The Grateful Dead weren't through with me. I'd tried to like them on their own merits, I'd tried to use them as romantic subterfuge - I'd learned my lesson.
The years passed, and I wrote songs when I wasn't busy with something else, and by the time the 90's rolled around I had an album's worth of material. I eventually accumulated a few friends who were reasonably proficient at different instruments, and we declared ourselves a band - in theory if not practice; we didn't play live, we didn't publicize ourselves in any way, but every so often we got together, learned the chords to a song that one of us had written (usually me), and, for lack of a less serious word, rehearsed.
We recorded some of it, rather crudely, and got some encouraging feedback (see my post on Linda Stein), so we tried giving it a slightly more professional feel to see if a record company would take a chance on us. To make a long story short, we drew a smattering of interest, but refusing to do live shows hurt our cause more than I thought it would, and we wound up just sitting on the tapes for several years. Pity, too, if I do say so myself; pop culture could have used a band like us around then.
The fellow we enlisted to give us a presentable sound - or "producer," however meaningless that word - actually did like our stuff, though, and as our demo tape languished, he would play it for his friends and speak of us highly. I didn't give it much thought at the time, but he was (is) actually a fairly established and well-liked figure among professional musicians in the Bay Area, and one afternoon he gave me a call. These might not be the exact words, but they're not far off:
"Hey, dude; I had a friend of mine over just now, and I was playing him your demo tape. He really liked the lyrics, and he wanted to see if you'd be interested in writing stuff for his band. I gave him your number; I hope that's all right." Actually, it wasn't entirely all right; I'm a bit reclusive, and didn't like thinking a stranger might call me unexpectedly. "You gave my number to someone I don't know? Who was it?" "Oh, he's a cool guy; don't worry. You might have heard of him. His name's Jerry Garcia. You know The Grateful Dead?"
Yes; I knew The Grateful Dead. The rest of the conversation I don't recall, but there wasn't much to it. A day or two later, the phone rang - I remember the call came at an inopportune moment, and I answered it irritably.
"Hello?" "Hello." "Yes, who is this?" "Well, we haven't met, but a friend of mine gave me your number. My name's Jerry Garcia." Gulp. "Yes, Mr. Garcia?"
He didn't come right out and ask me to write lyrics for them, but he said he dug (he used the word "dug") my lyrics, and wanted to know if we could meet some time. I said I would be happy to meet with him at whatever time he found convenient. "Well, I have to leave for a couple weeks, but when I get back, I'd like to talk to you if you have some spare time." It was a brief conversation, but I remember he seemed very low-key and affable; I couldn't help feeling a little guilty for holding his band in such perennial scorn.
I didn't hear back from him, and a month or so later - maybe less - I turn on the news: Jerry Garcia is dead.
I don't know if I'd necessarily have gotten the gig (how I hate that word), but I expect hearing them sing lyrics I'd written would have done a lot to improve The Grateful Dead for me. I don't like to think of them framed by interminable jamming (how I hate that word, too) and noodling, but the typical GD song had a meter I could have written for quite comfortably. I've contributed lyrics for several bands since then - including a few quite well-known ones; you may well have heard some of them - and they're not always as accommodating of my sense of prosody as the Dead would likely have been. Acts that need help with lyrics are frequently sensitive about receiving it, resisting acknowledgment. It would have been nice to work with a band that made no bones about needing a helping hand.
Ah, what might have been.
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A less serious word than "rehearse"?
I once waited in line to say a few words to Magic Slim after a set at a Chicago blues club. In front of me, a callow young frat boy type asked Slim if he had any advice for a fledgling blues player. Slim mulled the question over for a moment.
"Play", he said.
The callow young frat boy type must have been disappointed, or thought Slim needed a hand with expressing himself, because he immediately and eagerly tried to inflate the statement, answering back "Oh, you mean I should be sure to rehearse a lot!"
After the briefest of pauses, without adding a syllable, Slim offered again: "Play".
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Coppertop, I love that story. Some people don't get the simplest ideas, do they? I'm a computer programmer by trade, not a musician (I almost typed "magician," because music is magic to me, having no talent) but the idea Magic Slim was trying to get across works for any profession.
If you want to program, then program. Don't endlessly read books about it, hang out in programming forums hoping for someone to give you "tips," write letters to Bill Gates and Steve Jobs telling them you can learn it fast.
You just code. And when you get one project done, you write another one.
Lather, Rinse, Repeat.
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Fascinating. Great series of posts.
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I had a big laugh at this: "I expect hearing them sing lyrics I'd written would have done a lot to improve The Grateful Dead for me." That must be the ultimate expression of why someone would change their opinion about a band! These GD stories have been wonderful - thanks for sharing.
Magic Slim's advice is sage, and as it often is with sages, succinct.
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AA! It's very seldom I find someone who can pick le mot juste when I'm having difficulty hitting the bullseye; you've just done it twice. And then had the audacity to share an exquisitely appropriate anecdote that illustrates your point with grace and economy of language, while I've just written the MOG equivalent of A la recherche du temps perdu about a band I don't even like. I snarl silently as I'm left with no choice but to express admiration.
Konk; your comment reminds me that I have to forward you a question someone sent to me regarding some difficulty or other with computers; my suave tone masks a complete ignorance of these matters.
derm, I'm very glad you liked them. Thank you!
