Because we were part owners (at least in theory), the Carousel was kind of like our clubhouse during the Spring of 1968. All fun and games. Rakow oversaw a remodelling of the interior, complete with velvet couches that lined the perimeter of the dance floor. It made seeing live music there a whole lot of fun. We had a grand reopening on March 15, on a bill we shared with Jefferson Airplane. By summertime, it became obvious that our little adventure just wasn’t sustainable. Apparently, the terms of the lease alone made it financially impossible to keep the place afloat. It would’ve been tragic to see such a great venue shuttered, but only a masterful businessman would’ve been able to turn it around. Enter Bill Graham, who took over the lease that July and transformed it into the Fillmore West. Out of respect for rock history, he kept the Carousel marquee out front, right where there’s a giant “H” for “Honda” these days. Then he made his own rock history with the place.
The day before Graham officially opened the Fillmore West, he closed the original Fillmore. (The original Fillmore—on the corner of Fillmore and Geary—has since be reopened.) The Fillmore West lasted from July 1968 to July 1971 and it carried on the spirit of the Carousel while turning it into a respectable business. A big difference between Graham and when we ran that room with Rakow was that Graham had the wherewithal and the know-how to get the best acts and promote the shows properly. He also knew across all lines—he knew different musicians from all different worlds and had a knack for bringing them all together. We already talked about this because of the night when I first met Mickey Hart at the Count Basie show.
Graham continued this tradition at the Fillmore West. For the Grateful Dead, that meant—among other things—that we got to play on a bill with Miles Davis. A four-night stand beginning on April 9, 1970. And Graham scheduled Miles as the opener. Naturally, we thought that was totally ludicrous and ass-backwards. “What’s he opening for us for?” This was during his Bitches Brew era, when he had that bitchin’ band that included Chick Corea on keys, Dave Holland on bass, Airto Moreira on percussion and Jack DeJohnette on drums. They blew the house away. It was intimidating because after he finished, as we were picking our jaws off the floor, Graham was like, “Your turn, guys. Get up there! Time’s a-wasting!” We did what we could, and we didn’t play half bad, but we felt sufficiently humbled. (For his part, Miles must’ve been satisfied with these shows because, two years later, he released his set from the second night as a live album called Black Beauty.)
In addition to having a venue that we could essentially run wild in, we also had a new practice space, which we took to with all the fervor and hunger typical of any up-and-coming band our age. At least, any serious one. The new space was called the New Potrero Theater. As the name implies, the theater was in Potrero Hill, an old working-class neighborhood that has since become way more gentrified, probably because it sits on a hill that breaks away from the city’s notorious fog, so you have a lot of sunny days there, year-round. The district has always been family-oriented, with picture-perfect views of the bay and the downtown skyline. At the bottom of the hill, there are a lot of cheap warehouses and industrial spaces that artist types started snatching up, beginning in the 1960s and continuing to this day. Also: O. J. Simpson used to live in the neighborhood, but we never ran into him. At least, as far as I know.
In the Spring of ’68, we rented the theater and went and practiced there every day. Diligently. It was once a classic movie theater, but they ripped out all the seats. It went down a slope to where the screen used to be, and it was kind of run-down, but it was perfect for us. Down on the corner was a hamburger stand, so we became real friendly with those people and ate there quite often.
Mickey was still being worked in and we were coming up with stuff that no other rock band was doing at the time. Really far-out things. We learned a lot of music—and a lot about music—there. That’s when and where I first started believing in our abilities to truly explore different time signatures and play music that was free and far from ordinary. Rhythmically, we started playing around with sevens—we’d never done that before. We got away from being a blues band and started being more of an outsider jam band. That’s really what we did best.
The New Potrero Theater is also where we worked up “The Eleven,” which is significant because that tune, in particular, represents this new kind of thinking beyond boundaries that I’m talking about. Phil wrote the music for “The Eleven,” and Robert Hunter came up with the words. Traditionally, rock music is written in 4/4 time. Four beats per measure, right? You probably know this. It’s the standard. Sometimes you’ll find a 2/4, especially in country music. But for “The Eleven,” we took 12/8 and subtracted an eighth note to make it 11/8—hence the name of the song.
Right after we came out with that, the Allman Brothers did the same thing on the intro to a tune that would become one of their biggest songs—“Whipping Post.” The key is different, the changes are different, and when the vocals kick in, they slide it into a 12/8 blues. But the intro cheats that one beat, too. It’s 11/8. I wonder where that came from? Of course, I can’t say for sure. That’s for their story. Not mine.
In addition to all the shows at the Carousel, the tour with Quicksilver, and the free show on Haight Street that we talked about in chapter 4, another concert from that spring that probably deserves mention is one that took place at the Memorial Auditorium in Sacramento on March 11, 1968. We had a pretty good band on the bill with us that night. A power trio from England called Cream—Eric Clapton. Jack Bruce. Ginger Baker.
Watching Ginger Baker was always a trip for me, just because of the kind of drummer that he is. And I’ve always loved Eric Clapton’s guitar playing. It was really soulful. The three of those guys were just incredible together and they played some great music.
We were on the same bus back to San Francisco and we stopped at a restaurant, somewhere on the road there, and Clapton sat down at my table. He was a good cat and everything, but I was pretty well awestruck by the guy because I just loved his playing so much. I can’t recall what we talked about, really—it was a casual dinner conversation that took place more than four decades ago—but I can tell you that he was a sharp dresser. Those red shoes really worked for him.
