Grateful for the memories

THE DEAD PLAYS THE GREENSBORO COLISEUM SUN., APRIL 12

On the road, literally and figuratively

By Brian Clarey 

Mama, mama many worlds I’ve come since I first left home

It was “Brokedown Palace” that did it for me. That lyric in particular summed up all of my hopes and ambitions when I first heard it in 1984. I was 14 years old, living in the Long Island suburbs with my parents — very lame — and the malcontented yearnings I had always felt began to solidify in my young mind. I wanted out. I longed for the day I could shake the dust of my preppy little hometown from my hair and do some living. I suspected there were many big, exciting worlds out there, and I wanted to taste them all. But hell, I was 14. I didn’t even have a driver’s license. So I would listen to Dead bootlegs cassettes on my crappy little Yorx stereo, which was also my alarm clock, over and over and over, rewinding and replaying he lyrics that spoke to me in a way no other music ever had. The Dead were a pretty big deal in my hometown of Garden City, NY. Kids drew the Steal Your Face on their blue burlap binders even in the fourth grade; Dead cover bands proliferated; tie-dye never really went out of style.

Part of it was the iconography: skulls, roses, dancing bears… all that cool shit. Part of it, undeniably, was the drugs associated with the scene — they were as abundant in my hometown as any other, I guess.

Part of it was a teacher at the high school, Mr. Rivadue, a tiny Canadian Deadhead who wore tie-dyes in class and went to shows with some of the older students who didn’t mind the fact that he wouldn’t let them do any drugs. Rivadue was also one of the best teachers I ever had, and I liked the idea that Deadheads were smart.

But for me it was the lyrics. I’ve always been a word man, and Dead songs far outweighed the new-wave pabulum and post-punk crap I had been listening to in grade school.

Going to plant a weeping willow, On the banks green edge it will grow, grow, grow Sing a lullaby beside the water, Lovers come and go, the river roll, roll, roll These words had heft, meaning… a kind of common-man poetry that still influences my writing to this day. In summer 1986 I went to my first Dead show. They were paired with Bob Dylan at Giants Stadium. I drove out to Jersey with Silly, and we scored tickets in the parking lot, where several dozen kids from our high school were partying and making deals.

I’d be lying if I told you I remembered anything from that show, other than hanging out with Silly in the lot. I loved the parking lots at dead shows, where thousands of freaks would chill for hours and hours before and after the shows, selling peanutbutter-and-banana sandwiches, veggie burritos, handmade T-shirts and an entire pharmacopeia of illegal substances proffered by cool cats and groovy chicks. There would be hacky sack and Frisbee, music and laughter, dancing and screwing… action baby, of the kind I yearned to see when I was a lost teenager trying to discover the world.

And so I started going to Dead shows: Nassau Coliseum, just a mile or so from my parents’ house; the Brendan Byrne Arena over in Jersey; Madison Square Garden. We’d haul up to Saratoga or Albany, out to Philly and Pittsburgh.

Some of my crew even made it down to Greensboro for the biannual tour stops. Every one was a surreal treasure. I saw waves of people, flowing like water, spilling over the side of Giants Stadium into the general admission area. I saw a girl go into heatstroke on the floor of the Vet in Philly; I tried to shove my wallet in her mouth because I thought she was having a seizure. I got knocked on my ass by a fire hose in Pittsburgh and saw cops on horseback trample a gate-crasher in Saratoga. I saw guys in neckties freak dancing at Madison Square Garden. My friend Cap spotted Wavy Gravy traipsing Shakedown Street in the Meadowlands parking lot. My friend Dr. Lawyer swears it started raining inside the Hartford Civic Center during a spirited version of “Looks Like Rain.”

At the 1988 show at the University of New Orleans, Ramn Ramone and I scored tickets in the handicapped section and spent the first set dancing with people in wheelchairs.

By then I knew the words to every song — even the obscure ones like the Blues for Allah and Jerry Garcia Band stuff. We sang them like anthems with our fists in the air, hugging during Jerry Garcia’s soaring guitar work and floating to Bob Weir’s ethereal voice.