Jonh, surely you see my point, though. What more direct a trail to your tastes can a band blaze than to appeal to your narcissism?
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Your meditation on the Dead has been a fascinating read. In Part 1 you wrote, "How could a band standing almost at the dead center of ground zero during the most audacious period of social, cultural and artistic experimentation America has ever known produce nothing but this blurry treacle while bands like Jefferson Airplane, QMS , and Big Brother & The Holding Company surrounded them?" I'm not sure I would give its music the wonderfully poetic term "blurry treacle," especially numbers like "Dark Star," but a similar question was in my mind during the Dead's later career: how could a rock group that hadn't had any record hits in eons get to be the top-grossing live rock act? My theory is that the Dead attracted crowds who wanted to be at the Dead center of ground zero of hippiedom, so that they could have permission to truly become hippies for a few hours. Because the music was just part of the mystique, just as it had been during your first Dead concert, that put less burden on the music being top-notch just as long as it was good enough. Wherever the Dead performed would by definition become Hippie Central because the Dead had the perfect credentials: it had been there in the Bay Area at the beginning where hippie culture was first named; it had never broken up or mutated too much unlike the other major founding Bay Area hippie rock groups; it had never compromised its ideals; and it had kept a certain level of quality in its music and performances.
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i am not sure i believe it, garcia always had hunter, there was no one else
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Spike, I think you've hit on something with this "hippie central" theory, and I think the way you've explained it - the care you take to avoid condemning it as creative inertia or to praise it as firmness and resolution - displays a critical self-awareness one sees far too little of. Although if a band from the period had to remain its standard-bearer, I wish it could have been Jefferson Airplane. And Go to Heaven is tough to explain.
steve, I encountered the same reaction from other people I told that (entirely true) story to. I can't really explain it. I hadn't given Robert Hunter's role much thought back when I labored to "get" the band, but I can't think of any Jerry Garcia songs that didn't have Robert Hunter's lyrics. Possibly our producer misunderstood or (no doubt unintentionally) misrepresented what was said, and Mr. Garcia meant only to express his admiration, nothing more (after all, as I said, he never actually asked me to write anything), possibly he'd decided to try a new direction in the lyrics. I don't know. The only possible evidence I can think of would be to obtain our producer's testimony, but it would do nothing to prove I got that call from Jerry Garcia. But surely after - what, thirty years? - it would have occurred to him that Robert Hunter's lyrics were... Well, "idiotic" was, I agree, too mean-spirited; let's say they offered room for improvement.
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I didn't doubt the anecdote for a second, but steve simon has a point: it's the sort of "stranger than fiction" event that sounds like audacious malarkey: zarpex, poised on the brink of becoming a rock and roll legend, turns on the TV and learns his meal ticket's gone belly up.
When you get around to writing your fabricated memoirs - or your completely true short story cycle - it deserves a place of prominence. It's a good story either way.
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AA, I don't know if you realize it, but your remark above - "It's a good story either way" - touches on a viewpoint that I've embraced since I first grasped its importance. It showed up in my post on J.T. LeRoy/Laura Albert and in my post about Laurie Anderson. Keats summarized it famously in his "Ode on a Grecian Urn": Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know.
"Beauty is truth? What kind of foolishness is this? Truth abounds in ugliness! And how can this be all I need to know?" It sounds like the most dandified sort of self-delusion. But I was in a business meeting years ago listening to some lawyer or accountant intoning about the significance of some long list of figures on a sheet of paper, using baffling acronyms like "LIBOR," words that serve no purpose in the real world, like "amortization," and phrases so hideous they can only be used in the discourse of finance, like "tax-protected investment vehicle." I suppose these sorts of meetings are part - a ghastly part - of most people's lives at one point or another, but when I find myself in them, well, if I were a drawing, there would be at least three question marks bunched tightly together over my head at all times.
Then a thought struck me: how do I know one single word this guy is saying contains the least shred of truth? Indeed, how do I know anything I've ever been told by a professor or read in a book of history or science is true? Or anything I haven't confirmed by subjective experience or rigorous logic based on it? I can't.
The only valid currency humankind trades in is happiness (which is not synonymous with beauty, but the meaning of which converges with it). It comes in many forms, which can differ from person to person, but nothing else is ever the object of any of our thoughts, actions, or purposes. We sometimes seek it indirectly, but it's the one and only motive we know. That's why I hold A Million Little Pieces in such contempt and defend Sarah so vigorously. It's not because a phony author is somehow valid and a phony memoir isn't. It's because reading Sarah brought me laughter and insight, whereas reading A Million Little Pieces insulted my intelligence and wasted my time. I spoke of feeling a certain envy when I thought of the people who'd studied and absorbed an entirely imaginary Egyptian history under Laurie Anderson, and not knowing why. That was lazy on my part; I know perfectly well why. It's because there's a glittering gem of artifice in their minds, filed under "fact," that they alone possess. There's no possible way anyone else could share in it. A gifted artist contributed to their reality.
On the basis, AA, of your observation that "it's a good story either way," I will stand on my account, and offer no proof, testimony, heartfelt vows, affidavits or notarized documents. That is all ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know.