Garcia's Creative Accounting, late March 1975

In late March 1975, Peter Simon interviewed Garcia at the "film house"  (230 Eldridge Avenue, Mill Valley, CA, 94941), for publication in New Age Journal (Simon 1975).

NAJ:

You’re also doing a solo album and touring with Merl Saunders. In that you have so many projects at once, how do you channel your energy so productively? 

Jerry Garcia:

Well, things tend to work and overlap, generally speaking. I wouldn’t really be able to concentrate on sitting in front of a movie editing device for eight hours a day; I can do it pretty easily for six, though. I feel my attention is on it and I can do a good job keeping up with it. I like to play music in a studio situation – that can also hold attention for six or eight hours. If I’m on the road, I’m not doing anything during the day; I’m playing evenings. So during the day is a time which is convenient to compose. I might sit around an hour a day just playing the guitar and practicing and maybe learn something and maybe some ideas would come out that are like songs. That represents maybe two or three hours a day on the road where nothing else is happening but television and a gig that night. Usually a gig will take maybe four or five hours, total time actually playing maybe two of those or two-and-a-half. It may look like more, but it isn’t really that much. (Simon 1975, 54).

Note to self: I want to juxtapose this creative accounting with other kinds -- Rakow's, for example --  and with other, perhaps less creative accountings (see "Accounting the JGB: October 8, 1975").

Reading Notes: Signpost to a New Space and Stoned Sunday Rap

These are "reading notes" - little stuff I cull when I read. I copy and paste the quotes into thematic documents (e.g., drugs.docx), so all of this has been "processed" out of the book, and up one level, into thematic or other kinds of buckets.

You may not find the quotes of greatest interest to you. Obviously I am doing this for my own purposes.

March 23, 1975 - Jerry Garcia Interview

I don't know who the interviewer is, nor the radio station from which this particular recorded. It is the first track of shnid-126296. This is the interview Jerry gave before the SNACK Benefit at Kezar Stadium. Sounds like reading the newspapers around the time of the show will prove interesting, mismanagement of budgets by bureaucrats probably a recurring theme. I can't talk about that now.

Instead, just a few quick thoughts, with link to audio and my reasonably full transcription below the fold.

1. Why Side Trips?

One of the theses I'll address in the book is that Garcia's side projects were about more and different live gigging, relative to what he could get with the GD. It ain't earth-shattering to posit the primitives of quantity and quality of course. But the evolution over time is very interesting, how he interpreted and put into practice, these desiderata, is really rich. Indeed, it's what Fate Music will be about, how Garcia navigated his life beyond the Grateful Dead. It's a nontrivial problem, and his solutions tell us a lot about him and, certainly for me, sheds light on the human condition, on how each and all of us must navigate our own lives "beyond the Grateful Dead".

On the quantity side, history's arc bends pretty straightforwardly: until mid-1975, "more" meant "all the time". As time went on, it would this would diminish and become highly routinized, mostly through the Jerry Garcia Band. He'd play a weekend or two at a regular local haunt (the Keystone Family of venues until 1987, the Warfield after that, a weekend or two every few months, with the occasional off-weekend show thrown in. West coast trips to SoCal and up to the Pacific Northwest. Maybe an East Coast tour, eventually only in the fall.

A simple chart of the number of GOTS gigs over the years will nicely illustrate the point, but I don't want to go generate one right now. Soon enough.

The quality calculus, i.e., the evolving meaning and practice of "different" on The Side, moves, over the years, from challenge to comfort. The cut-point is 12/31/75-1/1/76. Prior to that point, the side projects involved more challenge than comfort. After that point, the curves cross and comfort starts trumping challenge.

I say all of this because there's a nice Q&A here on where Garcia's head was it, with respect to all of this, on March 23, 1975.

0018 interviewer You're an incredible guy, because with all the history of the GD and the all the musical avenues that the Dead has explored, you also work with Merl Saunders and the bluegrass thing OAITW… do you find that that is what you need to keep stretching musically?

0044 Well it’s just that I have a lot of different interests, and any one thing might not take up … If I have space … for example, when the Grateful Dead were touring, there would be times when we would be on the road for two weeks, three weeks, and then off the road for two or three weeks. During that two or three week interim period, I’d usually want to play some, y’know, play music somehow. And, obviously the Grateful Dead can’t go out and play in clubs, without causing some sort of amazing commotion … and so I started taking up my time about four or five years ago jamming, just jamming, on Monday nights at the Matrix, and started playing with Howard Wales and them, and later Merl, and John Kahn played bass and stuff like that. But it started to be a more or less regular thing, and I just got into feeling that, ‘yeah, when I’m not workin’, if I’m not on the road or touring or something like that, there’s still a lot of room for me to play and cha … and reach, y’know, out to a, … in a learning sort of situation and all that.

2. Fate Music

There's a great little Fate Music line here, too, where he talks about OAITW (@01:46)

Bluegrass music is something that’s a little different. It’s something I’ve always loved. And mainly with bluegrass music, you sort of have to wait for an opportunity to present itself, where there are musicians around that understand the music and play it really well .. and Old And In The Way was a result of that sort of coincidence, where suddenly there was [sic] three or four of us around who knew the music and who enjoyed playin’ it. So we started loosely, just getting together and playing for fun, and then got to be more serious about it as time went on. But really those things sort of happen accidentally in a way.

