Dark Star (45 page)

Dr. Randy Baker:
We got to early 1995 and the diabetes was becoming progressively worse. Diabetes greatly accelerates the process of coronary artery disease. The single most important thing that a diabetic can do is avoid eating sweets and I was getting reports from people surrounding Jerry that he was eating lots of sweets. Now, insulin is a great drug but it's very powerful and potentially dangerous. If someone's using insulin, they need to carefully monitor their blood sugar and if they take too much insulin, it can kill you from insulin shock creating low blood sugar.

I talked with Jerry about using insulin. He wasn't particularly interested and I really didn't think he was a good candidate for insulin because he wasn't taking much responsibility for his health. The potential danger of his taking too much and dying was fairly high because he didn't want to monitor his blood sugar regularly. Frankly, I also didn't want him to become too comfortable with syringes. At the tune, his drug use was primarily through smoking and I thought that was less dangerous.

Vince Dibiase:
Randy had no control over him. Randy was a Deadhead. When Randy got near Jerry, he was a Deadhead, not a doctor. Because he couldn't persuade Jerry to do what he wanted him to do.

Gloria Dibiase:
Randy wasn't persuasive or forceful enough to get Jerry to change his ways. But then nobody was. Jerry was bored, frustrated, and unhappy and he didn't want to try.

Yen-Wei Choong:
If you use cocaine or heroin, that can cause the toxic dampness and heat inside. Particularly the liver and the lungs. He had a great deal of dampness and heat. Acupuncture can reduce somewhat but more important is the herbs. I did send a lot of herbs for his heart, for his diabetes, but unfortunately, he didn't take. That was really frustrating, to be honest. I know he does not like the taste of the tea. I tried to order extremely concentrated herbal powder in the capsules. I told him many times, “You better take this.” I left them there. I know he didn't take because when I come back three days later, it's still the same amount. Sometimes, I leave the herbs in both his Tiburon house and Mill Valley, which is Deborah's house. I did try my best because many many fans encourage me but he didn't take. I'm absolutely sure that can work but the patient must be very cooperative.

Vince Dibiase:
The Chinese herbs were helping him when we could get him to take them but it was very difficult because he was a very difficult patient. An incredibly difficult patient but Yen-Wei would stick with him.

Bob Barsotti:
In February '95, we had to cancel a Jerry Garcia Band show at the Warfield. Jerry had been on vacation diving and something had happened to his hand. I think what had happened was he had fallen asleep on it. He basically let it get to the point where the entire house was in, we'd all eaten dinner, the sound was in, everything was in for the show. It was five minutes to eight o'clock and this hand had been bothering him for two weeks and he knew it didn't work well.

Finally, Jerry went, “Hey, you know what? I don't think I can play.” Steve Parish said, “Hey, Bob. Come here. Jerry doesn't think he can play.” I said, “Come on.” We went into the dressing and Jerry said, “Bob, something's wrong with my hand. I just don't think I can play.” I said, “What happened?” “I don't know. I got stung by a lot of jellyfish and I woke up funny on it one morning.” I said, “So what do you want me to say? It was jellyfish?” He said, “No, no. I don't want you to say that. It just isn't working. I'm not feeling up to it, you know?”

We went round and round and I said, “You know what, Jerry? We sold the show as ‘An Evening with the Jerry Garcia Band.' So why don't I just take a couple of couches, put them up on the stage, and we'll go up and sit down and shoot the shit like we do down here.” He said, “Wow, that's a great idea. That would be really wild.” I had no intention of doing this but I wanted to see what this was all about. I said, “No, I don't think that's a good idea because then you might get asked questions you don't want to answer,” and he said, “Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.”

