Dennis McNally - A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead

Table of Contents

A Long Strange Trip is dedicated to the memories of Jerry Garcia and Dick Latvala

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

HUNTER THOMPSON

Look, there are two curves in the air: the air That mans fate breathes: there is the rise and fall ofthe Christian culture-complex, that broke its dawn-cloudFifteen centuries ago, and now past noon Drifts to decline; and theres the yet vaster curve, but mostly in the future, of the age that began at Kitty-hawk Within ones lifetime.The first of these curves passing its noon and the second orientAll in ones little lifetime make it seem pivotal.Truly the time is marked by insane splendors and agonies. But watch when the two curves cross: you childrenNot far away down the hawks nightmare future: youwill see monsters.

ROBINSON JEFFERS, Diagram

Thats why the Lord gave us three ears. An invisible one for what is not said.

ROBERT HUNTER

Preface

As I came of age in the 1960s, I defined two fundamental intellectual orientations in my life. The first, born of modest participation in and deep sympathy for the civil rights and antiwar movements, and in the antimaterialist aspects of hippie, was an affinity for elements of culture outside the mainstream. The second, by instinct and the blessing of having wonderful teachers, was a profound respect for the study of history. So when I arrived at graduate school in 1971 and discovered that it was more a professional training center than a hall of scholars, I chose a topic of study that would maintain my identification with that first orientation: a biography of Jack Kerouac, my intellectual forefather.

Six months after I began in 1972 what became Desolate Angel: JackKerouac, the Beat Generation, and America (Random House, 1979), a friend took me to my first Grateful Dead concert, introduced me to the psychedelic experience, and changed my life. A few months later, it occurred to me that I wanted to write a two-volume history of postWorld War II American bohemia, volume one via the life of Kerouac and volume two through the lives of the Grateful Dead. It was my great good fortune (and intuitive correctness about the fundamental connections between the two phenomena) that Jerry Garcia shared my vision. I sent him a copy of Desolate Angel on publication, and eventually we met. Shortly after, he said, Why dont you do us? At one of our first meetings, we chatted in his dressing room, which was decorated with two pictures, one of his late friend and musical cohort, Pigpen, and one of Jack Kerouac.

At one of our first interviews, he commented, For the sake of history, or whatever, as a member of the Grateful Dead, and as a person whos consciously involved in some kind of historical process, right, its very important to me that somehow some essence of what were doing is accurately... that it conforms to my biashe laughed... that some representation of us is undertaken... your sensitivity with Kerouac and Cassady and the resonance of me having known Cassady and so forth, that resonance tells me that your work at the second levelI mean you werent there when it was happening, but your sensitivity and selectivity and so forth, on the second level away from it was accurate enough it hit my recognitions, and the fact that youre interested in usI mean that eminently qualifies you, as far as Im concerned.

That conversation was in 1981. In 1984, the Grateful Dead Productions company receptionist complained at a meeting that reporters were annoying her because no one was dealing with them, and Garcia remarked, Get McNally to do it. He knows that shit. So from then until the end of the road for the band in 1995, I was the bands publicist, adding a new layer of knowledge, intimacy, and detail to my study. Among many other things, the Dead was a spiritual experience, a musical phenomenon, and a business, and it is my hope that I have included all these facets in my portrait. It is for that reason that there are two sorts of chapters in A Long Strange Trip. It is largely a linear narrative that spans the early 1940s (the childhoods of Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh) to 1996, when we scattered Garcias ashes. In between these chapters, you will find interlude chapters that describe a hypothetical year in the 1980s and 90s, the era in which the band was an established success, the time that I witnessed directly, and within that year a hypothetical or perhaps more ideally archetypal concert. These interlude chapters describe subtopics in the music business as well as life on the road as the Grateful Deadand the Dead Headsexperienced it.

Being the biographer (as well as the publicist) of the Dead was not a job, it was an adventure. But that was true for all the participantsthe band, the employees, the audience. It was, to quote Phil Lesh, definitely long, definitely strangeand definitely a trip. Together we all joined in on a quest, and Id follow that path anytime. In Robert Hunters words,

Midnight on a carousel ride
Reaching for the gold ring down inside

Never could reach
It just slips away but I try

Acknowledgments

This sort of project is of necessity collaborative; my love and thanks to: Chris Byrnes (who started me), John and Gerry Hurley and Steve Buccieri (first companions), Danny Hupert, Maria Maloney, and Maya Maloney Hupert (younger brother and sister, plus), Lisa Biasi and Sandy Melloy (ace legwomen), Stu (ace legman) and Robin Nixon, Paul Grushkin (who helped introduce me to San Francisco, Joe Moss (keeper of the wheels), Jan Simmons (a gem of a sister), Quilley Powers (transcribing demon & savior), Michael Vosse (good buddy), Michael Bailey (ditto), Marty and Yvonne Martinez (Jersey siblings), Barry Alterman and June Omura (life is a dance), Phil, Arden, Sam, and Max Coturri, Jeff Briss and Dorothy Fullerton, Tom, Maggie, and Anthony Pinatelli, Felina Tambakos, Jon Korchin, Bernice Millman, the late Gertrude McNally, Alex Krutsky and Maggie McNally (just plain lovely family).

My thanks to the Grateful Dead family, most especially the late Bobby Petersen (start-up), Sue Stephens (guidance), Harry Popick (sonic advice), Ram Rod and Frances Shurtliff (senses of humor), Eileen Law (heart & soul), Cassidy Law (and unto the second generation), Mary Knudsen (critical support), Sue Swanson, Connie Bonner, Danny Rifkin, Alan Trist, Cameron Sears, Hal Kant, Bill Belmont, Wavy Gravy, Willy Legate and Carolyn Garcia (examples), Robert Hunter (mind), Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart, Bob Weir, and Jerry Garcia (for making it interesting). Although the whole band read the manuscript, Mickey Hart and Robert Hunter were exceptionally giving of time and knowledgemany thanks.

During the writing, Joel Selvin generously shared his research files, and Nicholas Meriwether proved a first-rate fact-checker. Jeremy Weir Alderson gave me access to a superlative unpublished interview he conducted with Garcia. Blair Jackson and Regan McMahon were the cosmic readersIm responsible for the mistakes, but they, especially, know how many arent here. David Gans also contributed an extremely valuable reading. Susana Millman was a fabulous photo editor for a visually challenged writer.