I like this for the Fate Music theme of these things coming together by happenstance. But this little synopsis also speaks to the process of institutionalization. It starts off a lark and ends up a job. That's one feature of the arc of Garcia on The Side that's essential to keep in mind.

3. GD and Side Trips

One of the key issues that I spend a lot of time thinking about (since my subtitle is Jerry Garcia's Musical Life Outside the Grateful Dead) is how the side stuff and the GD interact. Here, Garcia is asked whether being so busy with side stuff undermines the Dead. His answer (@02:22): "No, I don’t think so. I think it adds to it, just in terms of that each thing stays fresh if you’re not doin’ it all the time. You come back to it with new ideas and new influences and stuff like that.

4. Record Companies

The interviewer asks Garcia to evaluate whether the record companies were a good idea, in retrospect. This is really informative: in his mind, they were dead by 3/23/75. Here's Jerry's reply (@0427):

Well, yeah. I think so. Certainly in our heads I think it was a good idea. It hasn't been the world's most outrageously successful endeavor, but that's not the focus, either. Again, that hasn't been the focus. Now that we're in the midst of a bone-crushing economic slump, and all the rest of that stuff, our, we're scuffling just like everybody else is, basically.

5. Film Company

Round Reels, the film company, remains almost totally opaque to me. Garcia mentions it here as if it's a relatively recent innovation. He mentions The Movie and also the company's involvement with what would become, in 1983 (!) Hells Angels Forever [imdb].

6. The First Pirates' Ball, JGMS, 9/5/73, S.S. Bay Belle, NYC Harbor

In that connection, he paints a great picture of the first Pirates' Ball show (for the second, see my post on 9/15/76), September 5, 1973 (@0540). There was one

time that Merl and I and Bill Kreutzmann and John Kahn played for the Hells Angels, for one of their parties, where they rented sort of a ferry boat … the kind that go around Manhattan, y'know? They rented a ferry boat and they had this blowout for all these Hells Angels. They came from all over the United States, plus all kinds of New York weirdos and stuff like that. We played on this boat, on the top deck of the boat, underneath the Brooklyn Bridge, and went around the island a few times. The Jolly Roger was flying, y'know? And we played out by the Statue of Liberty with all these crazy Hells Angels and all this stuff. And they were filming it from all over, from perspective points like the tops of buildings, in New York, looking down those long canyons, and you could see this ferry boat go by with the Jolly Roger and that kind of stuff. There's a lot of really … there's a lot of arresting … striking visual stuff in the movie.

7. Hiatus

"That's part of the reason we stopped performing, was an effort to pursue completely new ideas and shake loose the past, in terms of musical … stuff" (@0742, discussing the "Blues For Allah" stuff they're going to play in just a few minutes)

Anyway, loved this interview. Not sure if it has been transcribed before, but, anyway, here it is.

Elves, Gnomes, Leprechauns and Little People’s Chowder and Marching Society Volunteer Fire Brigade and Ladies Auxiliary String Band

I cannot make any representation for the accuracy of any of this. It's a fascinating piece, of course. Dister was a famous French rock journalist (wiki) who spent ca. 1966-early 1968 in San Francisco, apparently spending a ton of time with the Dead, if the narratives are to be believed. I am sure it is perfectly well based in actual events. My sense is that he's more accurate on the early days (which I focus on here), when he was around, than later stuff, which he gleaned secondarily and in which I have found lots of mistakes on the particulars. Read it like you read Rock Scully's book (1996).

There are some new-to-me band names and such that are more up LIA's alley than mine. There are pre-GD bands and lots of little vignettes. It's a loose participant observation study. Fascinating.

This is an entry in the Reading Notes series, in which I just leave quotes and little annotations of stuff I have read. I make no representation of completeness, it's just whatever catches my eye. Aren't stochastics fun?!? As Ishmael said:

I promise nothing complete; because any human thing supposed to be complete, must for that very reason infallibly be faulty.

Reading Notes:

Dister, Alain. 2007. Grateful Dead: Une légende californienne. Paris: Le Castor Astral. ISBN 9782859207298, 254 pp.

Dister 2007, 22: Jerry’s “beau-père” was Wally Matusiewicz ... was that Ruth’s husband? Says he taught Jerry the rudiments of the guitar, don’t remember that elsewhere. “Wally was not a drinker, but he didn’t disdain the good Lord’s herb, which he considered less dangerous than alcohol.” #family, #Wally Matusiewicz, #Ruth Garcia

Dister 2007, 22: his teacher at the California School of Fine Arts was named Wally Hedrick, who was close to the Beat poets. (?), #Wally Hedrick, #Beats

Dister 2007, 24: after taking a joyride, he was offered a choice between prison and the Army. #Army

Dister 2007, 24: his Army drill sergeant “initiated him in the delicate art of finger picking on an acoustic guitar”. “Certain of his comrades were part of the Kingston Trio” (?) #acoustic, #folk

Dister 2007, 24: before the joyride and the military, Jerry “briefly took part in a jazzy group, The Chords, in the little Northern California town where his mother placed him” #pre-GD