We’d cram a dozen or so into a hotel room or sleep in our cars, selling imported beers to pay our way. We’d buy jewelry and T-shirts and scrutinize each others’ purchases like a fall fashion line. We’d sing and party and meet girls and get lost. Good times.

It was a formula for lasting friendships, that’s for sure, and also an ethos that included beauty and laughter, kindness and generosity, fellowship and gratitude.

At least, that’s how it seemed to us. The Dead influenced my life in a number of ways — musically, of course, but also the band, their music and their fans gave me a taste for the world outside my bedroom window in my parents’ house in the suburbs. I had always suspected there was something more. After a few dozen Dead shows, I knew there was something more. So I’ll be there on Sunday night when

the Dead come to town. Silly, who is now a banker in Charlotte, will be there too. It will be a trip down memory lane, to be sure, a celebration of days gone by and an acknowledgement of the possibilities yet to come. But mostly it should just be a lot of fun. I’ll be in the parking lot for a couple hours before the show, and if there are any good T-shirt makers still out there, I’ll likely pick one up. I’ll sing along to all the songs, if I can still remember the words. I’ll remember the boy I used to be, the longings he felt and the ambitions he harbored. And if “Brokedown Palace” makes it onto the set list… well, all the better.

Grateful Dead, family style

By Jordan Green

My dad hitchhiked to California from Baltimore in 1966 at the age of 18. He rented an apartment on Ashbury Street. That pilgrimage of youthful self-discovery served as the mythical lodestone on which my own dreams would later unfold Members of Big Brother & the Holding Company had previously lived in the apartment where my dad took up residence, and if memory serves he salvaged a strip of black and white photographs of Janis Joplin and Jerry Garcia, the celebrated guitar player of the Grateful Dead, mugging for the camera.

My parents owned Grateful Dead LPs from the time before I was born: The 1967 self-titled debut, Anthem of the Sun, also from 1967; Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty, both from 1970; and the double live LP known as “Skull and Roses,” from 1971. Later, my parents’ friend, David Hurt, a fellow communard and the father of my best buddy Garland, pulled out the Aoxomoxoa album, from 1969. My mom, my dad, David and I listened to it appreciatively one summer evening on the screened-in porch at David’s house.

My Montessori teacher, Leslie Shane, another good friend of my parents, always said she had a crush on Jerry, although she may have been even more enamored of Bob Dylan.

In the early 1980s, when cassette duplication technology became widely available, Leslie and another friend, Jean Zeitz, arranged for a copy of the Dead’s triple album Europe ’72 to be made for me. When my dog, Star, was killed after getting hit by a car, I mourned his passing, tears welling in my eyes as Jerry sang “He’s Gone.” Being that my parents were collegeeducated peasants who took a vow of poverty, they didn’t buy new music after they moved to Kentucky in 1971, but we somehow obtained other Dead albums: Wake of the Flood, from 1973; and Blues for Allah, from 1975. Every time my dad would visit his friend, Jan Willoughby, a balding, eccentric ex-professor who had jumped off the academic track at the University of Kentucky some years earlier, I would pull out his copy of Mars Hotel, from 1974, and put it on the turntable. 

Forever, it seems, I’ve known the band’s history and musical evolution: Their speedy rock and roll on the debut album, the acid experimentalism of Anthem, the song-based psychedelia of Aoxomoxoa, their sudden transition to rustic Americana on Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty, and the swaggering hard country of “Skull and Roses.” And I knew exactly what year each of their albums had been released.

I loved this band from the age of 6 onward, practically to the exclusion of anything else. Listening as a child Deadhead a decade and a half after the band’s founding, imagine my surprise when our family emerged from our agrarian time warp and rejoined the modern world in the age of Reagan at discovering that the Grateful Dead were still making albums, and, what’s more, still played concerts all over the country.

