Dark Star (21 page)

David Grisman:
Jerry's daughter, Annabelle, used to play with my daughter, Gillian. They were the same age. This was an idyllic period. I thought, “Wow, this is it. This guy's got it made.” He lived in the highest house in Stinson Beach. He had a great old lady and a family. He had his studio. He was making his own album. He could do this. He could do that. It was just a great time.

Peter Rowan:
We started going up to Garcia's house. David would say, “Garcia's home and he wants to play some banjo,” and I'd say, “Cool.” We were living in each other's living rooms most of the time. We'd go up there and hang out at Jerry's house and Jerry would often greet us at the front gate with his banjo on. That was the real Garcia to me. Then I saw how he had to be a businessman in some way because the Dead kept getting twirled around by business deals.

Carolyn “Mountain Girl” Garcia:
That was where I lost track of Jerry. Our life in Stinson Beach was isolated because we were a long way from the Grateful Dead office in San Rafael. Once I moved our domestic scene over the hill to Stinson and I had kids in school and I was running them back and forth and doing all those things, I took my eye off the ball. Jerry came and went when he wanted to. It wasn't easy for me to let go of him but I had to. At that point, I felt like I had to let go and not concern myself with where and what he was doing every day. We were watching the Watergate trials on TV, which was just a fascination for us. Remember how long that went on for? We sat there for months and watched that stuff. Jerry would get up in the morning and turn on the Watergate hearings and we'd have breakfast and get the kids off to school. He'd hang till one and then he'd go over the hill and rehearse or go to the office and then he'd come back later.

Richard Loren:
Jerry did the
Rolling Stone
interview and they asked him, “Are there any other groups in San Francisco that you've seen that you like?” He said, “The Rowan Brothers. They're great. They're like the Beatles.” Very reluctantly, we went out with the Grateful Dead. It was the worst mistake that could have been made. We put them in front of a Dead audience, who were looking for a band that jammed like the Dead. They wanted to like them because Jerry had said they were great. They weren't booed like a lot of other bands that were put on out of respect for Jerry but it wasn't the right chemistry. They opened maybe five or six gigs but it just wasn't right. It just wasn't right and then boom, it went downhill from there.

Merl Saunders:
A girl singer told me to come by a place where she'd been hanging out and I met Michael Bloomfield. He was producing an album with Nick Gravenites. I went to a session and I met this guitar player called Jerry. We hit it off very good because we had this chemistry. We just had this warmness. This thing. Gravenites picked up on it and he passed the word. Pretty soon, people started booking us together. We did a whole lot of sessions together and that was how we became friends. For about five or six months, I didn't know who he was. I had no idea. I had listened to the Grateful Dead but I never put the two together. All I knew was that he was Jerry with the smiling face. Then I began to know.

Jerry would say, “Hey man, I'm working down at the Matrix. Come on down, man.” I'd go, “Okay.” We'd sit there at the Matrix and play open jazz, free. Very few people showed up. We were totally out there. We were getting paid about ten dollars a night and we'd split the money up. Then people began to get into it. Fifty people. A hundred people. Pretty soon, the place was jam-packed, lines outside. People were flying in from Baltimore and New York to see us. I had an album to do over at Fantasy Records. I said to Jerry, “You helped me develop these tunes, you might as well come and do them.” So that was where it started.

Richard Loren:
Merl and Jerry were doing their thing together and Jerry was starting to play the Keystone. I said, “You need some help?” He said, “Yeah. Let's do it.” I became Jerry's personal manager and his tour manager. I set up the gigs and I started handling everything. I handled his money as well as all the business that didn't really have to do with the Grateful Dead. I didn't even go to their office. I'd known Jon McIntire a little bit but I was really not plugged into their scene at all. I was just this guy that Jerry met who was living with David Grisman in Stinson Beach. Miles away from San Rafael and the hub of what was going on. At the time, Sam Cutler was managing them. This was the era of Bear building the big sound system. Jerry's thing was to go and play on Friday and Saturday nights. It didn't get in the way of the Grateful Dead. Jerry started to like that a lot. He wanted to play a few more gigs. Even though no one would come out and say it, the Merl and Jerry Band became a little bit of a threat. I'd have to go to Cutler and McIntire and say, “This is what Jerry wants to do. Is it all right? Is this getting in the way of your tour?” “Oh no. Yes it is. No it isn't.” I'd have to work with them. On the surface, it was cool. But I think there was a little uneasiness amongst a lot of the band members to accept it. They wanted Jerry all to themselves.