Dister 2007, p. 27: Robert Burns, dit Hunter, born June 23, 1941 in San Luis Obispo. #Robert Hunter

Dister 2007 p. 36: “One can get nothing from the banjo if one does not have an innate taste for a job well done” ... JG as workaholic. “The rest, love, family, hanging out with friends, and the corresponding substances, those were always a sacré foutoir, the uncontrollable part of his existence” ... suggests that music was the one thing Jerry could really exercise some control over. #workaholism, #drugs

Dister 2007, p. 44: ca. 1963, while married to Sara and working at Morgan’s, in a band as follows. Garcia on banjo. Hunter on guitar. NB NRPS parallel: “Hunter was the first victim [of Garcia’s expectation of virtuosity]: he was thanked and thrown out of the group ... An enthusiastic player but with little talent, he gave way to Eric Thompson.” Also Pigpen, Kreutzmann. Name of the band? “Elves, Gnomes, Leprechauns and Little People’s Chowder and Marching Society Volunteer Fire Brigade and Ladies Auxiliary String Band” ... became Black Mountain Boys. #pre-GD, #Eric Thompson, #Bill Kreutzmann, #Pigpen

Dister 2007, 44: autumn 1963, Garcia and Hunter are in the Badwater Valley Boys and meet Bill Monroe at the Ash Grove in Los Angeles. Implies that this was before 11/22/63, JFK assassination. #bluegrass, #Ash Grove

Dister 2007, 44: Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions gig played the Tangent on 1/25/64. #pre-GD

Dister 2007, p. 61: after Frenchy’s, they spent three nights in a row at a Broadway strip joint, Pierre’s, autumn 1965. #pre-GD

Dister 2007, 66: had to change from Warlocks because there were bands by this name in England, Florida, Texas (including future members of ZZ TOP) and a NY-based quartet comprising Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison and Mo Tucker, the future Velvet Underground. #pre-GD

Dister 2007, 74: GD in LA from February-May 1966 #GD

Dister 2007, p. 78: Olompali ca. June 1966. #Olompali

Dister 2007, 90: “Jamming together, or sitting in with each other’s bands, is what fundamentally distinguished San Francisco’s music scene from LA’s.” #collective improvisation

Dister 2007, p. 91: Bay Area rockers grew out of the folk scene, especially in Berkeley and Palo Alto. “Ces habitués des hootenannies sont également rompus à l’exercise de la jam-session” #collective improvisation, i.e., #jam

JGMF: The hoot and the open jam session spontaneously evolved in many different contexts. Multiple discovery is common in science (wiki), biologists see tons of convergent evolution (wiki), and even some anthropologists talk about cultural universals (Brown 1991). Anything that has this quality of coming up again and again in the human condition is, in brief, probably really important. And playing music together is one of these kinds of things, really down to the root of our natures. I am talking shelter, warmth, maybe some food and drink, some good old goddamned human company. Get a room for the sex if you can, but the drugs and rock 'n roll are never far from the fire, and that's true for white folks in Appalachia and black folks in the Mississippi delta. Beat a drum, pluck a string, sing a little. In the American context, hollers, Gospels-spirituals, blues, jazz, soul, R&B, funk, and any other "black music" you can think of, whether South, North, Midwest, Great Migration, or wherever, has its improvisational tradition, and this is no less true of your old-timey, folk, Gospels-spirituals, bluegrass, country, rockabilly, rock or heavy metal. It's a people thing, painted in the riotous colors of every other kind of earthly variation.

Dister 2007, p. 103: GD were evicted from Olompali and refuged at Camp Lagunitas in ca. August 1966. Moved to 710 Ashbury in September 1966. #Olompali, #Camp Lagunitas, #houses

Dister 2007, 126-127: story of stealing the equipment from Monterey Pop. P. 127 equipment (le matos) “duly returned eight days later [6/26/67], after having been put to use during a free concert in the Panhandle, a concert in which both Eric Burdon and Jimi Hendrix participated (but where are the tapes?)”

JGMF: I list 6/21/67 at the Polo Grounds (no source, not in Deadlists) and 6/24 at El Camino Park in Palo Alto (http://rockprosopography101.blogspot.com/2009/07/june-24-1967-el-camino-park-palo-alto.html, last consulted 3/28/2011), but nothing from the Panhandle.

Dister 2007, 134: the 10/2/67 bust and subsequent police harassment “ended the [MG-JG] dream of living in the middle of the cauldron” of 710 Ashbury, with the baby and all that, living in the attic. “They would first move near the Palace of the Legion of Honor, not far from the Presidio where Jerry did his brief military service. A little later, they’d cross the Golden Gate Bridge for Larkspur bungalow rented out by John Cipollina’s father.” MG in Greenfield says they lived there six months. #houses

Dister 2007, 141. This is interesting about early GD musical interactions. “Early in November 1967, Pigpen (or maybe Garcia) allows me to accompany him into the recording studio.” Anthem of the Sun ... “The little studio is somewhere downtown. Everyone’s there, squeezed around the console. Garcia’s listening to live tapes, pushing buttons, switching from one solo to another, juggling the mix, barely taking the time to the others what he had in mind. Weir s’emporte, he’s like that, rock ‘n roll energy, shooting nasty looks when he didn’t agree. The exchanges are pretty sharp, one could think that these guys aren’t on the same wavelength, that the group is at risk of imploding at any moment. Several alternative musical conceptions, as many different ways of engaging them ...” #Bob Weir 

JGMF that's a cool little piece of color right there.

