Dark Star (20 page)

John “Marmaduke” Dawson:
As to joints, Garcia usually had his own. Mountain Girl was a fabulous farmer. He'd be sitting there at the beginning of a session twisting up a couple of doobs and then he'd have them ready for when he wanted them. I don't remember him having done particularly more or less than anybody. I do remember the evening that everybody was passing around the Acapulco Gold and the joint was just about finished or a couple of joints were just about finished. Everybody was sitting there and Garcia said, “I want to make enough money to stay high like this forever.”

 

Clifford “Tiff” Garcia:
As far as the drugs went, my mom was not worried about Jerry. She figured it was trendy. She was a nurse so she had gone back to nursing. She worked the night shift and she would go to work at four in the afternoon. She had a dog that I had given her and she'd take the dog up to Twin Peaks and let him run before she went to work. Then she'd drop him off at the house and go to San Francisco General, the hospital she worked at. She had stopped the car. Before she put it in park and set the hand brake, the dog got really excited and got between the brake and the gas. She put her foot on the gas and her Oldsmobile Cutlass went off a cliff into a tree. You wouldn't believe it could happen. From the windshield and the dashboard back, everything was totally intact. Everything in front of that was shredded. The engine included. It couldn't have stuck out more than a foot or two.

This was in 1970. She was sixty and in excellent health. Jerry was the one that told me about it. My wife and I were living back in the city at Harrington Street so he knew where to find me. He came by there and left a message. “Mom's in the hospital.” He was hanging out there until I got home from work and then we both went to the hospital. Jerry was working at Wally Heider's and I was working in the Post Office. He'd pick me up at the Rincon Annex and we'd go to the hospital. Every night for a month. We both lost twenty pounds. It was that stressful. She had multiple injuries. Slowly, she was fading. There were other things where you couldn't count on Jerry. You couldn't count on his being regular to show up for events. Just like me. But he showed up for this. We both did.

Jon Mcintire:
When I would ask, Jerry would tell me about the members of his family. I asked him once, “How come you don't ever see them?” And he said, “That's just not the kind of family we are.”

Carolyn “Mountain Girl” Garcia:
Jerry's mom died while they were working on
American Beauty
at Wally Heider's. Jerry had never wanted me to meet his mother. All I can say is that we were not family oriented at that time. We were still into the rebellious stage. My parents were not particularly welcome at all. Even my brothers weren't particularly welcome. One of the problems of the group scene was it took over from your blood family. It became your true family. I didn't meet his mom until we got to the hospital. She was lying there just miserable. Fully conscious and in pain and on a breathing tube with casts everywhere. It was very sad. I took Annabelle in there to see her so she did get to see her granddaughter. After she died, I felt pretty bad that I hadn't insisted on developing a relationship with her.

Sara Ruppenthal Garcia:
Although Jerry and I had been split up for some years, his mother and I were very close. During the two weeks she took to die after her car accident in 1970, I was teaching nursery school at a Quaker school in Palo Alto in the mornings. Then I'd drive up to the city and be with her in the afternoons. Jerry and I were in the elevator there together once before she died. I remember trying to talk to him about seeing each other and his mother being in such bad shape and I remember him saying, “God! You even wear the same perfume that my mother wears.” He couldn't stand it. It reminded him too much of his mother and he couldn't deal with it.

Clifford “Tiff” Garcia:
I don't think either Jerry or I cried because to tell you the truth, I think we were all cried out when my father died. Sometimes, you expel all your emotions only once in a lifetime. The rest of it tenses up and it's hard for people to release it. Instead, you keep stuff built up inside.

Carolyn “Mountain Girl” Garcia:
Jerry took her death really hard. He was so saddened by it. I could tell there were issues with his mom that had not been resolved. Then he came to that moment when he knew they could never be resolved. When Jerry came to that, he was spending quite a bit of time with Tiff.