Merl Saunders:
Jerry would always ask me about different runs I would do and I would teach them to him. The first tune I taught him wasn't a standard. It was “Imagine” by the Beatles, which he could have probably figured out himself. One of the standard tunes that he did learn from me was “My Funny Valentine.” I taught him classics like “The Man I Love” and “Georgia.” We hung out a lot. One night, he called me. “Merl, you know Kenny Burrell?” I said, “Yeah, I know Kenny Burrell, he's at the El Matador. Why don't we go see him?” After the show was over, Jerry wanted to meet Kenny Burrell. He asked him questions and Kenny didn't know who in the hell Jerry was till after I talked to Kenny the next day.

Donna Godchaur Mokay:
Jerry and his band were playing at the Keystone Corner in San Francisco with Merl Saunders and John Kahn. Keith and I sat in the audience and Jerry and the band took a break. Jerry walked by us and I tugged on Jerry's arm and I said, “My husband and I have something to talk to you about.” Jerry said, “Fine. Come on backstage.” That was just the way he was. I don't know how many other human beings would have been as out front as I was either. It was a combination of both. Jerry went on back and Keith and I just sat there. I said, “Gosh, how are we going to do this? I don't know that we can just go backstage and do this. This is pretty weird.” We continued to sit in the audience.

A few minutes later, Garcia came out from backstage to get me. He came right down in the audience and he said, “I still want to talk to you.” Keith was facing in such a way that he couldn't see Jerry. I turned to Keith and I said, “Honey, I think that Jerry's here and he wants to talk to you.” Keith looked at me and Jerry and he put his head down on the table and said, “You'll have to talk to my wife. I can't talk to you right now.” So I said, “Jerry, here's the deal. Keith is your piano player and I need your phone number so that we can call you.” He had no idea who we were. None. But he gave us the number of the office and his home phone number and he said, “Okay. We could use a piano player.” Little did I know that Pigpen was dying and they were going to have to have another piano player.

We called the office a few times and I would say, “This is Donna Godchaux and Jerry said to call.” Because I didn't really want to call him at home. So this message never got through. I would call and say, “Look, if you don't tell him that we called, I'm going to have to call this guy at home and I don't want to. And I mean it.” I was very forceful. Finally, I did call Jerry at home. He had never gotten the message. He said, “We're having a Grateful Dead rehearsal on Sunday. I'd like for you to come on down.” So we went. The rehearsal was at a little warehouse on Francisco Boulevard West right off the freeway in San Rafael.

Lo and behold, the band had not given Jerry the message that there wasn't a Grateful Dead rehearsal. So Jerry was down there alone and Keith and I showed up and Keith and Jerry played. Jerry was really knocked out. He called Kreutzmann and said, “You got to come down here and hear this guy play.” The next day, there was a Grateful Dead rehearsal so the entire band was there. Having never played a Grateful Dead song in his life, Keith played with the Grateful Dead and they asked him to be in the band.

At that time, Jerry also asked me to be in the band and I said no. Back in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, I had sung backup vocals on “When a Man Loves a Woman” by Percy Sledge and “Suspicious Minds” and “In the Ghetto” by Elvis Presley. I had worked with Joe Tex, Ben E. King, Joe Simon, and Solomon Burke. But I said, “No. I don't want to right now.” I wanted Keith to get the opportunity before me. Maybe that was southern.