Dister 2007, p. 143. Says that TC came into the GD at the time they were working on Anthem ... it comes into the narrative before a discussion of November 1967 ... #Tom Constanten

Dister 2007, 146: first live Dark Star was 12/xx/67.

Dister 2007, 147: Ramrod, first roadie, arrives late December 1967. Rex Jackson came next?

Dister 2007, 150-151. Description of a February 1968 gig at San Quentin. He says “I believe that the day of the concert, or the day before, they found Neal’s body on the side of a railroad track somewhere just outside of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.” That was February 4, 1968. Later below, he says that “Phil Lesh had stayed in Oregon after a series of concerts in Portland and in the colleges and universities in that neck of the woods. So Bob Weir played bass.” I think he is conflating some stuff here. The correct date, based on contemporary ex post reports (the best kind of data) clearly confirm Thursday, 2/15/68 as the date of this event (UPI 1968; Torgerson 1968; see also Hannan 2009 SQ LLD post).

Contrasts 5/8/69 People's Park with 5/7/69 GGP show. "A distillation of the ending Sixties: a few show in Golden Gate Park, with Bear at the audio console, while ten miles away as the crow flies, tear gas is still sticking to the trees on the Berkeley campus" (Dister 2007, 158). #jerry and the Jeffersons

 

RN Peter Simon 1975 New Age Journal

Simon, Peter. 1975. Making Musical Miracles: An Interview with Jerry Garcia. New Age Journal .5 (May 1975): 52-59.

This is a really neat piece, lots of great stuff.  Interview took place at the "film house"  (230 Eldridge Avenue, Mill Valley, CA, 94941), ca. the last week of March 1975.

Love his notion of "tight-loose" forms conducive to "orchestrated twists of fate". This is essential Garcia in a very fecund period.

Reading Notes

Interview took place at a film lab in Marin County #The Movie. Note took place after 3/23/75, but before whatever needed to happen for a May deadline. Because Jerry went on the road with Legion of Mary and was gone the first three weeks of April, I have to say that this was probably the last week in March 1975.

Garcia hopes to have The Movie “done and maybe out by around October, but it could go longer than that – there’s a lot of film” (Simon 1975, 52). He speaks more about the film, how they have to work through the dreaded middlemen, trying to do the distribution with integrity. Talks about the idea behind it, how it tries to capture the GD concert experience in part as a substitute for the band touring live.  He explicitly talks about this as an alternative to touring. It’d be less expensive, and you don’t have to expose fans to hassles, including the ultimate hassle, the police power (Simon 1975, 52-53). #The Movie

JG on The Movie: “On the level of ideas, and just in terms of something to do as an artist, it represents a new level of interest and development for me. I enjoy films. I’ve been a film buff for a long time and all that – it’s neat to be kind of forced into making a movie” (Simon 1975, 53). #The Movie

They are working on Blues For Allah, so this could be February-March. Not sure I know when film work starts? NB from below, this is after 3/23/75. Sometime between then and a deadline for May 1975 issue. I am not sure I knew when JG started working on The Movie. # The Movie

Workaholism, life balance: NAJ: You’re also doing a solo album and touring with Merl Saunders. In that you have so many projects at once, how do you channel your energy so productively? JG: “Well, things tend to work and overlap, generally speaking. I wouldn’t really be able to concentrate on sitting in front of a movie editing device for eight hours a day; I can do it pretty easily for six, though. I feel my attention is on it and I can do a good job keeping up with it. I like to play music in a studio situation – that can also hold attention for six or eight hours. If I’m on the road, I’m not doing anything during the day; I’m playing evenings. So during the day is a time which is convenient to compose. I might sit around an hour a day just playing the guitar and practicing and maybe learn something and maybe some ideas would come out that are like songs. That represents maybe two or three hours a day on the road where nothing else is happening but television and a gig that night. Usually a gig will take maybe four or five hours, total time actually playing maybe two of those or two-and-a-half. It may look like more, but it isn’t really that much” (Simon 1975, 54). This is a great #adayinthelife #1975

The interviewer is impressed with his productivity, which Garcia explains away: “I’m crazed. I’m obsessed.” “People see you as a musical junkie,” the interviewer continues. Garcia: “Yes, that’s as good a description as any” (Simon 1975, 54).

JG: “I prefer playing live for sure, just as an experience, it’s definitely richer, mainly because it’s continuous. You play a note and you can see where it goes, you can see what the response is, what the reaction is. It’s reciprocal”, and a different energy than you get back from fellow players, which is like “a room full of plumbers” (Simon 1975, 54).