I caught flak from my neighbor, a fiery redhead named Heather who was two years younger than me, because the Dead’s name and skeleton iconography was “satanic.” I knew better, but couldn’t deny that they were weird. My dad confirmed as much, telling me that, like him, the members of the Grateful Dead probably sat around their houses naked, as a consequence of years of smoking pot. Even now, almost three decades later as I spend late nights in the office with archival Dead concerts streaming over the internet as the soundtrack for my workload, I struggle to put my finger on their magic. Their great, sprawling body of American song is certainly joyous, adventurous and, probably most importantly, communal. The give and take of the playing coalesces with the inclusive subject matter of the songs, which are parables of communities forged along the frontier of polite society.

Events stoked my love affair with the Dead. First, when the 1983 drought sucked the creek dry, left a stunned black snake stranded on the blacktop and destroyed our tobacco crop, my dad decided it was time for a vacation and hauled me with him to California on a three-week trip by Amtrak, thumb, flight and bus. We stopped to see a friend named John Murphy in Chicago, who pulled out a bootleg LP called Vintage Dead. Later, at a record store in Oakland, Calif., my dad purchased the double album Reckoning from 1981, Go to Heaven from 1980, and Terrapin Station from 1977. (He also picked up a copy of Black Market Clash by the Clash, setting the stage for an entirely different exploration.) On the flight back to Kentucky, we had a layover in Chicago.

I spotted a dude wearing a Dead T-shirt and struck up a conversation with him. He asked my dad if he wanted to step outside to share a joint. My dad reluctantly and prudently declined the offer.

In 1985, we got our first chance to see the Dead live as a family. We filled a couple carloads of adults; I can’t remember any other children being there. As we traveled the interstate through northern Kentucky, I noted with mounting excitement that Deadhead stickers adorned various cars. By the time we got to Kellogg Avenue, traffic was moving at a crawl and we saw hippies walking along the roadside approaching Riverbend Music Center.

It was a great show, and I distinctly recall stellar renditions of “Alabama Getaway” and the Dylan song “Quinn the Eskimo.” Even though it rained, a spirit of fellowship prevailed. I remember an acquaintance of someone in our party offering me a bite of his slice of pizza.

We saw harbingers of the new era of the Dead, too. A punk chick with a hot-pink Mohawk stood in third row screamed, “Jerry, Jerry, Jerry….” A clutch of clean-cut fraternity brothers dressed in khaki shorts tripped on acid. One of them abruptly plopped down in a mud puddle outside of the amphitheater and started thrashing his arms. As we left, my parents pointed to a late-model Toyota pickup, and marveled at the seeming affluence of the younger fans. “These people look like they should be at a Prince concert,” my dad sniffed.

The Grateful Dead played the Greensboro Coliseum seven times

05/01/80

Set 1:

Alabama Getaway
Promised Land
Candyman
Me and My Uncle
Big River
Althea
Easy To Love You
New Minglewood
Blues
Sugaree
Lost Sailor
Saint Of
Circumstance
Deal

Set 2:
Feel Like A
Stranger
Don’t Ease Me In
Estimated Prophet
Uncle John’s Band
Drums
Wharf Rat
Around And
Around
Johnny B. Goode

Encore:
Brokedown Palace
04/30/81

Set 1:
Jack Straw
Peggy-O
CC Rider
Alabama Getaway
Greatest Story
Ever Told
Loser
Looks Like Rain
China Cat
Sunflower
I Know You Rider

Set 2:
Shakedown Street

Samson And
Delilah
It Must Have Been
The Roses
Estimated Prophet
Eyes Of The World
Drums
Truckin’
Black Peter
Around and
Around
Johnny B. Goode

Encore:
Casey Jones
10/09/83

Set 1:
Shakedown Street
Samson And
Delilah
Peggy-O
Little Red Rooster
Candyman
My Brother Esau
Big Railroad Blues
Let It Grow

Set 2:
Touch Of Grey
Estimated Prophet
Eyes Of The World
Man Smart-
Woman Smarter
Drums
Not Fade Away
Sugar Magnolia

