Selvin Joel - Fare thee well: the final chapter of the Grateful Deads long, strange trip

Copyright 2018 by Joel Selvin

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First Edition: June 2018

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Selvin, Joel, author. | Turley, Pamela, author.

Title: Fare thee well: the final chapter of the Grateful Deads long, strange trip / Joel Selvin with Pamela Turley.

Description: First edition. | New York, NY : Da Capo Press, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017058056 (print) | LCCN 2017058615 (ebook) | ISBN 9780306903045 (e-book) | ISBN 9780306903052 (hardcover)

Subjects: LCSH: Grateful Dead (Musical group) | Rock musiciansUnited StatesBiography.

Classification: LCC ML421.G72 (ebook) | LCC ML421.G72 S45 2018 (print) | DDC 782.42166092/2dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017058056

ISBNs: 978-0-306-90305-2 (hardcover); 978-0-306-90304-5 (ebook)

E3-20180503-JV-NF

To Bobby, Phil, Mickey, and Billy and all the Deadheads.

C HRIST, NOT Garcia.

Nobody expected that. True, everybody on the plane had heard him wheezing when he fell asleep on the flight home from the bands last concert at Soldier Field in Chicago, but his death in August 1995 had come as a complete and sudden shock to all his bandmates and their organization.

The Deadheads, especially the canny older guard of the bands exceptionally knowing, caring fans, were not so surprised. Many had stopped coming to shows after Garcia returned from his diabetic coma in 1987. They were heartbroken as they watched his waistline explode, his health deteriorate, and his once unparalleled skills on guitar disintegrate. As the bands performances through the nineties continued to devolve with Garcias personal problems increasingly apparentand their audiences almost inexplicably still growing beyond imaginationsome simply stopped attending, convinced they were watching him kill himself.

Just as no other band had ever been like the Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia had been like no other bandleader. He was the philosophical axis, the virtuoso guitar player, the father figure, the best friend. In fact, each one of the four surviving members thought that he alone had been Garcias best friendthey held no such illusions about each other. Garcia was their true north. Since they were young men, they had set their compasses to him. His death hit them like a sledgehammer.

But in the uncertain and bewildering days after Garcias death, it wasnt just the loss of friendship with him that they had to mourn. Their entire foundation had come loose, and they were jolted by the harsh realities that had suddenly intruded into their lives. Distraught and fearful, uncertain of the future, canceling engagements, laying off loyal crew, these men had barely seen each other since the funeral, couldnt bring themselves to. Each one had largely disappeared into his own world. Four months went by after Garcias death before the four surviving members could muster the will to meet and decide what to do about the beast called the Grateful Dead that had ruled their lives for the better part of four decades.

After thirty years of touring, the band ached from a deep weariness that almost no one but their road crew could understand. Over the years, they had realized the Grateful Dead was bigger than all of them, had a life of its own, and created its own momentum. But could it survive without the visionary leadership of its founding father? There had been many lean years in the history of the Dead, but by the time of Garcias death, they were playing to stadiums full of paying customers in every city in the country and it was hard not to go out and pick up the money. They had come to enjoy the charter jets, limousines, and five-star hotels. Band members, along with crew and staff, were settling down, getting married, raising families, buying expensive homes. Their employees numbered more than sixty, many of whom had been on the trip for decades.

The bands so-called career was largely an accident. The Grateful Dead never sought success. They saw themselves as musicians. They played music. The actual business of a rock-and-roll band was a mystery to them, and they couldnt be bothered with it. They didnt think in terms of wealth and fame; they hadnt sought it and didnt know how to value it. Eventually, they realized if they were going to manage their organization and continue to do what they loved, they had to come to terms with the commerce, and they made a grudging, uneasy peace with it. More than any other rock band, the Grateful Dead had enjoyed freedom from highly structured and rigid business practices. Instead of corporate bylaws, they had lived by a code vigilantly observed, which had served to create the Grateful Dead ethos. They had largely been able to approach life on their own terms, but with the level of success they had stumbled into, that carefree attitude was no longer possible.

The band members and their most trusted associates showed up Thursday morning, December 7, at the bands old Victorian in downtown San Rafael that had served as their headquarters for more than thirty yearsthe new Novato headquarters on Bel Marin Keys Road was not quite ready. They were there for a meeting of the board of directors of Grateful Dead Productions, the corporate arm of the famed psychedelic rock band. They were weighed down with grief and the burden of having to decide the fate of not only themselves, but of all the people who depended on the organization for their livelihood. Their long-suffering staff stood by anxiously. Drummer Billy Kreutzmann still couldnt bring himself to attend and stayed behind in Hawaii.

It would be the last board meeting at the Lincoln Street complex, held in the upstairs room in an auxiliary building across the street from the ramshackle two-story gabled house on the quiet corner. In typical Grateful Dead fashion, the band had rented the building since they first moved to Marin County and had only recently purchased the former Coca-Cola bottling plant in nearby Novato where the bands thriving merchandise enterprise had already been located under a rental agreement for several years, and where the entire Grateful Dead operation would now be centered. Just before he died, Garcia had visited the new rehearsal hall and offices and given his approval.