Studio vs. live: “Because we play music, one of the forms that music can go out in is the  record, but it’s a distinct form and not necessarily a reflection of what we do, so we just treat it for what it is. If you’re an artist, you might prefer to work in lithographs, … though sometimes you do a water color [despite the fact that] lithographs still might be what you get off on the most. But if you have to do a water color, you do a water color” (Simon 1975, 54). #official releases

Why did GD stop touring. The amount of gig money was not enough to move the band around, develop what they wanted to develop, and pay everybody. “We had a huge organization with a colossal overhead on a weekly [54-55] basis. So, past a certain point, we were really working to keep the thing going, rather than working to improve it or working because it was joyful. … We were interested in doing stuff that’s joyful or fun, y’know, then how could we reconcile that with economic survival, how could we work and have a good time and also pay the bills? We didn’t have that together.” Also the remoteness and anomie of playing large venues, “creating an unpleasant situation for the audience” … “We don’t want people to be busted at our concerts, we don’t want them to be uncomfortable or any of those things …” “Also, it’s basically sort of de-humanizing to travel [jgmf yes! air travel dessicates the human soul] the way you have to travel in a rock-and-roll band, and the quality of life on the road is pretty slim.” (Simon 1975, 55). #hiatus

More on hiatus: “Mainly, however, , it has to do with economics and the fact that we’ve been doing it for ten years, and we haven’t spent any time away from it. That’s a long time to do anything. So we’ve just decided to stop before it overwhelms us. Now we’re trying to consciously see what the next step is for us. We don’t want to go into the success cul-de-sac … we don’t like that place. Yet, it’s not possible for us to really do something that would be totally altruistic, like going and playing free everywhere. What we really need is a subsidy.  The government should subsidize us and we should be like a national resources” (Simon 1975, 55). #hiatus

Refers to Kezar benefit “recently”, so after 3/23/75 (p.55).

GD wants to play live again, but trying to figure the format. “One possible fantasy that we’ve thought of is moving toward playing at a more or less permanent musical fixture with the possibility of eventually building a place that could be like a permanent performance center that could be designed around us and our specific ideas” (Simon 1975, 55). Maybe do it two months out of the year. Prefiguring “Terrapin Station” and, now, Leshtopia.

Again mentions filming in Deadtopia and selling canned concerts (Simon 1975, 55) #The Movie

These ideas of a fixed venue, filming, etc. might let everyone “live comparatively normal lives”, touring selectively. “It would be good for the music” (Simon 1975, 55).

Do you feel ripped off by tapers? JG: “Not particularly. I think it’s OK, if people like it, they can certainly keep doing it. I don’t have any desire to control people as to what they are doing, or what they have … there’s something to be said for being able to record an experience that you’ve liked, or being able to obtain a recording of it. Actually, we all have that stuff, too, in our own collection of tapes. My responsibility to the notes is over after I’ve played them; at that point, I don’t care where they go [laughs], they’ve left home, y’know?” (Simon 1975, 56) #tapers

Asked a question about signaling musical intuitions within the group, he offers a beautiful interpretation of creative collective action: “A lot of it is miracles and that’s part of what creating new forms has to do with; it has to do with creating a situation where miracles can happen, in which amazing coincidences can happen, so that all of a sudden you’re in a new musical space. That’s the challenge of coming up with structures that are loose-tight, you know what I mean?” [JGMF my goodness … Garcia is a sophisticated institutional theorist!] They have an element of looseness to them which means they can expand in any direction or go anywhere from anywhere, or come from anywhere, but they also have enough form so that we can lock back into something. It really has to do with the element of what’s knowable and known and what isn’t known and what isn’t knowable and what can be invented on the spot. There’s a delicate balance in there and since we’re dealing with several consciousnesses at the same time, everybody goes through their individual changes, that those times when everybody is up for it and everybody feels right about it and the form provides openings, then miracles can happen, amazing miracles. That’s what we’re in it for, that’s one of the reasons that we do it is for those moments of ahhh … unexpected joy, just amazing stuff. … Orchestrated twists of fate” (Simon 1975, 56) #creation #institutions #dualities #collective improvisation

Quick note about that nice line “orchestrated twists of fate”: Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks had some out January 1975, I think, so “Simple Twist Of Fate” seems to have entered Jerry’s consciousness right away. He’d start playing it xxx TJS. #songs-S

They took 19 or 20 days to complete Workingman’s, but that has been their most “significant” album, scare quotes Jerry’s (Simon 1975, 57). That was going on while the New Orleans bust scene was “hanging over our heads”. “With American Beauty there was a rash of parent deaths where everybody’s parents croaked in the space of about two or three months. We were working on that and it was just incredible. It was just like tragedy-city --  bad news every day, really” (Simon 1975, 57). #official releases, #GD #dualities

Working with Hunter. Garcia’s a better editor than writer. Hunter finds the words for Garcia. “We don’t clash in terms of our egos and we both tend to focus on our work rather than on ourselves so it works out to be very comfortable.” #Robert Hunter

“I have this hangup about songs. I’m fascinated by fragments because of my involvement in traditional music – there’s a lot of things around that are fragments of songs, and they’ll be this tantalizing glimpse of two or three verses of what was originally a thirty-verse extravaganza, and there will be two or three remaining stanzas in the tradition and you read them or hear them and they’re just utterly mysterious and evocative for odd reasons at different times” (Simon 1975, 57) [jgmf think Whiskey In The Jar] #songs

What musical influences interests? “Everyone, everything, all music. I’m not particularly attached to any one idea or format, I just appreciate whatever is good. It’s whatever I hear, endless numbers of anonymous musicians whom I don’t know on the radio and stuff have influenced me, not to mention all the people who are well known whose names I do now. They’ve influenced me, too. I listen to everything” (Simon 1975, 57). Such a sponge.