Encore:
Baby Blue
03/30/89

Set 1:
Bertha
Jack Straw
Row Jimmy
Blow Away
When I Paint My

Masterpiece
Bird Song
Promised Land

Set 2:
China Cat
Sunflower
I Know You Rider
Looks Like Rain
He’s Gone
Drums
The Other One
Stella Blue
Sugar Magnolia

Encore:
Knockin’ On
Heaven’s Door
03/31/89

Set 1:
Hell In A Bucket
Sugaree
New Minglewood
Blues
Peggy-O
Me And My Uncle
Big River
Loser
Victim or the
Crime
Standing on the
Moon

Set 2:
Hey Pocky Way
Truckin’
Terrapin Station
Drums
I Will Take You
Home
All Along the
Watchtower
Morning Dew
Good Lovin’

Encore:
Brokedown Palace

03/31/91
Set 1:
Mississippi Half-
Step
Wang Dang Doodle
Friend Of The Devil
Queen Jane
Approximately
West LA Fadeaway
Cassidy
Might As Well

Set 2:
Samson And Delilah
Eyes Of The World
Playin’ In The Band
Drums
Space
The Wheel
Around And Around
Johnny B. Goode

Encore:

Knockin’ On
Heaven’s Door
04/01/91

Set 1:
Jack Straw
Peggy-O
It’s All Over Now
Candyman
Just Like Tom
Thumb’s Blues

Picasso Moon
Bird Song

Set 2:
China Cat Sunflower
I Know You Rider
Looks Like Rain
Dark Star
Drums
Space
Dark Star Reprise

Playin’ Reprise
Black Peter
Turn On Your Love
Light

Encore:
Baby Blue

Jeri Rowe, Jerry Garcia and the great ‘extra sticky’ sticker production caper

By Charles Womack

 

My friend Jeri Rowe was the first person to receive one of my Jerry Garcia stickers. We met back in 1988 when he was newly-hired reporter covering cops and crime in Randolph County for the Greensboro News & Record, and I was selling ads for the Randleman (NC) Reporter. It was March 1989 and I was being dragged to another Grateful Dead show by my brother, Patrick. Pat was convinced that if I could see them enough times, I’d be captured by their magic. Since I had acess to newspaper credentials, and a newly-budding desire for capitalism, I hatched a scheme.

I contacted the Dead’s longtime publicist Dennis McNally in California and lined up a review ticket and a photo pass, and packed my bags for another bonding excursion with my brother. We had traveled to Hampton Roads, Va,, Maryland, DC and other venues, but the shows in Greensboro are when my entreprenurial skills were born. I had access to a printing press, sticker paper and computers, and an idea to make some cash.

I found a cool black silhouette of Jerry Garcia and had the printers crank me out about 500 3-by-5 stickers. Half were on white paper and half were on yellow, and they would stick like hell. I mean, once you put these bad boys on, if you tried to peel ‘em off… it would rip and tear and take forever to remove.

My cost on the stickers? A nickel. My cost to the buyers? One dollar. I took them to the show in Greensboro and I sold a few. But mostlywe gave ’em away to “close friends” and “new friends.”

I didn’t tally my bounty, but used the experience to further my business ideas. I’d like to think I broke even. A few days before those Greensboro shows, I ran into Rowe at our regular meeting spot — the Asheboro Police Department. We chatted about going to the show and I laid one of my Garcia stickers on him, hot off the press. He complimented the design and thanked me as I told him he was the first to get one. I see Jeri from time to time and years later he brought up the Garcia sticker, saying, “You know that Jerry Garcia sticker stayed on my refrigerator until I moved. I had a bitch of a time getting it off.” We both laughed and marveled at its endurance. And ours.

Jerry Garcia, the sticker image, picks away in Greensboro.

Fellow campers enjoy the festivities before or after one of the shows in Greensboro at the Womack campsite. (photos by Charles Womack)

The night I met Jerry

By Edward Cone

 

My Grateful Dead stories are different from yours, but I bet a lot of them rhyme.