Richard Loren:
At this point, Steve Parish was my ally because he was working equipment for Merl and Jerry. I would do the business stuff and Steve would do all the equipment. Basically, the three of us, Jerry, Steve, and I, became very close. We'd get there early at the gigs. We'd hang out. We'd get high. We'd bullshit. Jerry would be backstage at the Keystone hours before the gig. He'd get there at three or four o'clock in the afternoon for a nine o'clock show. He'd sit backstage and play and diddle with his guitar and get high and people would come in and he'd talk. He was so open that way. In the later days, he'd isolate himself. Everyone would isolate themselves in little rooms and you couldn't get into them. In these days, it was wonderful. In the early seventies, it was free. Everybody respected who he was and we didn't need any guards at the doors. After the gig at two-thirty in the morning,
vroom
, I'd drive over the hill and we'd follow one another. Next morning I'd wake up, go up to his house, and we'd take care of business. At the time, the Grateful Dead weren't yet big enough to smother him. He was allowed to do these side projects, including playing music with any number of groups. I think this was the best time of his life.

Merl Saunders:
Jerry never talked to me about how hard it was to be part of the Grateful Dead. We didn't have to discuss it. I could tell it and hear it. The Dead was not his band. He never did want to be put in that position. It was not his band. He always said, “It's the Grateful Dead.” But they pointed to him because he was the influence of the whole thing. In the early seventies, they took a sabbatical. He said, “I just want to play with you, man.” I'd say, “We ought to book a tour and I want to book it around the Dead.” He'd say, “Don't worry about that. Just book the tour.” So everybody started looking at me. I was the bad guy. They still consider me the bad guy. Because Jerry disappeared with me for three or four years.

Richard Loren:
Jon McIntire came up to me and said, “Richard, Sam Cutler is no longer working for us. Would you like to book us?” I went to Jerry. I said, “Jerry, I was just asked to book the band.” I hadn't been an agent for years but Jerry had told them that I'd had a lot of experience booking rock 'n' roll bands in New York. Unlike Danny Rifkin and Rock Scully, who'd taken care of the needs of the Grateful Dead when they were living on Haight Street and were perfect at that time, I really had experience in the true business world. While they were doing that, I was learning the ropes as a traditional agent. Jerry said, “Yeah. We'd love you to do it.” It was a decision that he'd made. Sam Cutler had been the big man for the Grateful Dead. He got fired for some impropriety. Then Ron Rakow came in and got involved forming a record company called Round Records.

 

Ron Rakow:
It was after Europe, '72. I was riding in the car going to the office in San Rafael when I got a bolt of lightning as to how the Grateful Dead could unhinge from the entire record business. I saw exactly how it would work. What I didn't know was anything about the record business. So I immediately went to Jerry Garcia and said, “I see that the record industry does nothing for the Grateful Dead. It's the other way round. The Grateful Dead should sell its own products through its own fans and make more money and support its own people as opposed to those who don't admire them. I want to investigate this.” Jerry said, “Do it.” He called in Jon McIntire for me to explain it to him. Jerry was already maximally enthused. That was something I could do to him at any time.

Steve Brown:
Hale Milgrim was the manager of Discount Records in Berkeley and a gonzo Deadhead so anything Dead-related was in the front window, big, with homemade handcrafted displays, arrows, and glossy eight-by-tens. Hale told me since he was locked into what he was doing that maybe the timing was right to go in there and hit them with the idea of doing their own thing. Jerry had seen me over the years. I'd been at a lot of Grateful Dead gigs and I already had a certain amount of credibility from being around productions he was familiar with. I knew people he knew. But he didn't really know me personally. I said I understood that their Warner Brothers contract was coming up and could I propose something to them in regards to an independent venture that they might want to consider for themselves on their own.

With that, I proceeded to sit down and write out my own proposal of how it would work. Meanwhile, they'd had the same idea and had enlisted their friend and previous financier of sorts, Ron Rakow, to also do research on the financial end as to what it would take to do it. He put together his own proposal known as the “So What Papers” because you'd hand them to a band member and they'd say, “So what?” They'd read it and say, “So what?” It still wasn't anything. It was just words on paper. Although Rakow read my papers, my first meeting wasn't with him. It was with Jerry. Rakow called me in to meet Jerry.