In his playing, there’s a sound he is wishing he could hear, a sound he is searching form, “maybe just a little snatch of a guitar player on some record or just a moment … and there’s something about it that says ‘that is a door to something’ – I can’t really explain it, it’s emotional and it goes back to my earliest years, it’s that deep. It just is me really selecting out of the Universe stuff that’s part of that sound. It’s a thing that sometimes I hear very clearly and sometimes I Don’t hear at all, but it has produced by whole development” (Simon 1975, 58). #sounds

Early musical learning: I think Troy 1994 is wrong when he says Garcia had piano lessons, but I need to double-check. Here Garcia responds to a question about early picking up a guitar: “No, I didn’t, unfortunately; I wish I had. I got my first guitar when I was fifteen” (Simon 1975, 58).

“I didn’t really start .. working at the guitar until I was about twenty-three” (Simon 1975, 58). This dates it to electric period, ca. 1965.

“Feel that I’m a person that doesn’t have a great amount of talent. What I’ve learned, I’ve had to really work at learning. It’s been a hassle, basically. That’s one of the reasons I play a lot. I need to play a lot just to keep myself together, just to keep my chops together” (Simon 1975, 58). #workaholism

Question about channeling the Universe. Garcia: “I can’t say that there’s a certain sense when I am transformed, you know, in the sense that all of a sudden God is speaking through my strings … It’s more like if you’re real lucky, and practice and play a lot and try to feel right and everybody wants for it to happen, then there’s a possibility that special things will happen” (Simon 1975, 58). #workaholism

NAJ: “Do you have much ego identification with Jerry Garcia as a rock star or is music your main form of meditation?” Garcia: “Music is my yoga. If there is a yoga, that’s it. Practicing and keeping my muscles together, that is like what I would relate to a physical yoga, a certain amount of hours every day. Life is my yoga, too, but I’ve been a spiritual dilettante off and on through the years, trying various things at various times, and I firmly believe that every avenue that leads to higher consciousness does lead to higher consciousness. If you think it does, it does. If you put energy into it on a daily basis, no matter what it is, some discipline … I believe it will work. I believe that it’s within the power of the mind and consciousness to do that” (Simon 1975, 59).

Question about interviewing: “I can’t really do anything but lie, all talking is lying, and I’m lying now, and that’s true, too. … go and hear me play, that’s me, that’s what I have to say, that’s the form my thoughts have taken, so I haven’t put that much energy into really communicating verbally. It’s all open to misinterpretation” (Simon 1975, 59).

Reading Notes: Jon Sievert's 1978 Guitar Player interview with Jerry Garcia

Man, this is such a great interview. Sievert always connected well with Jerry.

These are my "reading notes", which just means that I am drawing quotes and dropping them back into context. So, for example, some of the pedal steel talk below has been pasted back into my materials on the pedal steel guitar and on the NRPS. There is no pretense of completeness, nor even unbiasedness. This is not a random sample. It's the stuff I think, on this read, worth noting.

As I said, some great stuff here.

Sievert, Jon. 1978. Jerry Garcia: For More Than A Decade, the Patriarch of the San Francisco Sound. Guitar Player 12, 10 (October): 44-46, 114-122, 126-136, 142.

Reading Notes

Puts John Dawson with everyone in 1964 in Mother McCree’s, but I don’t think that’s right? I don’t remember that. (Sievert 1978, 45) #NRPS #John Dawson #pre-GD

Garcia on stagnation and renewal: “I think it's something that happens to every guitar player as he keeps on playing through the years. You're struggling to learn a whole body of material, and you finally learn it and can play it expertly, and then you get bored. It becomes a Now What? situation. You're struggling to obtain ground and you reach a plateau, and then your boredom finally drives you to develop to new levels. I think that's a healthy and normal thing. I seem to go through it about once every year and a half or two years pretty regularly. That's pretty much how my metabolism seems to work. I think of myself really as a guitar student as much as a player or performer, because there's so much being developed and so much that's already been done that I'll never learn it all.” (Sievert 1978, 45).

When he’s in a renewal phase: “First I go out and buy all the new guitar method books that have come out since the last time and read through them and try out ideas and exercises. I find it really helpful to see somebody else's handle on it, because it's possible they can show me new ways of looking at the instrument or music that l hadn't considered before. The state of guitar education today is incredible compared to just 15 years ago. You can learn an astounding amount from just reading books that are available today. I'm working very hard now. I'm working hard on things that I haven't worked hard on before. I have certain exercises that I do, but it's more like working out little bits and pieces of unfinished ideas. A lot of it is just free playing, exploring for places where all of a sudden something is vague or awkward - like suddenly finding yourself in a position that's odd in relation to the key you're playing in.”  etc. (Sievert 1978, 45)

JG 1978, working hard: “I'm spending seven or eight hours a day with it. I'm trying to rebuild myself; I feel like it's time for me to do that in my playing. I don't know whether it will amount to anything, but in six months I'll know. I'm sort of in a two-year plan right now- the first pause of the next level.” (Sievert 1978, 46)