You’re thinking of a great road trip, rewarded by an exceptional show? I’m thinking Hampton, Va., April of ’83. A serendipitous moment? I’ve got a wintry night in Philly when the band opened with “Cold Rain and Snow.” We remember the Deadheads themselves, the twirlers and the freaks and the guy who burst into a crowded men’s room, shouting, “I guess everyone takes a leak during ‘El Paso.’” You know these stories, or versions of them. So I guess I should tell the one where I meet Jerry.

It was Easter weekend, 1987. Backstage, between sets, at the Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre in Orange County, Calif. I was 24, old enough to know that encounters with famous people can be disappointing. But I was not disappointed. Talking to Jerry was like climbing the mountain and finding the wise man at home. The whole experience was a trip. A business trip, to be precise.

A couple of months earlier, I’d pitched a story idea about the Dead to my boss at Forbes magazine. Other bands prosecuted bootleggers, but the Dead encouraged people to tape their shows. People traded tapes, the sense of community around the band grew and endless sold-out concert tours kept the money flowing in. Variations on this strategy became popular during the internet bubble, but it was pretty fresh back in the Reagan era. They put me on the story with a senior editor who did not care much for the Dead. After a couple of shows in Jersey and some negotiations with the band’s management, we flew to LA. We interviewed a lot of people that week. Clive Davis received us in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. He ate an entire plate of grapes without offering us one. David Geffen sat down at the Ivy and told our local bureau chief that he needed to lose weight. We came away with a big story about a new technology that was pulling in tons of money — the compact disc. It was fun, but it wasn’t what I’d come for. Finally, we made it to Orange County and checked into our hotel. That night, we went to see the band at the amphitheater — my first California show. The next day, after my maniacal editor woke me up early to play tennis with a couple of salesmen, we hung out poolside with

Brent Mydland, who was still a few years away from the fate that awaits all Grateful Dead keyboardists and Spinal Tap drummers. Later we drank beers and talked for some time with Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart in Kreutzmann’s suite.

So far, so good. But the rest of the band was nowhere to be found. I knew our story wouldn’t be complete unless we got face time with Garcia, the heart and soul of the group from its earliest days. And from a lessprofessional point of view, Jerry was the one person I really wanted to meet. He was more than a guitarist, he was a guru. That year, as my father was dying back home in Greensboro, I found some solace when he sang that we all wear a touch of grey. I had a job to do, but I was on a pilgrimage, too. Back to Irvine Meadows for another show. We flashed our backstage passes and wandered around the inner sanctum while the stage crew did its thing. I had a brief, unsatisfying talk with Phil Lesh, almost got beat up by a very large roadie and interviewed Bob Weir in his dressing room. During the opening set, I opened a longneck and leaned on an amp, looking over Jerry’s shoulder at the crowd while the band played “Promised Land.”

And then, during the break, we got the summons. In a trailer, on a couch, surrounded by his bandmates and the legendary promoter Bill Graham, sat Jerry, graying at 44, holding court.

After some banter — I remember asking him why the band never played “Cosmic Charlie” — we asked if he felt he’d gotten a fresh start after his recent diabetic coma. “I’m not a whole new me but pretty new, not a new me but an extrapolation of the old me,” he said. We talked about work: “If you don’t love it, fuck it, it’s not worth doing. The money part is not the important part, the important part is the opportunity to get your hands wet, to go out there to jump around, fuck around, make mistakes. Try weird stuff, see what works.”

And so it went (you can listen to the interview here: edcone.typepad.com/wordup/2003/01/ a_conversation_.html. At the end, he cited Borges, mispronouncing his name as he told the story of a character who longed for a death with “an adventure attached to it.” “That’s how I feel,” he said. We went back to New York and wrote our article, which left out all the good parts. I married the reporter who fact-checked it.

The Grateful Dead performed March 30 and 31, 1989 at the Greensboro Coliseum. (photo by Charles Womack)