I said, “Do you think you'll be able to play tomorrow night?” He said, “Yeah, I think my hand will be better tomorrow night.” We had Monday free. I said, “So why don't I just say that we'll take the Friday show and we'll switch it to Monday, and if you can't do it, they'll get a refund and I won't kick everybody out right away. I'll let them hang out.” He said, “Yeah, that's a good idea.” I said, “But I'm not going to do this until you leave.” He said, “I'll just wait here.” I said, “No, you got to get out of here now. It's ten after eight now. Let's not make these people wait too long before they know they're not going to get anything.”

A long time ago, Bill Graham taught me something. When talking to an audience from the stage, use the star. Jerry was the star. So I went out and I said, “Jerry asked me to come out and tell you something. He went on vacation recently, he was doing a lot of diving, he injured his hand. It wasn't feeling right and he thought it was getting better. He's been working on it the last week exercising it and he really thought he was going to be able to play tonight. He came here and he tried to sound-check and it got to the point where he didn't feel like he could give as good a performance as he wants to give you. So he's asking if you can all come back on Monday night.” Everyone went, “Oh, yeah. No problem.”

I don't think his hand ever really came all the way back after that. The first few shows he did with the Garcia Band, it was kind of embarrassing. He couldn't play the notes. He was simplifying every solo way way down to the bare bones. Where there had been ten notes, there would be two.

Justin Kreutzmann:
I talked to Jerry when we played Utah in February '95. I was with my girlfriend and we were at a sound check and I heard this, “JUSTIN!” And I was like, “What?” I looked around and it was booming through the PA. The Dead had this new headphone system where they could talk to each other on stage but they had the speakers on. Jerry was talking to me from the stage but he was talking into his mike and he was like, “How did you let that Quentin Tarantino guy get ahead of you? He reminds me of a used car salesman.” Booming over everything. Everybody was looking at me and I was just totally abashed. Jerry hated
Pulp Fiction
. I did, too. I thought it was a piece of shit. I couldn't get behind that movie at all.

Dr. Randy Baker:
As we got into the spring of 1995, I was acutely concerned about his health and I told him straight out that I didn't think he would be on the planet for very much longer if he didn't make radical changes in his lifestyle. One of the difficult things about working with Jerry was that he wanted to please me. I would say, “You need to do this” and he'd say, “Oh, yes. Sure. No problem,” and then he wouldn't do it.

It was sort of my dream job. I wanted nothing more than to keep Jerry alive. It was also one of the most difficult jobs in the world. It was a supreme challenge. I would go to Dead shows and instead of enjoying the music, I would be thinking, “How can I get through to Jerry?” I would be worrying about his blood sugar. It became clear that it was essential for Jerry to stop eating sweets and to stop smoking and I felt that it was impossible for him to control those urges while he was using heroin.

Harry Popick:
It was a strain seeing Jerry look the way he did. There were times when I'd be doing the monitors over by him and I'd just look away and close my eyes and say, “Oh, my God.” I was waiting for him to fall to his knees. He could finish playing the first set, go back into his room there, and start snoring. He would conk right out. The fans knew. It troubled us all deeply. Everyone was shaking their head like, “My God. My God, what are we going to do? What's happening here?”

Bob Barsotti:
He was just shriveling in front of our eyes. You could see it. He aged so much in the last few years and I kept going to these guys and they all kept saying, “We're doing the best we can.” Maybe if Bill Graham had been here, he could have talked to him. Over the phone, I talked to David Crosby. I said, “You know, David, now is a really good time for Jerry's friends to try to get close to him 'cause he's in trouble.” He went, “Oh, yeah?” I went, “Yeah. He's in really bad shape. He really needs his friends to say something to him because the people that are around him are too tied up in the whole deal and it's hard for them to really articulate to him and have him listen.”

David said something to me that really helped me get through my time. He said, “I went through all that too and every one of my friends came and talked to me. Then they came and yelled at me. Then they came and hit me over the head. Then they came and dragged me away to fucking institutes and you know what? I didn't listen to anyone until I was ready to listen to them. He won't, either. It has to be his decision. He has to come to that realization and I don't really want to talk to him before that because it's too sad. But, boy, I sure would love to be there when he comes out because I would love to help him.”