When you're not going through these intense learning periods, how much time do you usually spend with a guitar? “It depends on the schedule. When I'm on the road it's a lot more, but when I'm home I'd say I spend no less than an average of two hours a day at the absolute worst. That's like really screwing around. I think four hours is more normal for me. On the road it goes up to about six, including the show. I lose my edge in a day if I don't stay on top of it constantly. Anything more than two days and it's like being a cripple. And the more you play, the more you notice it if you miss a day. But then there's also the thing that if you're away from the guitar for two or three days sometimes you can come back with something else. Now that's not one of those things you can depend on, but sometimes it does happen just in the flow. You come back and you have a little more of something. I don't know what-confidence, new ideas, or something.” (Sievert 1978, 46)

How did your early process of music education work? “My first orientation was learning from my ear. So I learned mostly from records-Freddie King, B.B. King extensively - and, you know, everybody else. That was my first exposure, mostly because the [San Francisco] Bay Area didn't have that many guitar players back when I started playing, and there really wasn't a lot of local information, or at least I wasn't able to uncover it. For me, I would describe my own learning process as wasting a lot of time. I d id it the hardest way possible, or it seems that way now. I had to spend a lot of time unlearning things- bad habits and so forth. I think I went through as many of these unlearning cycles as I could. It was around 1972 or '73 when I finally unlearned all the things that had hung me up to that point” (Sievert 1978, 46)

“boredom and enthusiasm cycles” JG (Sievert 1978, 112)

“There are times when I wish I were a combination of a French horn and an oboe”, anticipating MIDI (Sievert 1978, 112).

Do you have an Alembic guitar? “Yeah, but I’ve never used it on a gig. I used it on recording sessions a little bit, mainly with. Merl Saunders.” (Sievert 1978, 118). I am not an axe guy, but I don’t recall knowing that he used an Alembic guitar on any of the Merl records. It’d be interesting for gear heads to try to find out where! #gear, #Merl Saunders, #official releases

#methodology Here’s Garcia contradicting himself in the same magazine, seven years apart. 1971: “There is no relationship between [guitar and banjo] except for the fact that they are fretted instruments” (Stuckey 1971 36); 1978, in response to a question about his guitar fingering technique:

“I think it has something to do with my early 5-string banjo playing” (Sievert 1978, 118). Now, he might have changed his mind, or he might have gained new insight in the interim. But it’s also possible that he is responding to questions thoughtfully, but spur-of-the moment. Who among us might not contradict ourselves? Some days I love Jerry’s banjo playing, other days not so much. Being surrounded by recording devices, like a contemporary celebrity or public figure, would flat out suck, consistency-the-hobgoblin-of-petty-minds and all that. We just need to be careful not to overinterpret any one mosaic stone. #banjo

Great line: “Generally speaking, I tend to be style conscious in terms of wanting a song to sound like the world it comes from” (Sievert 1978, 120).

You've described yourself in previous interviews as a playing junkie. Do you still play all the time? “It's what I do. And now I think I'm probably playing more nights per year than I ever have.” (Sievert 1978, 122).

GD and JGB: “Those are really the only things I'm involved with on a continuing basis, because right now they're both sophisticated, demanding, interesting, and fun enough. They're both very satisfying, and that's all I really could deal with right now and do it right.” (Sievert 1978, 122)

Who does your band consist of right now? “John Kahn, my old partner from way back, is playing bass. Buzz Buchanan, a young guy from L.A., is playing drums, plus there's Keith and Donna Godchaux from the Dead, and Maria Muldaur when she's around and she wants to. It has a nice balance of instrumental proficiency and a fine vocal thing, too-both of which I like a lot.” (Sievert 1978, 122) #JGB, #1978

Going back to the early days, why did you switch from electric to acoustic at first? “Well, economics were involved: I could get work as an acoustic player. And also, in terms of accomplishment, I wasn't very good when I stopped playing electric. I didn't really start to develop an understanding more than just a feel for the music-until I got into acoustic. It gave me that chance to be more reflective about it.” (Sievert 1978, 126) #acoustic

“Something about the rhythmic quality of fingerpicking and banjo was getting at something I wanted to develop further, but the rigidness of the banjo stopped me.” (Sievert 1978, 126) #banjo

What are some of the things you've gained playing with people like Merl Saunders? “When I was playing with Merl we did a lot of instrumental material- standards and jazz tunes and things like that. That required a whole lot of quick education for me, and Merl was responsible for that. He really helped me improve myself on a level of harmonic understanding. Playing with him required a whole different style from three-chord rock and roll or even ten-chord rock and roll; it was a whole different thing. But what I was able to bring into that situation was the ability to use odd-length runs in conventional formats. I was able to use ideas that were rhythmically uneven because of working in odd time signatures so much with the Dead. Because Merl did not work in odd times, my relationship with his rhythms made it possible for me to create ideas that were, for example, seven bars long against something that was fundamentally a 4/4 feel.” (Sievert 1978, 128)

