my role in the GD business gestalt is that I represent ethics, if I represent anything. That tends to be the things that are most interesting to me, as far as what business is. As far as the GD idea, what it has to do with business, a relation based on a certain kind of ethics. ..

1345 I've learned about it because of the experiences of getting burned and so forth. So, I know how business functions, but I'm not into it. It just isn't something I'm into. I don't really care. If it were still the sort of situation where I'm gettin' 5 bucks a week, I'd still be doin' what I'm doin'. It hasn't gotten to be a preoccupation.

GD needs to know about business "in order to avoid getting ourselves into complicated situations that are a drag later. Like when we were in a tremendous amount of debt to WB for making our expensive records, 14345 and when our manager Lenny Hart burned us, and those kinds of things [he swallows … he noted earlier that Mickey was running tape] Those are just the kinds of things that you expect to learn professionally, then it's easier for you to understand what's going on so you know what not to do. So I've learned about it reluctantly. "Is it right? Is this really the cool thing for us to do?" obscure difficult to understand business decisions, like on Rakow or whoever it is at the time, the head of the record company,

1510 at this point, professionally, I'm into challenging all those situations on the level of creativity. The GD problem at this point has to do with, we want somebody to turn us on with a new idea. We want somebody to supply us with interesting new input in terms of [1525 I am thinking of John Scher here, proposing the theater tour, everything managed by Monarch to the GD Phil and Bobby xxx where was that info? xxx] the kind of format that we'll go out in. We're asking promoters to give us something creative. Turn us on. Give us something that's different.

#The Movie

1539 How Is The Movie coming?

1540 It's almost, uh, gettin' there. Looks like spring, it'll be done in spring. We've just gotten to the stage where it's in assemblage, it's about a 6 hour assemblage. We've got a pretty good idea of what's gonna be in it and what isn't. A lot of the music has been cut pretty well. What we've got now is like a box of bones … before we had dust. The dust has been turned to bones now, and now we have the bones, and it's time to … we're assembling the skeleton. 1610 1625 anything else of substance? Puts on his huckster hat: "I'd like to say a few words about transcendental meditation, if I may."

1630 question about SF studios

"There's a couple of OK studios. This one is a good studio. [conjecture: HMW?] The others are just normal. Columbia is kind of a good studio, but it's so sterile, it's just a drag to be there. Wally Heider's is like … normal, and the Record Plant is normal. But it's never happened up here, the recording scene hasn't, because the recording companies have never put any bucks into San Francisco. There's no authority up here, so there aren't people doin' a lot of work. It works two ways. The disadvantage is that there isn't a big recording scene in SF. The advantage is that there isn't a big recording scene in SF.

more LA crap studio scene mechanical music most players up here don't want to do those kind of sessions.

1745 Q about Alembic

Alembic was more of a research wing, generally, about sound in general. And now, this, HMW [yeah!] is working more than ever as a recording studio. It's starting to be well known on some circles. This is really a quality studio, an excellent studio.

1815 Q about early criticism from Chicago (Bloomfield!) 1825 It works both ways because you could say … Big Brother they were bad, but they were also great. It was a breakaway from "what's good" … the idea that what's good is what's steady is no better idea that what's good is what's crazy. Any idea of what's good or what's bad is subjective. The whole SF thing, the SF bands, showed that music 1903 it isn't a question about music, it's a question about energy … if I had been in a position to be criticized from someone in that world in those days, I would have had a rejoinder like 'well, the thing that's wrong with Chicago is that it's lame'.

Q about seeing the big show at the Coliseum

2005 That's why the GD isn't playing. That's why the GD isn't playing that kind of gigs. We just burned out on that scene. After a certain point it just becomes mechanical. That's the thing that we don't want to be – we don't want to be mechanical on that level. We would rather be able to maintain some [sense of communication] with the audience, and maintain the quality of it on that level. That's sort of gotten to be the aesthetic problem … [earlier it was problems of sound reproduction, which they have worked on] now it's how do we get it to feel good in these places?

2049 what made people stop dancing?

JG: too crowded. That and everything has gotten to be focused in a kind of proscenium setup – here's the stage,

Q 2130 why did people start dancing?

It feels good. Plus, if you're high, it's good thing to do with that energy, to get up and get your backbone moving. Better than sitting around and getting weird.

Q 2145 Have you seen the Tubes? Oh yeah. You like The Tubes? Oh yeah. We were … my band, we were rehearsing over at SIR and the Tubes were in there rehearsing. Their rehearsal scene is like more stringent than a Broadway play. They rehearse like a bar at a time, their moves, they have like a 7 o'clock dancer call, 8:30 is the band call, … they're very serious on the level of what amounts to stagecraft, and I can dig that – it's just like a musical or a play. The fact that they can do it with some wit, and enjoy it, that's tremendous. There's an awful lot of discipline involved in what they do. I would never be able to handle that.

