So Many Roads (51 page)

It wasn't only the musicians who had to adjust to the idea of a video. As the filming continued, McNally had the unpleasant job of wading into the audience and busting anyone with a flash on his or her camera. (At least the crew hadn't wrapped him in duct tape, part of his initiation hazing when he joined on as PR person.) One Deadhead thought McNally was hitting on his girlfriend and threatened to deck him; for the rest of the night McNally asked a security guard or two to follow him around.

Otherwise the filming was largely uneventful, one indication that the Dead were working hard to keep their past excesses at bay. Garcia's was the most dramatic rehabilitation, but he wasn't the only one who'd straightened his rudder. With his first baby on the way (Grahame, his first son, was born December 1986), Lesh had stopped using drugs and had seriously cut back on drinking. In terms of maintaining Garcia's recovery, Lesh and Weir laid down a law: no more cocaine on stage. (“That's possible,” Lesh says of the story, “but I don't remember that.”) Nitrous would still be allowed there, but it too was eventually banned during shows: “That
SSSHHHHHH
was coming through the microphones,” says Bralove. “It wasn't doing anything for the music and it was destroying the sound.”

In the way they were trying to straighten out the Dead were mirroring the times as much as they always had. The all-for-one sixties were gone, as were the solipsistic seventies that the Dead had reflected in the formation of their own label. Now they were echoing the clean-and-sober stance of many of their peers. Steve Winwood and Peter Gabriel made themselves over as
GQ
-level cover models. David Crosby, their old friend and partner in excess, had been busted for freebasing, had served jail time, and was now living a healthier lifestyle. Former Eagle Glenn Frey posed with his newly firm biceps in ads for a health-club chain. The punk rock and new wave that had made the Dead and their peers seem passé had outlived its welcome, and the sixties—even a reunited Monkees—were resurrected. Unintentionally the Dead had picked the ideal moment to connect with the masses.

The newfound and striking aura of professionalism around the Dead extended to the conference room at their San Rafael headquarters. By then the phrase “there is nothing like a Grateful Dead concert” was part of fans' vocabulary, but there was little like a Dead board meeting as well. During band meetings in the seventies the floor would be thrown open to anyone who wanted to express an idea or speak out. “People would sit around smoking joints and saying, ‘We should play Cleveland after Chicago,'” recalls Sam Cutler of a typical early get-together. “And someone would say, ‘No, I like St. Louis, that's the best place to play.' Amateur shit.” Now that they were one of the highest-earning corporations in California, their business gatherings took on a more orderly air—as much as possible, anyway. They would begin at least two weeks in advance, when office employee Sue Stephens, the assistant to whomever was managing at the time and eventually also a video producer, would begin calling the band members individually to remind them of the upcoming gathering. After Garcia's coma, meetings were restricted to band and crew, which didn't always mean they were streamlined. Enthusiastic as always, Hart would throw out creative but sometimes impractical ideas; Weir would have a suggestion that would
result in wisecracks from the other band members. Allan Arkush, who had by then known the Dead nearly twenty years and sat in on a few of these sessions, was struck by how unconventional they were despite the Dead's best efforts. “It was fascinating how there was absolutely no forward momentum in these meetings, no matter what the agenda,” Arkush says, recalling one particular ideas meeting. “Mickey, Jerry, and Phil came in for a while. Bob came in for a few seconds and left. It was whoever was around. Whoever was there had a different idea. The roadies had ideas. You didn't know if you should pursue one person's idea or put them all together. It was hard to know how to deal with those situations.”

One of the few who could grasp and work with the dynamic of the band was Jon McIntire, who had returned to the management fold after a ten-year absence. (In the interim he'd managed Weir separately, among other pursuits.) “In the Grateful Dead the term ‘manager' doesn't mean what everyone outside thinks it means,” McIntire told writer David Hajdu. “It's actually a lot more daunting than people would know, because of the lack of definition. Am I going to listen to the band? Yes. Is there a bottom line here? Yes, the bottom line is the band. But the band rarely would take a stand, first of all, that was unified, because they were just different individuals. But the individuals in the band would rarely have opinions so definite that they would preclude my making choices in what I was going to do. The one exception there would be Garcia, who occasionally would feel very strongly about something—like, ‘hey, man, I'm not playing the
game
—stop that shit!' if I would be trying to make points that were a little bit too strongly in favor of business as usual out in the world, rather than creating our own game. Sometimes, I would go around to every individual in the band and take them aside, and I would explain what it was that I was trying to get them to see.” With techniques like those, McIntire was able to get a few things accomplished and move the group's business forward.

Weeks after the “Touch of Grey” video had been filmed the meetings grew more focused and business-like. One concerned the marketing of long-form videos—
So Far
, a collection of performance clips and effects directed by Len Dell'Amico, and Justin Kreutzmann's documentary,
Dead Ringers
, about the making of the “Touch of Grey” video. Would the two products compete for fans' dollars? Bill Kreutzmann, who had been in charge of band finances very early in the Dead's life and still kept a watchful eye on the money (and the managers who oversaw it), could be laconic in meetings, but he also knew when to make sure his point was made. According to notes from the meeting, he “suggested working out the timing and price structuring to be able to market both items. The board agreed that they want to be able to market both, but wise strategy and communication are important.”