How about your work with Howard Wales? “With Howard we never had tunes; Howard would just play through tremendously extended changes. That developed my ear to an amazing point because I had nothing to go on. I didn't even know what key we were in. Here were all these extended chords coming out, and I really had to be able to hear a correspondence somewhere. Merl helped me improve my analytical ability and to understand more about how substitution chords work in standard musical forms. Howard was a great in-between there, because his playing was so outside and totally unpredictable. Also, playing with Merl gave me a real feeling of freshness that carried over to later work with the Dead. So for me, it's very healthy to work with other people. I like doing sessions when I can, but my favorite stuff is really my own band and the Dead. Those are the two most complete experiences for me. ” (Sievert 1978, 128) #Howard Wales, #Merl Saunders, #JGB, #GD

How did Old And In The Way happen to come about? “That band was like scratching an itch I'd had for a long time. I got very much into playing 5-string banjo early on but was frustrated insofar as never really having a good band to play with. Bluegrass is band music, and I've always loved that aspect. In fact that's what I like best – band music rather than solo music. Playing with Old And In The Way was like playing in the bluegrass band I’d always want to play in. It was a great band, and I was flattered to be in such fast company. I was only sorry that my banjo chops were never what they had been when I was playing continually, though they were smoothing out toward the end.” (Sievert 1978, 128) #banjo, #1973, #oaitw, #bluegrass

What is your relationship with the pedal steel guitar these days? “I haven't played it much for quite a while, though I played it pretty steadily for about four years. I really got into it, but it kind of became an either/or situation: I found it very hard to play half the night with a pedal steel and a bar in my left hand and then switch to straight overhand guitar. The difference between a solid finger configuration and a moving arm, wrist, and fingers was too great. It was painful to the muscles. It got to where I couldn't play either of them very well, and I realized it just wouldn't work. I don't consider myself a pedal steel player, and I'm always embarrassed to see that I've placed in the Guitar Player poll.” (Sievert 1978, 128) #pedal steel guitar, #NRPS

Could you talk about your process of composition? (Sievert 1978, 128). [my copy seems to be bungled around here.]

Lots of great complimentary talk about Bob Weir as “the best rhythm guitar player on wheels right now” (Sievert 1978, 130).

“If you have the space in your life where you can be high and play and not be in a critical situation, you can learn a lot of interesting things about yourself and your relation to the instrument and music. We were lucky enough to have an uncritical situation [during the 1965-1966 Acid Tests], so it wasn't like a test of how stoned we could be and still be competent - we weren't concerned with being competent. We were more concerned with being high at the time. The biggest single problem from a practical point of view is that obviously your perception of time gets all weird. Now, that can be interesting, but from a practical standpoint I try to avoid extremes of any sort, because you have the fundamental problems of playing in tune and playing with everybody else. People have to pay a lot of money to see us, so it becomes a matter of professionalism. You don't want to deliver somebody a clunker just because you're too high. I don't, anyway.” (Sievert 1978, 130) #drugs

He works to be able to sight-read music because “there are times when I find it necessary to sketch out an idea to somebody who has a legitimate background – a string player or whatever” (Sievert 1978, 134). He and Kahn had mentioned the great player they got for Cats … I think it was a French horn. see 3/11/78 interview?

“l trade tapes.” – Jerry Garcia, 1978 (Sievert 1978, 136).

What kind of music do you listen to? “Just about everything, really. I buy lots of records, and l trade tapes. I also have a lot of friends turning me on to things, so I'm continually exposed to new music. And not only modern American music or guitar playing, but I listen to keyboard players a lot. I go through little fevers, like one time 1 suddenly got excited about orchestration and started listening to all of the Duke Ellington I could find. I went through a period- actually I'm still going through it- of listening to as much [jazz keyboard legend] Art Tatum as I can find. So much great music has already happened that catching up is a hell of a job. And there's so much new stuff coming out all the time that's so impressive.” (Sievert 1978, 136) #influences, #jazz

What do you like that's new? “It's really hard to draw a line on what's considered new. I really like AI Di Meola, George Benson, and Pat Martino. Pat's really one of my favorites; rhythmically he's really fine. There's a young flamenco player named Paco de Lucía who knocks me out. He has a beautiful flow to his (Sievert 1978, 135) music that's really rare to guitarists. And every once in a while I hear something on the radio, and I can't believe it and have no idea who it is I'm hearing.” (Sievert 1978, 136).

Elvis Costello recently said that he really likes your playing. “Oh yeah, too much. How flattering … I like his music, too. I like most of the new wave stuff- if he's considered new wave. It's obvious as they pass by who's here for keeps and who isn't. Some people have something to say, and it really gets to you no matter what you believe or think that you like. I keep an open mind. I like disco music a lot. All that stuff is interesting to me- it's all music. I like music from other cultures, too.” (Sievert 1978, 135)

“For me, playing in my band -it's like a four-piece band, essentially- is like playing in the new string quartet. It's the new conversational music where the instruments speak to each other, and you have that kind of tightness and dynamic happening- the stuff of string quartets” (Sievert 1978, 142). #JGB, #1978

“I don't have plans. I get surprised because suddenly an interesting project will come up sort of on its own accord. It's a matter of inspiration rather than long-range plans. I'm working as much as I want to now. If I wanted to work all day long, every day, I could do more, but what's the point? Right now I have more to keep me interested and occupied than I ever expected” (Sievert 1978, 142). #why, #1978