Q see them working with videotape and stuff like that, any ideas about that for GD?

2259 we've never felt ourselves to be that … "look at us" – it's not that kind of a performance. We're more into seeing what the moment will bring, and each situation is its own special thing, without any kind of preconception.

Q 2337 do you learn much from the Deadheads about the band?

Oh yeah. Back in the days when we played with lots of bands on the bill, I always used to go to the back of the room and listen to the bands. And a lot of my playing was structured on the basis of what I heard. I'd say, "Oh no, that guy is playing an SG Custom", and I'd notice that the midrange xxx from back here can't really distinguish the interior of his lines … I would extrapolate on the basis of what I'd heard, because I wanted to be able to make my guitar sound the way it sounded onstage. So, I'd study. You don't have an opportunity to hear yourself on stage 2433 , you can only guess at what you sound like, but you don't know. And in fact I don't know.

Q 2459 soundcheck, rehearse

We used to have a place where we would rehearse more or less regularly. Then in the last four or five years we worked so much that if we rehearsed, learn new numbers, we'd just learn 'em before the gig. … the way our band works is that every piece of material is in a state of evolution, none of them are fixed. We don't know what they're gonna be … they turn into something eventually, hopefully.

Q 2540 BFT I have a side trip I'd like to ask you about … the Population Institute was JG ready to be a parent? Sex education, etc.

2650 that's all of life, really. I never had any real education, except for the fact that my mother was a nurse, and I had access to medical texts and stuff like that. So my first education in terms of the mechanics of sex had to do with reading medical books when I was seven or something like that. 2715 did you feel free to ask your mom? JG yeah. How did she feel? 2719 She was embarrassed, and so was I, subsequently. But as far as like … I was definitely not ready to be a parent when I had our first kid, and I never have been that kid's parent, as a result. [it all worked out]

2800 Now I'm a different person and I like 'em a lot. The thing about being a parent, you have to remember where kids are … they're human beings, they are never anything less than human beings. My relationship with my kids is … now they're getting old enough that they're really neat … has been basically that they're human beings and I'm ready to learn anything I can from their experiences. I dig 'em, and I respect 'em, and I pretty much leave 'em alone. I don't have any special desires or wishes for them, I just want them to do whatever they want to do. I mostly don't want to hang 'em up. I'm anxious not to pass on whatever my own difficulties are to them. [constantly changing]

2930ish tape flip

2949 someone else maybe Charles Perry asking a question about rise and fall of the Haight-Ashbury that period 66-68 question posed to someone from UK 68 you first came over here to play the Carousel your sense of what the contrasts

NB there's a small kid in the studio

3018 Nicky Hopkins there was nothing anything like what was going on, at all.

3045 played the last gig at the Carousel before it turned over to Bill Graham

Q about acid getting dosed 3138 I remember that Jerry Garcia met us at the airport. He'd obviously been hearing about Peter. He really took care of us, in more than one way.

// 32:26 back to JG it seems like hundreds of years, and it also seems like not too much time at all. It seemed like a hundred years the next day [after Longshoreman's Hall and the Trips Festival]

3300 one of the big nights Family Dog show Lovin Spoonful Garcia Weir Lesh and BK were up on Mount Tam, "stoned", driving through the city, heard about it on the radio, made a stop at Cloud Alley, which was always really weird, and went to the Longshoreman's Hall [inaudible] that thing more story Phil lady what this little séance needs is us!

3409 Acid Tests first one in SJ at somebody's house; next one was some weird night club down in Palo Alto, then we did one at Muir Beach, at the old Muir Beach lodge thing, and finally the Trips Festival … oh I think [xxx] Fillmore Auditorium before or after the Trips Festival, around that time

Q about BG Mime Troupe Phil and Tom Constanten knew him, were involved with that. Story of some guy who was making explosives, blew himself through the wall of his parents' house. 3525 trunks of his stuff at 1090 Page Peter and Rodney sort of inherited them … all kinds of weird paraphernalia this guy Edmund I think was his name

3633 our scene was one of the peripherals scenes around Stanford … that's what was going on down there, that's what was interesting, where you could go to get a meal, or sell a lid, or play, for that matter

3811 pre LSD psychedelics JGs first exposure: Back in the 50s, like the middle 50s, 55 or something, on television, there was some show on that was like a documentary on people that were taking drugs that at that time were said to create psychosis … that was their rap … and there was this guy who was an artist, and they'd given him some, and have him do pictures before and after 3900 That was the first thing, I was interested at that time. I definitely wanted to try something like that, for sure. Everyone had been smoking pot, maybe a little psilocybin, crystal meth, then 3920 all of a sudden, bam, there was LSD.