Meanwhile Arista, sensing it might have an in-demand piece of music to market, began gearing up. The label prepared an initial shipment of 467,000 copies of
In the Dark
(“well beyond our most optimistic projections,” wrote John Scher, still working closely with the band, to McIntire on July 9). Soon after came a memo from Arista marketing executive Sean Coakley to Scher recapping radio play for select songs on the album: “Week #3 on ‘Touch of Grey' . . . can be described in no other terms than awesome. Album radio is dominated by DEAD air. If this were a hype it would be nauseating; since it's true it's enthralling.” The label began planning a day-long celebration with MTV, to be called “Day of the Dead,” to introduce the band to viewers who'd been born around the time
American Beauty
had been made.

The Dead finished their part of filming and lip-synching, a short break was taken, and at 11 p.m. the time came for the ghoulish marionettes. The attention to detail was impressive: each skeleton was the exact height as its corresponding band member. With the help of Parish,
Gutierrez secured one of Garcia's actual guitars, and together they figured out a way to protect the front of the instrument from being scratched by the skeleton hand. Gutierrez's company also suggested Weir and Lesh wear shorts “so that we can expose the skeleton's knobby knees!” read an internal memo.

Before the skeletons were wheeled out onstage, the musicians popped in backstage to inspect them and were suitably amused. They'd seen them in the early production stages, but now they faced their own macabre apparitions in their own clothes. Kreutzmann leaned into Garcia's skeleton and joked, “Keep on your diet and you'll be fine!” (For once they could laugh about Garcia's health scare.) Trixie Garcia recalls amusedly “the fake boobs on Jerry's skeleton to make him look beefy,” and Garcia and Mountain Girl's daughter Annabelle helped assemble the skeletons by inserting wooden planks down the spine. On a large metal truss platform twenty feet above the stage, the puppeteers took their positions and began manipulating the skeletons, who were placed in the same spots as the band. To Gutierrez's surprise, the Dead stayed to watch the filming—not the entirety of the night but enough to prove they didn't have complete disdain toward the process. “The fog was coming in, and the lights were on the fog—it was just perfect,” Hart recalls. “We couldn't have wanted a better setting. The skeletons were creative. The other videos were stupid, but that one was fun.” When the marionettes started, the crowd roared as if they were watching the actual band. “They had all the same enthusiasm,” Gutierrez marvels. “We had the real Grateful Dead reaction to the marionettes.”

In the early hours of the morning the filming began to wrap up. Gutierrez and his crew would be there until just before dawn, although the Dead themselves were able to leave earlier—and, to some of them, not soon enough. Vans carried everyone back to their hotel, with some residual grumbling about all the hours they'd spent in the cold, lip-synching their song. “It was a long night, and it went on and on, and
it was, ‘We're dying here!'” recalls Mountain Girl, who was out in the crowd with Annabelle for most of the shoot. “Everybody was completely burnt out. It was a long drive down there, and then we do all this crazy shit. Everyone was beside themselves.” She noticed that Garcia seemed to be “very pissy” at that point, although she couldn't always tell whether it was about their relationship or the work.

Gutierrez and his company would have just over a month to turn the video in to Arista—the deadline was June 8—so editing began almost immediately. When a rough cut was finished the director took the clip to Front Street, where by now the band was rehearsing for an upcoming tour with Bob Dylan. Gutierrez and his crew brought along a tape deck and monitor and set it up in the front office space, and the musicians took a break from rehearsing and gathered around to watch themselves in a music video. Culminating in the charming moment when the skeletons transformed into the live Dead, the resulting clip was clever and self-aware, and it captured the Dead's sense of humor. The macabre aspect of it—the sight of a Garcia skeleton in an imitation of his clothes, just about a year after he almost died—wasn't lost on anyone. When it came to his documentary, Justin Kreutzmann thought all the outsiders who wandered onstage actually enhanced his project: “With all those people up there,” he says, “it made for an interesting shot.”

When the “Touch of Grey” screening was done, applause and approving comments followed; as was often the case, Garcia loving it was good enough for everyone. In the back Dylan said nothing, but he nodded and smiled at Gutierrez, in what seemed to be tacit approval.

The video would be merely the first of a new list of industry chores on the horizon. The band had to put finishing touches on
In the Dark
and rehearse for the tour with Dylan.
Forbes
, the business magazine that normally couldn't have cared less about anything Dead, was requesting
an interview for a lengthy story about the industry of the Dead in 1987: the ticket office and sales, the six thousand calls a day received by the hotline. Despite a few grumbles now and again, the Dead went along with it all. They
had
survived, and what better time to remind everyone that they had and then sell a few records in the process? As buzz for “Touch of Grey” and the Dylan tour began building, a palpable tingle enveloped the Dead office: they'd been hearing for twenty years that they could be a huge band, but that level of success suddenly felt within reach. Talking with
Rolling Stone
at the time, Hunter, giving a rare interview, wondered aloud whether the incoming tidal wave would be good for them all. “By all indications, we're going to get the record-company backing all the things that are necessary to have a hit, and it's a little frightening. Are we going to be eaten now? . . . I'm excited by it, and I have misgivings. I would like the world to know about the Grateful Dead; it's a phenomenal band. But I don't think the Grateful Dead is going to be as free a thing as it was.”