So Many Roads (58 page)

One of Mydland's friends called the Dead's office to relay the grim news. Nancy Mallonee, now the organization's chief financial officer, had the unfortunate job of calling some of the musicians. The Dead operation was stunned and saddened—if not completely surprised—by the news. Garcia was at his home in San Anselmo when the call arrived, and he was, in Manasha Matheson's words, “visibly shaken.” Weir was angry, Lesh saddened, and some office employees cried. That same day John Cutler, Justin Kreutzmann, and engineer Jeffrey Norman were working on the band's forthcoming live album,
Without a Net
. They'd just isolated Mydland's piano track on a terrific, rousing version of “Cassidy” in order to give it a better listen when the news of his passing arrived. With the band's consent, an immediate decision was made to include a Mydland-sung song on the album, and the Dead signed off on a version of “Dear Mr. Fantasy” that included the keyboardist's lead vocal.

Starting with the Associated Press, the media reported that Mydland, who was thirty-seven, had died of “undetermined” causes, since nothing was confirmed and the autopsy report had yet to be completed. When the toxicology report came out a few weeks later his passing was attributed to “acute cocaine and narcotic intoxication”; due to “a recent needle puncture mark” and the presence of a mix of cocaine, morphine, and codeine in his blood, it was clear Mydland had injected himself with a speedball. Compared to the initial news, though, the final results didn't get as much play in the media, and McNally sensed how relieved the band was not to have to talk about a drug overdose in the band. In the Dead organization Mydland's lack of intellectual curiosity was often cited as a root cause of his ability to find satisfaction beyond fame. As Garcia told
Rolling Stone
a year later, “He didn't have much supporting him in terms of an intellectual life. . . . Brent was from the East Bay, which is one of those places that is like
non
culture.” But it was also clear that Mydland was still desperately eager to be accepted as
more than the “new guy” and that keeping up with the band's lifestyle may have been his way of earning their respect. And like Godchaux before him, he paid the price for not being as road-hardened as those around him.

As word continued to spread, few were shocked. “We saw it coming,” Hart, his voice a mixture of anger and resignation, told Gutierrez when the director stopped by Hart's house a few days after Mydland's death. (Garcia said something similar in his
Rolling Stone
interview a year after Mydland's death.) Hart told Gutierrez the band had tried interventions and even made threats about his livelihood, yet there seemed little they could do.

Once again, as they had for Pigpen in 1973, the Dead congregated at a chapel for a funeral service for one of their own—yet another easily rattled keyboard player who couldn't control his excesses. The Dead squeezed in together in a front row, across from Mydland's mourning family, as a tape of “I Will Take You Home,” which now felt heartbreaking, played on a small sound system. “They were all quiet,” recalls Mydland's former girlfriend, Cherie Barsin, who attended. Unable to fully address his death, the Dead joked around with the casket in a back room, almost dropping it. At the cemetery in Lafayette a member of Mydland's family pointed to his house and told Trixie Garcia that Mydland would sit on his porch with binoculars and zoom in on burials. (“He loved his family, his music and his friends,” read Mydland's own tombstone.)

Trixie, still a teenager, also grappled with Mydland's death; she'd come to think of him as her “little buddy.” But a far more sobering thought crossed her mind the day of his funeral. “That was when I realized Jerry was probably going to die early,” she says. “I had to think that Jerry lost hope or was unhappy.”

From the moment he heard the news Garcia clearly took Mydland's death particularly hard. Onstage the two men had an intriguing
dynamic—Mydland's vigor and musicianship would frequently bolster Garcia's own, especially coming after Keith Godchaux's increasingly lethargic concert presence, and he forever seemed to be looking at Garcia to receive a quick nod indicating Garcia was happy with something he'd just played. A few days after Mydland's death the Dead's ticket office held its annual barbeque on Garcia's birthday. Normally Garcia would've been on the road, but in view of the tragedy, the Dead had canceled shows, and Garcia was back home. The ticket office's Steve Marcus invited Garcia, who, to everyone's surprise, showed up and spent two hours at the party.