4033 but we moved to LA shortly after the Trips Festival

What was the rationale for going to LA

Well, the Acid Tests went to LA, the GD was involved with that at the time. 4046

Meeting Owsley

He mentions one other Acid Test in SF, at a recording studio, weird record come from, Sound City,

4355 how successful were the Tests inLA

Babbs strange fascist trip

4430 liked em when everyone got really high: "As far as I was concerned, it was the ultimate in entertainment."

From LA, moved to 710 Ashbury, he says 45 min range

Some tape splices here

[banjo] 4640 What I was trying to do was basically mathematical, mechanical. It was basically like a dead end, it stopped being interesting. I never really decided, it was just 'I can't play this thing anymore'. … LSD made me want to hear longer sounds, be freer, not be restricted, musically, and not be such a victim of self discipline 4704 – banjo is a heavy discipline instrument, and I just didn't feel like getting that serious, I didn't want to have that much discipline, I didn't want to express that much discipline. Plus, the thing of being loud was great.

4729

//

4750 things were ready when they got back from LA

4815 when we first moved back up here I think we moved to Novato for a couple of months, that later Don McCoy and that whole scene had. Unifiying scene, had parties, got real high – it was nice. But mostly the thing about being in SF was that's where the gigs were – we could work there.

5100 he liked that it was natural, organic, community, you'd seen these people, smiled, lived a thousand lifetimes with them. JG never wanted to engineer the Haight. "It always wrecks the best of everything"

Chester Anderson started a little newspaper, brought out the most negative stuff. First thing was about a half a dozen meth freaks shooting up some 12 year old 5158 … ground floor negativism … the east coast mentality pouring energy into this scene and forming it into easy-to-identify bags. It's reductive – all those efforts were reductive. What was going on there, because it was cosmic, or planetary at least, didn't need that sort of stuff.

Great analysis of how Haight was killed

5355 And the thing that remained was the thing that was there before, which was this loose network of people that knew each other, which still exists 5413 , only it's much larger now, and incredibly more secretive [!!!], because, you know, once bitten twice shy and all that shit. 5423

5540ish he thought LSD could change the world if everybody could just have some. We'd see that we'd been muddling along on extremely low voltage … what is all this stuff?

5615 for me it was perfect

Re Acid Test graduation 5700 I never liked the formalizing of anything, really. I liked the Acid Tests when they were more chaotic, I liked the HA when it was at its loosest.

Q gigs in the park 5717 they were mostly fun … fundamental point in the whole GD reasoning, such as it is. The real free thing was getting up in morning, saying, wow, what a great day, let's go play in the Park. That was the real free thing. Spontaneity. That happened, a lot.

5830 the first time we played in the Park was Chocolate George's funeral, who was a Hell's Angel. One of the first times.

5845 one of the neatest ones was the time when we down and played on Haight Street …

Q late 59 was it official pressure, cops busting people? Yes, but also there were people in the scene who wanted that confrontation, who were anxious to get that kind of forum.

6029 there was always that first guy who threw the bottle. There was always that guy who sort of 'let's [xxx] the potential of this crowd to violence, right now. That would be the guy. As far as I was concerned that one guy, whoever he was, was the main asshole, regardless of who else was playing in the game, whether it was the cops or the National Guard or any of that. But whoever was dumb enough to provoke such an obviously violent thing, I mean, what's the point?

61-62 it was all games … there was nothing to be gained on any level, it was all games [JG on politics] and nothing was gained, only that it ended that much sooner. Weird, really weird.

Talks about living at 710 people climbing in through the window "happy freaks – lovely, but of high nuisance value" 6540

6631 first met Hunter in 61 army got kicked out after 9 months

6759 I had this '50 Cadillac while I was in the Army that didn't run anymore. He [Hunter] had this Dodge, which actually ran pretty good. I was livin' in the back seat of my Cadillac and he was livin in the back seat of his Dodge in this lot in East Palo Alto. Hobos together for a couple 2-3 years.

6950 rh's desire to avoid media exposure. JG: "Well, he knows what it's like. He's seen the rest of us blunder. 7005 JG seeks out places where people won't hassle him. "that's one of the nice things about being a certain kind of celebrity – at least I don't have that TV show, it's not like Johnny Carson or something. Most people don't know or care who I am or anything like that. It's only if I hit the hip places that I get recognized, so it's kinda cool. But Hunter, he's real paranoid about it, for sure. He doesn't want …"

7045 rh first lyric we did together was "Dark Star" … at that time he was writing crazed crystal-freak mad imagery  … crazed, meth-freak 7110 kinds of elaborations 7145 early songs were too unwieldy, too wordy. That was before we learned about the little niceties of songwriting, like you should leave room for people to breathe and stuff like that.

72ff words as semantic traps

7255 Warner Brothers contract