Nina Blackwood Interviews Jerry Garcia for MTV, ca. June 2, 1983

Some classic lines here, like the studio as building a ship in a bottle and playing live like piloting a rowboat in the ocean. I wasn't super careful about getting everything 100% perfect, especially not where there's GD talk. I am not 100% certain about the geolocation, but it's got to be about right.

Jerry Garcia Interview by Nina Blackwood
MTV Studios / Teletronic Studios
West 33rd Street and 10th Avenue
New York, NY 10019
June 2, 1983 (Thursday)
Youtube > Tuberipper m4a > otter.ai

! metadata: date a little uncertain. The Relix version (Blackwood 1983) says "conducted at MTV by Nina in May, 1983". But the Gary Gershoff pix at Getty (https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/portrait-of-mtv-vj-nina-blackwood-and-rock-blues-musician-news-photo/1364449796) date this as 6/2, and that does seem likely.

! venue: At this time, MTV was housed in the Teletronic Studios on West 33rd Street, right around the corner from 10th Avenue

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/RkQZy4xDDLUyUWqG7

! ref: Blackwood, Nina. 1983. Jerry Garcia: Interviewed for MTV. Relix 10, 4 (August): 16-20.

! R: source: part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-zEcX9_nXM TT 13:02

! R: source: part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl85mQ49Rlw TT 14:16

rough transcription after the jump

PART I

Jerry Garcia  0:00  Got it apart. Yeah. And to me that's very loose to that has a very light niceness to it that I like. But that still my all time favorite is that Talking Heads one 

Nina Blackwood  0:12  I like Twilight Zone  I don't get sick of that one. I love like Yeah, it's fine. Love that one. 

Jerry Garcia  0:17  I mean, I'm interested in seeing how this stuff works out like, is it going to turn into something that people are gonna buy? Are people going to buy these things? You know,

Nina Blackwood  0:25  I know , I know

Jerry Garcia  0:27  what directions are gonna go? Yeah, okay. All right. Yeah, I think my take might be coming up taped.

Unknown Speaker  0:32  Yeah. Is that mic coming loose? was 

Nina Blackwood  0:43  and I do want to tell you if you see me looking away and not paying attention to you, I'm just trying to keep my place, so ...

Okay, welcome to MTV here in the studio. We're talking to Jerry Garcia. And you're on the solo tour now. Which is your first in quite some time actually. How's it going? 

Jerry Garcia  1:13   Pretty good. 

Nina Blackwood  1:15  You having fun [on JGB tour]?

Jerry Garcia  1:16  Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, that's the main reason I do it.

Nina Blackwood  1:21  How are you comparing the audience's that you're getting with your solo tour as compared to Grateful Dead?

Jerry Garcia  1:30  They're pretty ... well. There's, they're similar, I think my audience might be just a little bit more laid back. I guess, you know, if that's the right word to use, maybe that's not the right word to use. Maybe they're more. They're a little less demonstrative, maybe a little quieter.

Nina Blackwood  1:50  Who's playing in the band?

Jerry Garcia  1:52  John Kahn is bass player, my old and dear friend. And the keyboard player is Melvin Seals, the drummer is Greg Errico, and have DeeDee and Jackie are my girl singers. And they're good. This a good band. I like this band a lot.

Nina Blackwood  2:10  Really, when you started off ... way back when? Well, you were in a jug band, actually, and you did a lot of acoustic material. Right? Are you doing any of that? Are you playing banjo or pedal steel?