Clifford “Tiff” Garcia:
We were warm with one another. That was the thing. We were pretty warm. But the other thing was that I was standoffish. I never got involved in his shit because a lot of the drug dealers used to hang around and it was just a little sleazy. Basically, I was not a night person. I hated the bar atmosphere or anybody that got drunk. I generally never bothered him at shows because everybody was trying to bother him and I figured he needed the space and I didn't have a hell of a lot to say to him anyway. The time wasn't right.

Carolyn “Mountain Girl” Garcia:
After his mom died, Jerry sank into a rather serious depression for a while. It was hard for him to finish that record. He had no joy for a long time. It lasted for months. He got very close to the children at that time and he told me lots of stories about his upbringing and his mom I'd never heard before. As far as he was concerned, what she had done wrong was that she had remarried. Think about it from the kid's point of view. His father drowned. This was all terribly sad. Then she married a stranger who expected to be able to discipline these little boys. Apparently, he was real hard on them. He was somebody with quite a temper. Jerry just hated this guy and that is so typical. Think of women who have lost their husband or been divorced and then the boyfriend comes in and the kids are growling at him from the corners. That was why Jerry wound up at Grandma's house. Ruth couldn't deal with Jerry's passion about her new husband. Tiff was older. He wasn't a little kid. I have a feeling this guy was pretty hard on Tiff, too. I know Jerry was furious when they buried his mother next to this guy. Oh, Jerry was mad about that. He didn't like her being buried next to this guy. But that was where her plot was.

Clifford “Tiff” Garcia:
After the funeral, Jerry and I rode around the cemetery smoking a joint. It was nice. My cousin gave us a joint and it was sweet.

Carolyn “Mountain Girl” Garcia:
Jerry never blamed Ruth for what happened to his father. It was just that he had witnessed it and it was terrible. He said to me that his childhood had been so painful that for him to seek any kind of therapy or go back over that stuff would be so dreadful that he couldn't even conceive of doing it. To bring all that stuff up again would be so painful that he couldn't make himself do it. That was really all the information I had to go on but of course it broke my heart. I felt so bad about it and was terribly sympathetic. Somehow, his mom passing away brought us closer together. He remembered that he really loved his brother and it was a sweet time for us. We had lots of time together without anybody else hanging around in the living room and it made for a very close family scene there for quite some time.

 

Carolyn “Mountain Girl” Garcia:
We moved to Stinson Beach. I wanted to get away from those people who would come over to our house, take up space, and drive me crazy. They would sit around the living room and talk to Jerry. Our circle of acquaintances had expanded considerably and some folks had come to work for the band that I couldn't stand and there was an element around that was the hustler kind of element. What I never understood before was just how much of the power went with us. When we went out there, a lot of people moved out there with us. I thought, “Oh, you guys are moving out to Stinson too? How cool.” Ron Rakow was our neighbor. Big Steve Parish moved out there. The Rowan brothers were out there. It changed our social set.

Richard Loren:
Gino Cippolina got us this house in Stinson Beach. David Grisman and I and the Rowan brothers all moved in. David was at Ed's Superette and Jerry was in there buying cigarettes. David came back and said, “You know who lives in Stinson Beach? Jerry Garcia. He lives on the hill.” I said, “No shit. Isn't that a pisser?” David and I started visiting Jerry mornings up at the house on the hill. MG was there. Jerry would wake up, have his coffee, and we'd sit around and bullshit for a couple of hours about the music business. We'd smoke big joints and listen to everything from the Swan Silvertones to Stockhausen. We'd listen to whatever was turning Jerry on at the time and it was never necessarily some new rock band. We had a lot of questions about the music business. Granted, I'd been an agent for years but Jerry told me inside stuff about his dealings with Warner Brothers and Joe Smith. The things to avoid and the pitfalls of the industry.