Before Garcia arrived, Marcus warned his coworkers not to mention Mydland; no one wanted to accidentally depress Garcia. But once he showed up and took a seat at a picnic table, Garcia brought up the topic before anyone else could. “What should we do?” he asked the employees. He told them he dreaded the idea of going onstage and not having Mydland there, but the Dead had shows lined up at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View. Perhaps boldly, Marcus suggested that the band should take a six-month break and examine its scene, which would involve shutting down the ticket operation. Garcia took it in but didn't decide one way or another.

A little over a week after Mydland's death Hornsby and the Range were playing the Concord Pavilion—by eerie coincidence the same town where Mydland and Keith Godchaux had both grown up. Before the show Hornsby had received a call from Lesh that he and Garcia were going to drive down to see the show and talk with him. Along with Sears, they all huddled in Hornsby's dressing room and offered Hornsby a job with the Dead.

Almost immediately Hornsby had mixed feelings. A part of him relished the thought: as a young music head, he'd been a fan of jazz and Leon Russell and had seen his first Dead show in 1973. But it wasn't
until the following year, when he saw them at the William and Mary Hall at the University of Richmond, that he became truly entranced. Between the Wall of Sound and the band's music, Hornsby was swept up in the Dead. “What really got me on board,” he says, “is that at the end of the night, Bob walks up—I've never seen this before or since—and says, ‘Hey, we had such a good time playing tonight, we're gonna come back tomorrow and take out the seats and party.'” Hornsby was one of many who returned the next day and heard the band play a completely different multihour set. With that, he says, “I was totally on board. I wasn't a Deadhead, because I was immersed in other music too, but I loved it.”

Thirteen years later Hornsby found himself playing an opening set at a Dead show—the same Laguna Seca performances where the “Touch of Grey” video was filmed. (Because he left after his set, Hornsby didn't witness any of the backstage tumult involving the Dead's crew.) The Dead's East Coast promoter, John Scher, a fan of Hornsby's music, had sent a copy of his debut album to the Dead, who signed off on the idea of Hornsby and his band as an opening act; it might have helped that Hornsby was covering “I Know You Rider” in his set. Over the next few years the bond between the group and Hornsby gradually strengthened. Having played in a Dead cover band in Virginia, Hornsby was fairly well versed on the band's repertoire, so it felt natural when he was asked to sit in on piano or accordion. “They said, ‘Come on and play!'” Hornsby recalls. “And suddenly I'm standing next to these guys. Garcia said, ‘We don't let just
anyone
play accordion with us.' They were a bunch of smiley faces. It was surreal.” Early on, Hornsby also learned how demanding the band's fan base could be: at the Laguna Seca shows he played the identical songs both nights, and Deadheads responded by yelling out, “Same set!”

For all his interest in hooking up with the Dead, Hornsby's own career was thriving. The previous year “The End of the Innocence” had hit the Top Ten, and his schedule was starting to fill up; he'd already
been in the studio with Dylan and Crosby, Stills & Nash, and Raitt was next. As flattered as Hornsby was about Garcia and Lesh's offer at the Concord Pavilion, the timing wasn't right. “If they had gotten to me four or five years before, I would've said yes,” he says. “And I would've been their keyboard player for good, and it would've been great. But I had my own thing going pretty well.” A few days later Hornsby called back to say he wouldn't be able to become a full-time member but offered to help with their transition to another keyboardist; he would be, in Garcia's term, a “floating member.”

Now the band had to scramble; a fall tour was set to start in early September. The last thing anyone in the Dead wanted to do was break in a new member, but they dutifully called in a range of keyboard players, including T. Lavitz of the Dixie Dregs and former Jefferson Starship member Pete Sears, and jammed with them, all in a single grueling day. When word leaked that the band was auditioning players, Weir, through a mutual friend, was approached by Vince Welnick, a thirty-eight-year-old Arizona-born journeyman player and singer.