Jerry Garcia  2:23  No, I'm not. It's very hard for me to do more than one thing at a time. As far as instruments are concerned, what happens is ... They're different. Acoustic guitar is not like electric guitar. For me, it's a different set of chops. And pedal steel is even more different. And banjo is even more different. So it's hard for me to switch hats like that. I haven't got that kind of concentration, or I like to feel very good at one thing, you know. And so, for me, it's a matter of doing something full tilt and not splitting my attention. I tried [being a multi-instrumentalist] at various times during my so called career and it and it doesn't work. Like when I was playing pedal steel for a while, back with the New Riders, I was playing pedal steel for half the night and guitar for half a night. I found that the change in muscle development from holding a steel bar, with one hand and your wrist down and not using your fingers at all for half a night, and then going to the wrist up position and moving your fingers … when I went to play the guitar, my fingers felt like lead - I got cramps in my hands and everything. And my guitar playing suffered terribly. I mean, it got to be really awful. And I got to this point where I felt like if I'm going to do both, I'm going to end up being real mediocre on both instruments. And I'm not going to feel like I'm getting off at all, you know? So it's like ... finally at some point I had to decide what am I going to do? This full time, or this other? So I opted for the guitar. And actually I think I've put more energy and I feel more comfortable and more natural with it now.

Nina Blackwood  4:07  playing the guitar ...

Jerry Garcia  4:08  Yeah, it's the kind of musician I am. I can't switch guitars either. Like a lot of guys - a lot of bands go out there with you know, hundreds of guitars on stage and switch guitars, tune in, and stuff like that. That's another thing I can't do. I can only play one guitar, they'll have it set up very carefully, and it's just me and that instrument.

Nina Blackwood  4:24  Has it been with you a long time, like your baby?

Jerry Garcia  4:26  I do 'em one at a time. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's the way it is. I have that one guitar and that's the one I play and any change in that is a major trauma.

Nina Blackwood  4:37  The musician and the instrument very inseparable. But you know, you're saying that you can't really like you know, play two instruments at one time, but yet you have your solo career and also the Grateful Dead. How are you doing both of those?

Jerry Garcia  4:49  That's a little different, in that ... for me there's no conflict there because I'm playing the electric guitar, which I conceive of as one kind of energy, one kind of instrument, and the differences in music are very natural for me. And the kind of music that I play in my band is different from Grateful Dead music. And so it's like, my solo career, it's kind of this accident, really, you know. I never really planned on it. What happened was that when we were at home, and the Grateful Dead wasn't working, I would get horny to play, you know, I would want to play. So I started going to these Monday night jam sessions that they used to have this club in San Francisco called Matrix. And I started going down there and playing. And that's where I met Merl Saunders. And I started playing with him on a regular basis there every Monday night, and I met John Kahn there, and we started playing, and we were playing there for maybe a year ... every Monday night, nearly, when I was in town, in a very casual way. And this gradually turned into something kind of a little more formal, and so on, until now, see. This has all been, uhhh, really it just comes from my wanting to be able to play a lot. That's really what it's about." #why #fatemusic #institutionalizatoin

Nina Blackwood  6:04  So it developed into a serious thing, rather than just for fun?

Jerry Garcia  6:07  Kinda. I try not to I try not to let it be too serious, because it isn't really isn't something ... I really don't want a solo career, in that sense. I just like to play, really, is what it's all about.

Nina Blackwood  6:18  With the Grateful Dead … like bands, like the Who, or the Rolling Stones, have real solid, hardcore fans and have followed, you know, through the years, but with your band, you have something one step beyond that, really? How can you explain this culture that has followed you and they're so dedicated, they just are still ...

Jerry Garcia  6:39  I can't explain. I can't explain it, they all have the same people. You know, I mean, also, it's not, it's not as though we have a bunch of 40 year old hippies, nobody, you know, same kind of PA Yeah, I think that's the key to it, you know, there's a certain kind of person, you know, maybe in every generation or whatever, I really don't quite know how to split it up. And there's certain kind of person that likes what we do. You know, it's like, like, there's certain kinds of people who like licorice, you know, or a certain kind of people like buttermilk or something, you know, and it's might not be something that everybody likes, but there are certain kinds of people that really do like it and, and, and empathize, you know, or sit or it's like, what they would do, you know, or something like that, you know, that's as close as I can come to figuring out why it is that we have this kind of our audience has been actually gradually increasing over the course of the slowest rising rock and roll band in the world. That's really what's happening with us. And it's, it's just, you know, I can't really, I really don't know why, but that's the closest I can come is there's something there's a certain kind of person that we're, we're for them, you know, and it's like discovering us is like, oh, yeah, right. You know, this is this is for me. That's as close as I can come.