Bill Graham was actually at one of Crosby's interventions. They got Crosby into the place for treatment and then he tied sheets together and escaped out the window.

Vince Dibiase:
The last five years of his life, he didn't really hang out with anybody. He didn't like being bothered or going out. He was very reclusive. But he was being bothered by people, one in particular, and he did not even want to answer the phone but he would have to. He would have to return certain calls because some people were relentless with him. “Hello, hello, hello, hello. Are you there? Are you there?” “Yeah, I'm fucking here!” It was interfering with his train of thought. It was interfering with
Harrington Street
. It was the first time he'd tried writing in his life. It was something new for him and he started getting off on it. He'd found a groove. He had to do it by hand because the computer keyboard was much too linear for him. Just to get his password in took forever. He'd take pains typing it out with one finger and then he'd realize it had to be in capital letters.

One day, he sat me down and he stuck a big paintbrush in my hand and said, “Hold that.” As he was sketching my hand, he started talking about when he was a kid. He and Tiff would play with fire and they'd set fires in the hills. He said that one day they got into throwing rocks and breaking windows. He was about five. Tiff might have been eight or so. He said, “Yeah, we broke a whole bunch of windows.” I figured he meant three or four windows. He said, “We were standing there for at least half an hour breaking windows.” “How many windows did you break?” “Sixty or seventy windows.” I said, “You're kidding me. Was it an old warehouse?” He said, “It turned out to be the back of a police station.” The cops finally came out, picked both guys up, threw them over their shoulder, and took them home. Kicking and biting and screaming.

John Perry Barlow:
The last interaction I had with Jerry was interesting. I was teaching Weir how to Rollerblade. We were staying at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York. Having gone through the great neofascist marble hallways of the New York Four Seasons on roller blades, Weir and I went through the lobby and came out the door and Jerry Garcia was standing there in the sunlight.

It was the first time I'd seen him in the sunlight in I don't know how long. He was totally white. White as death itself. He was like a Fellini vision or something out of Ingmar Bergman. This incandescent paleness. I don't think this is a retrospective overlay because it really was apparent at the time. The frailty and the whiteness of him. He looked up at us and he snorted and he said, “If you guys get killed out there, I'm not going to your funeral.” I said, “I don't know. I've been to funerals with you where we were there for less.” He said, “But I won't go to yours.” And I said, “Jerry, I'll go to yours.” He said, “Fine. Do that.” Off we went to the park where we had a truly psychedelic kind of experience.

Vince Dibiase:
Before the spring tour in '95, Jerry was in bad shape. The morning he went on spring tour, his blood sugar level was five hundred.

Gloria Dibiase:
We were talking to his doctors. We were talking to band members about Jerry's deteriorating health. Jerry didn't like us talking behind his back. Like a child, he didn't want us to tell on him.

Vince Dibiase:
He considered people alarmists if they talked about his health to others. The thing was that I didn't want to walk into that house and find him sprawled out on the bathroom floor dead. I'd rather have been out on the street with my family without a job and have him alive and recovering than have him dead. Once they were out on the road, I told Randy. I said, “Randy, does anybody know?” He said, “No.” I said, “Don't you think you better tell somebody because I'm not a doctor.” Randy FedExed to Jerry and I don't know what the response was. They continued with the tour and Jerry seemed to get better while he was on the road but he still wasn't doing well.

Eileen Law:
The kids at the shows would say, “Yeah, I got a feeling he's slipping again.” It was scary to me because there would be that small percentage at the shows who I was sure would say, “He does it. So it must be cool.” And we were starting to have some ODs out there on the road. Jerry would come into the office and because I knew things weren't good, instead of going up to him, I would almost run to my room. I read this wonderful article where in 1969 this one kid had yelled up to Jerry, “Hey, Garcia! Get your ass in gear!” I almost wish someone had yelled it in the last three years.