Joe Smith:
The Grateful Dead could go to New York and sell out any place but the first two albums didn't sell that well. Somehow, they never captured what they were on stage. We decided to do a live album and record it in different places. In terms of making an album back then, thirty to forty thousand dollars was a major investment. I figured, “Okay. We'll give them thirty grand.” With their great indecisiveness, with the drugs, and with their running around, three would be straight and two would be stoned, and two would be straight and three would be stoned, and four would—and then they'd all be stoned. They ended up spending ninety grand. Which at the time was unheard of. Then they wanted to call the album
Skull Fuck
. I remember we were all sitting around and talking and Phil Lesh, the bass player, said, “I've got a great idea. We'll go to L.A. and we'll record thirty minutes of very heavy air on a smoggy day and then we'll go to the desert where it's clear and record thirty minutes of clear air and we'll mix it and we'll use that as a pad and we'll record over it.” I was waiting for people to laugh. But nobody laughed. He was serious and they all agreed it was a great idea. I had to tell them the American Federation of Musicians wouldn't allow it. So they couldn't do it.

Carolyn “Mountain Girl” Garcia:
Everybody was sick of Warner Brothers Records and their little routines and trying to stay on the edge rather than just lay back and not sell records very much. Because the Dead's records just didn't sell worth beans compared to the Airplane, who had really hot record sales. We didn't and it was tough.

Joe Smith:
At one of our interminable meetings, the Dead convinced me that we didn't know how to promote their records. They hated everybody. They just hated me a little less. I was the guy they would talk to. They said, “You guys just don't know how to do this. Let us promote the record. Set up these cities. We'll send out members of the family and members of the band. We'll go out.” In excruciating detail, we set up sixteen cities they were going to. Our promotion people were going to pick them up at the airports. We had lined up all the alternative radio stations, the FM people, and so forth. All the members of the group failed to make the planes they were going on. They were not going on the same plane. Different times. Different planes. Different cities. Every one of them blew it. I had sixteen people standing out there at the airports in Baltimore, in Seattle, in Boston, in Miami. Nobody showed. Because nobody made the plane.

Richard Loren:
I don't think Jerry had anything bad to say about Warner Brothers at the time. He had just gotten a record deal from Joe Smith to do a solo album. The one where he played all the instruments with “Sugaree” on it. That was the album that was coming together in his little studio which he had built outside of his home on the hill at Stinson Beach. I think it was the first record project that he'd done outside of the Grateful Dead and it paid for the house. He would talk with us and then he'd go up and record.

Carolyn “Mountain Girl” Garcia:
Basically, I just wanted a place where I could grow a garden and have some privacy. We had a beautiful yard. It was so private and pleasant up there. God really smiled on us. The cosmos really looked out for us because it was a gorgeous spot and we got it at a good time for us. The kids were small and it was safe. It was secure and a place where if you wanted to sit in the sun and do nothing, you could. Jerry built a studio there. Old and In the Way rehearsed in the living room, which was just great. Bob Dylan even came over and visited us. Trixie was born. Theresa was nicknamed Trixie as soon as she was born. It was all very idyllic. That place was paradise.

Peter Rowan:
David Grisman, with whom I'd been in Earth Opera, was living in California and producing my two younger brothers, Chris and Lorin, for Clive Davis on Columbia. I'd heard some of Garcia's playing on their demos and I thought, “Cool. This is going to be interesting.” After Sea Train broke up, I moved out there as well and we all ended living in Stinson Beach. I remember there was a sign outside Garcia's house. It said
SANS SOUCI
, which means “without care.” The word “serendipitous” became this big word. Synchronistic happenings. We were out there on the San Andreas fault line smoking dope and going, “Man, I don't know what it is. But man, this is, this is, this is …”

The guy of course that we all gravitated toward was Jerry. For me as a musician, the reason for hanging out with Garcia was to play music with him. For other people, it might have been an intellectual thing. Because Jerry was a tremendous conversationalist as well. As a musician, it was so rare for me to see another musician who loved to let the discursive thought net subside. Between musicians, there's always a lot of eye contact and nodding of the head. With Jerry, it was, “Yeaaahhh.” Once it was yeah, it was
yeah
.