Nina Blackwood  7:46  You get any strange kind of presents letters from your phone?

Jerry Garcia  7:49  Oh yeah. Wonderful things, wonderful things. In fact, there's a there's a neat book out that's a deadheads books about dead heads and for dead heads and, and has lots and lots of stuff that deadheads have created and anecdotes and, and it talks really about that subculture, if you want to describe it, in that it kind of gives you some sense of what they have, what they do, or who they are,

Nina Blackwood  8:12  and what kind of thing can you think of the you know, like everyone,

Jerry Garcia  8:15  Every kind of thing, I mean, everything from original artwork, you know, like me, like really lovely things really beautiful, beautifully executed things to things like motorcycles with the Grateful Dead designs on them advance customized vans, you know, that kind of stuff, you know, American, you know, hardware, art, to, you know, fine arts and tapestries, and, you know, lovely boutiques and all kinds of things. I mean, every form of every form of plastic art that I'm aware of, we've had some version of, and really well done stained glass, we've had an incredible stained glass window. So I mean, a huge, beautiful stained glass window of one of the covers of one of our elements is somebody lovingly put together and it's a beautiful piece. Please, for all album, it's a makes an amazing, impressive thing. It has such a monumental composition, it really looks great. It's the stained glass window, but lots of those kinds of things and, and things they're not only derived from the artwork from our that's created by our people, but, you know, I mean, the artists that do our covers, and so forth, but people who have truly original visions that are somehow inspired or, you know, motivated somehow by their relationship to the Grateful Dead experience, you know, it's things that are truly original and, and wonderful letters in real literate. I mean, we have great range, you know, from kind of street, like there's got there's a guy that's got a tattoo that's got a tattoo of me on his arm, you know, and it's a nice tattoo, you know, and he's like a street guy and he's got a thing of style and a thing also, which is very specific and very individual it's, it's him you know, it's not me and it's not really the Grateful Dead it's, but he's used us as a kind of a way to go had to focus himself somehow. And then I get letters from PhDs and from astrophysicists and you know, the rate is incredible. Yeah. That's what's wonderful about it.

Nina Blackwood  10:12  I want to go back a little bit to when you started playing guitar. Yeah, I believe I read. Yeah, let's go back a little bit. Okay, back into the 50s. And at that time, apparently, we had read that that, you know, you wanted to play rock guitar, but there wasn't really like there weren't that many rock guitarists to study for home or some of you?

Jerry Garcia  10:35  Oh, well, for me. I mean, for me, it was, I got my first guitar when I was 15 on my 15th birthday. And I played around with it for a year before I learned how to tune it properly. And I had invented my own tuning, and invented my own chords and everything. Because there were no there was nobody in San Francisco that I could discover that played that guitar at that time that played anything … like when I wanted to play and, you know, I didn't, it was just one of those things, I had to grope. Finally, I met a guy you know, in the high school, I was going to the new a few chords and knew the right way to tune the guitar. And I, I picked it up like that, really. And for me in my music, career, it was it was like, it seemed like wherever I was located wherever I was, I was in this odd musical vacuum, where I somehow wasn't able to meet people who knew anything about the guitar, and I wanted to play it so badly, you know. And so for me, it was this, this process of little discoveries, you know, that which represent a whole worlds of things. Oh, wow, that's amazing, you know, and I learned these little things. And it was definitely the hard way to do it. You know, I mean, I wish that I could have taken lessons. And, you know, I could have saved myself years of trouble. But it just didn't work out that way, you know, and 

When I went into bluegrass music, I had the same difficulty. You know, I learned banjo off the records and stuff like that. I didn't know I knew very few bluegrass musicians, I'd meet a few and I just couldn't, I couldn't get involved in a musical situation that would, that was satisfying for me because I wanted the music to be as good as the way I imagined it. You know what I mean? And it just never was that way. And so I kept trying to find niches and things.