On paper Welnick wasn't the odds-on favorite. He'd grown up immersed in the same genres the Dead loved—jazz, boogie-woogie—but was best known as a member of the Tubes, the campy-decadent seventies San Francisco prog-punkers who were the polar opposite of the Dead. But unlike some of his competition for Mydland's seat, Welnick could sing the high notes. (As Welnick later told
Relix
publisher Toni Brown, “[Bob] said, ‘Bruce Hornsby is in the band now, and we want a synth player who can sing high harmony.'”) “I remember the band sitting around going, ‘Wow, he could play the hard parts,'” recalls Bralove, who attended the rehearsals. “He had all of Brent's high harmonies, which made it possible for them to keep doing what they were doing vocally. The idea of rearranging the vocals to accommodate a new voice would have been very challenging.” Welnick could also hold his own instrumentally: when the band jammed with Welnick on
“Estimated Prophet” Kreutzmann was impressed that Welnick didn't “give up the seven”—referring to the song's 7/4 time signature. After anxiously waiting a week to hear whether he was in, Welnick got the offer, and he became the Dead's new keyboard player. As Welnick would later recall in several interviews, the band flashed its dark humor by asking him, “Is your insurance paid up?”

The decision was relatively quick; the Dead, in typical style, decided to keep working rather than confront its internal issues. As always, it was best to move on without dwelling much, if at all, on what had just occurred. “Band morale was so low,” recalls Justin Kreutzmann. “It was, ‘Oh, God, we gotta do this again?' I remember Jerry saying, ‘I'm never going to teach all these songs again—this is it. We're not going to start up all over again with someone new.' It really sucked to be the new guy after Brent.” When McNally asked the band about releasing a statement on Welnick's hiring, they decided against it; as Garcia told McNally, “Enough already.” The thought of talking up a new member—and talking about the one who'd just passed away—was beyond dismaying. By way of the
San Francisco Chronicle
, which had covered the Dead for many years, the news eventually broke. But no official press release about Welnick would ever make it out of the Fifth and Lincoln office, right up to his debut with the band in Ohio in September.

A few weeks later Hornsby made his official debut as part-time member—and discovered soon enough that the Dead machine, although efficient and militaristically organized, was also eccentric. That first night Hornsby didn't rehearse and had to wing it. He only knew how to play about thirty Dead songs, which left another hundred-plus that could pop up in the repertoire. (Adhering to a bit of rock concert protocol, they did compile set lists the first few months for Hornsby and Welnick; Welnick especially was far less up to speed on Dead songs than Hornsby was, so the band sent him their back catalog and even a CD player.) When the time came to walk onstage Hornsby would be
pumped, but he was surprised by how casual the rest of the band could be. “Eight o'clock would come and go, and they wouldn't give a shit,” Hornsby says. “At 8:15, I'd say, ‘Hey, you guys wanna go out there?' They didn't want to be pushed.” Soundchecks were also rare, and at times he found himself standing onstage with the Dead as everyone adjusted their levels and prepared for the show as a stadium or arena full of fans watched. “Other bands would be freaking,” he says. “That never happened, which was really nice, really refreshing. No pressure.”

Once the music began, Hornsby at times grappled with the band's overwhelming sound, now augmented by not one but two keyboard players. It was, he says, “so friggin' loud,” especially Lesh's bass, that Hornsby felt the music ripping through his torso. As a result, he would sometimes play the wrong changes and, after the show, be told what chord he should have been playing. Hornsby even stood out physically: recalling one show in the summer of 1991, Hornsby jokes, “I look like a choir boy out there, or like I'd just come from playing with Tony Orlando.” And although Hornsby didn't mind the smell of pot wafting around him during concerts, he gave the band and crew a strict warning: if he were dosed, he would leave. “I didn't want to deal with that,” he says. “But they were good with it.”