Finally the jug band thing worked out pretty good, because it didn't require that anybody be very good. See, nobody had to be an expert. You know, and you can have fun with it. But there was still musical, it still had the basic elements of music. And from that moment, it seemed to me that the thing to do would be to get together with your friends and try to hammer something out in that situation and forget about good, bad or indifferent, right? And try and go about it that way. You know, so that like that kind of opened the door for me as far as acceptance goes, you know, to let myself be in this situation. So the jug band turned kind of turned into the Warlocks which kind of turned into the Grateful Dead, which ...

PART II

Nina Blackwood  0:00  That was my next question. Moving up a little to early 60s ...

Jerry Garcia  0:05  trudging through time

Nina Blackwood  0:06  Trudging through time. How did you meet the members of Grateful Dead? The original members for instance?

Jerry Garcia  0:12  Well, when I met Phil, he was a lunatic, classical composer. And he was he had a little place in Berkeley, a little apartment at Berkeley and he had like a card table that had orchestra shards, scoring orchestra scoring paper, these things with a million staves on him he was writing this thing for for orchestras, you know, and he No piano or anything, you know, he had perfect pitch. He just pulled the notes out of his head. He had an incredible musical education the most, the most knowledgeable guy I've ever known. So it's the opposite. Oh, yeah, totally different. But incredible, super Livewire. Phil was when I first met him. He was a live real Livewire. So we hit it off like sparks, you know, bam bam bam. And at the time, he was working at a radio station over there, and that was one of the Pacifica you know, like educational TV on the radio is what it boils down to. And he, he was the engineer for a fun music show. And at the time I was I that was very my foci period, you know, so he liked the music that I was playing my little blues tunes and folk songs and stuff. So he engineered this to this hour long program I did for that radio show. And, you know, that was kind of our, our musical first musical connection because we were worlds apart musically. That's when I first met him that was like three or four years before the Grateful Dead foreign but, and then Phil and I knew each other socially, we were friends, we weren't musically involved with each other. But then I ran into him again, when the Warlocks it started and there was my old pal Phil see, and now he's now he was driving a truck for the post office, you know, and, and, and, and a hippie, you know, and, and he came down to see the band, the Warlocks as they were at that time, he came down from San Francisco down this line and say, oh, man, this is amazing. I said, Hey, man, how would you like to play bass in the band? You know, because I knew that with Phil, he had so much talent. And he knew everything there was to know about music, you know. So the structure of rock and roll was certainly no problem for him. And all I had to do was tell him how the bass is tuned, you know. And two weeks later, he played Yeah. And basically, he invented the instrument, you know, as he's gone along. I mean, he's a guy who's invented a way to play in. And in fact, he's got now he's got a six string instrument, which is his own invention. It's completely unique in His whole approach to everything is completely ... he's an amazing guy 

Nina Blackwood  2:46  When did Pigpen fit in?

Jerry Garcia  2:47  Pigpen was another guy I knew socially. And he was, he was this 15 year old kid who is, you know, hung out in Palo Alto cutting school all the time and drinking wine going over to East Palo Alto. We're all the black people lived in the ghetto. That was the ghetto that we all lived over there at various periods of time and, and he hung out and played harmonica. And his father was the first rhythm and blues disc jockey in the Bay Area was interesting thing about Pigpen. So he grew up with the blues and R&B, you know, it's just as natural to him is, I mean, that was the music that came out of it. And if you asked him was music, what he came out with was the blues. You know, so he and he never really thought of himself as a performer. I don't think it was just something he could do. You know, and I, we would really coaxed him into it, we we've sort of forced him into performing, you know, so and I also knew that he played a little piano. So it was just natural. It's gonna be you know, they figured out hey, yeah, you know, he's a great singer, you know, sang blues real well. So, from the jug band, to sort of electric an blues band that was the transition. That's what the Warlocks was originally, kind of …

Nina Blackwood  3:56  do you think that suddenly the Grateful Dead has ever been captured correctly? Or the right way? on vinyl? 

Jerry Garcia  4:03  No. 

Nina Blackwood  4:04  studio album, I should say

Jerry Garcia  4:05  No, no, not at all. Not at all. Because when we go into the studio, we turn into this ... these scientists, you know, we turn into another kind of ... we become another sort of person. And it's, it's no ... we don't, I mean, it's like the difference between building a ship in a bottle and being in a rowboat on the ocean, you know … it's a world of difference.

Nina Blackwood  4:25  How would you compare, like a dead album with recent ones to the older albums?

Jerry Garcia  4:31  Well, it's hard for me to make comparisons, I see all of the Grateful Dead albums as near misses, you know, and like that, you know, because I can only see them in terms of the difference, the discrepancy between my own mental conception of what attune should be like, and the realization which I always feel is slightly flawed, you know, just because It just it always is. But that's the thing about the Grateful Dead is that it's not my point of view, you know what I mean? So that's the thing I'm constantly coming to grips with, we all are in our way, is there's the difference between what we think it ought to be individually, and what it is. And what it is always turns out to be more interesting and more, more itself than any of our individual viewpoints contains, you know, what I mean? It's the thing is larger than the sum of the parts of the whatever.

Nina Blackwood  5:28  When you're when you're playing live, what specific songs do you play that take you off into the solos or the group or what you're talking about the group interaction? Any specific ...

Jerry Garcia  5:39  Oh yeah, there are ones that work that way. All of them potentially could, you know, and every, ... Even though our even our simplest songs are mostly choices being made in the present time, and that is to say that even if the song is just a short, little, you know, four verse job, you know, it's the simplest kind of like, rock'n'roll song, Chuck Berry song, anything. The simplest kind of songs still is, everybody is playing, what they're inventing at the moment, you know, what I mean, even our simplest stuff is relatively free of specific hard arrangement, ideas, there are a few things that we have that have specific things, but mostly, the nature of our music is such that it all has a lot of improvisation, you know, it's that we deal with different forms, we have forms that are very, very tight and very structured and others that are very open.

Nina Blackwood  6:32  Why What do you play? You play? Like four and a half, five hour? Sets? 

Jerry Garcia  6:37  Yeah. 

Nina Blackwood  6:37  Why do you play that long?

Jerry Garcia  6:38  It takes us that long to get it together. I mean, and also, it's that our, we don't really plan, it really is just that, that our ideas tend ... even our short ideas tend to be kind of long, like for us a short song is seven minutes, you know, I mean, that's also one of the troubles we've had with records, too, is that our ideas tend to be bigger, you know, they, the record is really not quite the right medium for us.

Nina Blackwood  7:07  I also want to ask you about the films, you're involved in a couple of films, a documentary, I believe on Grateful Dead, like 74-75. 

Jerry Garcia  7:17  Yeah - it's not really a documentary. It's, it's a, it's a, it's a film. And it's, it has documentary bits in it. Sure enough, but it's not a documentary. It's it has its there's a little more art to it than that as much as I hate to use that word. It's really, it's structured, really using the form of the Grateful Dead concert as a model. Kind of the same way that deadheads book is The deadheads book is also structured the way the show is structured. So I use the Grateful Dead concert as a energy model. Like when you're making a movie, you want a movie to have certain things to satisfy that requirement of sitting in a theater watching a screen, you know, it's not the same as being in a concert, you know, it's wants to be a movie. So that was what I wanted to have happen. And I didn't want it to be a documentary in the cinema vérité sense, you know, and I wanted it to be something more than that. So for me, all of the bits of film, including the documentary things, they all have energy, you know, levels of energy and certain things so, for me, it was a matter of taking stuff like a documentary piece that was very, that had, you know, tremendous that was up I would I could use it in either as counterpoint you know, in material it was down or, or to move somebody along, it was up you know, so is really using making those things come together as another version of the Grateful Dead experience, so to speak. That was the idea.

Nina Blackwood  8:43  That's gonna be out on video disk, right? That particular one? Yes. Also to you're going to do a new Dead album. Yeah. Whenever understand when are you gonna start on that?

Jerry Garcia  8:54  When we get a chance. [sometime this year]

Nina Blackwood  8:59  What can we expect

Jerry Garcia  9:00  from that? Oh, yeah, new stuff. We're already performing the new stuff. And this is a great luxury for us. You know, this, like, usually we have to squeeze the new we're none of us are our crackerjack composers, you know, I mean, we've whipped ourselves into becoming composers you have original material. Yeah, that was always the rap. Right. So you know, we've flogged ourselves into becoming composers and, and so our output is like, not prolific. It's extremely erratic. And usually what happens is, for us making a record is like doing a term paper. We do all it all gets done that Friday before the test, you know,

Nina Blackwood  9:40  Speaking of term papers, I know a lot of our fans and stuff that are watching while they're doing their term papers are also running thes letters asking for some Grateful Dead video. Can we expect to get any video from the album?

Jerry Garcia  9:52  Yeah. I think so. Yeah, they're all Yeah, we definitely have tunes that are like tailor made. I mean there and I have there are some ideas that I would like to follow. myself, as you

[started that question, could I really ask you I'm sorry, sorry]

Okay ask me that again.

Nina Blackwood  10:07  Not in the same way, because we aren't getting some letters, a lot of letters, as a matter of fact, from the people that are watching MTV, wanting some video from the Grateful Dead. Yeah. We can expect any video from the new album?

Jerry Garcia  10:22  I think so. I hope so. There, I talked to some of my friends that we have definite ideas about working with us as far as production is concerned, and I have some ideas of my own. And I but I believe mostly that I think we have some tunes that might work real well.

Nina Blackwood  10:43  How do you feel the Grateful Dead fit in your music fitting into the music of the 80s? What's going on now?

Jerry Garcia  10:51  Well, it's Grateful Dead music of the 80s. You know, I just because it definitely changes. I mean, we we are like, everybody has have ears, you know, and we were affected by and we let ourselves be, you know, affected by whatever happens in music. And as we're exposed to it, you know, freely, you know, the thing of being freely what influenced, we steal from everybody? And so, you know, it's the 80s I mean, the 80s version of us, it has things that I think, certainly, certainly sounds and textures and stuff that belong to the 80s that that, that make it different, say, from grateful to the 70s and 80s, or whatever.

Nina Blackwood  11:31  Do you feel that there's still a 60s counterculture culture?

Jerry Garcia  11:36  There's an 80s counterculture. I don't like that kind of culture, it it's not as though there were a culture to be countered to it, you know, what I mean, there's a the, there within that the range of the American experience down at one of the, one of the data, the shallow end or something, you know, there's, there are these margins, you know, and, and somewhere in the margin, I think, is where the Grateful Dead and dead heads and whatever it is that we are part of, you know, because I feel, yeah, I feel that we're part of something, but I don't feel that it's this banner, you know, that we're carrying along this banner, that's this relic from the 60s. And it doesn't feel that way at all, you know, it isn't like that. And the Grateful Dead, just as we move through these periods of time, you know, there's the 60, that period of time they call the 60s, that period of time, they call the 70s, or whatever, that that that emptiness, they call the 70s. And so forth. I mean, it's it never has been. We've never felt attached to that stuff going on around us, really, because our, our directionality and our, the thrust of what we're doing has remained pretty much pretty similar to the way it's been to the way it was when we started it. And the what happened, what's, what time has produced, is maybe a little clearer focus, you know, maybe, and a little bit better, a little bit closer to that idea that we think is out there. You know, it's this is like this gamble that we're taking, you know, it really is based on having faith that there exists that's all, it's all been working, you know, amazingly enough,

Nina Blackwood  13:37  you think you're gonna be together for a while? Oh, yeah. ... go on and on. 

Jerry Garcia  13:40  Yeah, I think so. Because it's it, it still feels very much like, like, we're just starting to get it, you know, Oh, yeah. When we're so close, you know, it has that feeling. And as long as it keeps having that feeling, like it makes it exciting, you know, as long as it has that feeling of like there's something over here that really, you know, that only we can get at, you know. 

Nina Blackwood  14:05  slowest rising band, still rolling on

Jerry Garcia  14:05  that's right, as long as it has that we'll we'll keep doing it

Nina Blackwood  14:08  Thank you. 

Jerry Garcia  14:08  Thank you much.

Unknown Speaker  14:09  Thank you.