There was also an incident in New York City that I don’t remember all that much about, but, instead, I have these images in my mind that are like postcards from my past. It was a free show that we staged at Columbia University on May 3, 1968. There had been a student strike, politically motivated of course, and the campus was effectively shut down. Police guarded the perimeter, which, naturally, stirred the prankster pot in all of us.
We weren’t political hippies. We were the much more dangerous kind—fun-loving, peace-seeking, do-as-you-wish hippies that just wanted everybody to get on with their getting on, whatever that may be. For us, that meant loading into the back of a bread truck, sneaking onto campus, and staging a bit of a caper—just for kicks. Nothing to it. We set up on the stone steps in front of some university building, as fast as we could so we wouldn’t be shut down, and then we played some music and that was that. It was completely unannounced, guerrilla-style. Nobody was hurt and nobody was arrested, as far as we knew. I do think that we confused some of the students, and I’m not sure how many new fans we picked up that day, exactly—we probably fared better a couple days later when we threw a freebie in Central Park—but at least we all had fun. And we got to pull a fast one on the authorities, which we were always fond of doing.
As for that gig in Central Park, I just remember that Mickey’s lady at the time had a bottle of Methedrine on her. Liquid speed. She administered a shot of it to both Mickey and me—right in the butt—so that we’d get through the gig, because we had been up really late the night before. It worked. We were in the heart of New York, the Big Apple, the city that never sleeps, so all of that seemed completely appropriate.
We returned to New York just a month later, on June 14, 1968, for our first run of shows at the newly r
enamed Fillmore East. On opening night, we were paired with the Jeff Beck Group, a young band from England. It was their American debut and the audience seemed to really love their lead singer. A guy by the name of Rod Stewart.
We played the Fillmore West a bunch that summer, too—both before and after it changed over from the Carousel. We had a few pickup gigs in places like Lake Tahoe and San Diego, as well as a festival in San Jose where we appeared alongside the Doors, the Animals, Ravi Shankar, Taj Mahal, the Youngbloods, and some others. We also played some festival of some sort in Orange County where we assaulted our friends in Jefferson Airplane with cream pies. Each man had a mark and mine was their bassist, Jack Cassidy. I got him good, man, but he didn’t like it one bit. He was so pissed off at me that I still don’t know if he’s ever forgiven me for it. I’m sure you have, Jack.
I bet you the cream pies were Mickey’s idea, because he loved that tactic. He even got me once, on a birthday, but I didn’t mind—I like pie.
Our second album, Anthem of the Sun, was finally released in mid-summer—July 18, 1968—and then, about a month later, the band went through a rather uncomfortable period that included two distinct attempted lineup changes. “Attempted” being the key word in both of those instances.
First, there was a meeting in which some members of the band tried to fire Bobby and Pigpen. I had nothing to do with it. I didn’t give it credence and I didn’t play into it. But Phil had really been on Bobby’s case for whatever reason; he didn’t think Bobby could keep up with the band’s growth, or he didn’t fit into his idea of where it was going, or whatever. Phil may have also thought that Bobby was partying too much, or drinking too much, or having too much fun. I just remember him really being on Bobby’s case all the time. It seemed personal.
I was getting as high and having as much fun as anybody, so I wasn’t about to point any fingers. In any case, Phil must’ve been really bothered by something and he brought Jerry into it. Now, Jerry was the most non-confrontational person in the band, so that didn’t quite work. Management was briefed on the situation and they called a meeting and we all sat around and kind of skirted the issue. Nobody could actually come right out and fire them, outright. Things were said … but, in the end, nothing was decided and it didn’t last, that’s for sure.
Bobby and Pigpen didn’t stop showing up and nobody turned them away. Their persistence paid off and, if anything, their determination to succeed led to greater contributions to the band. In Bobby’s case, especially, he made himself irreplaceable. It was the best possible resolution to that whole conflict.
Some people will find this interesting so I’ll mention it: There was chatter in our ranks about approaching another guitarist in our scene—David Nelson—to possibly take over Bobby’s spot, should it open up. It was brief and just talk and I didn’t feel any of that because I didn’t play into it. I didn’t think that either Bobby or Pigpen should leave and I was glad when they didn’t.
The other nonbinding, attempted lineup change that happened that year was also instigated by Phil. It may have been related to his reasons for wanting to get rid of Pigpen. Since that wasn’t going to happen, Phil came up with a different solution. Remember, this was during the Grateful Dead’s most experimental phase where we really got Out There every night. Pigpen was a straight blues guy. He formed the group because he wanted a blues band. His rave-ups were a hallmark of the early Grateful Dead and, as a frontman, his command of an audience was second to none. But with Mickey now in the band, and with our forward motion into all these new, complex song forms, we were getting into territory that Pigpen just wasn’t suited for, as a bluesman. He was in over his head. We all were.
But Phil had some history with an old friend of his, a keyboard player named Tom Constanten (aka “T.C.”), who, in theory, had the chops to accompany us on these weird musical journeys through other dimensions. Phil had already invited him into the studio with us to record some trippy keyboard bits for Anthem of the Sun, and that worked out just fine.
There may have been a band discussion about it or it may have just been a few people in the band, or it may have just been at Phil’s directive—nobody seems to recall—but beginning on November 23, 1968, at the Memorial Auditorium in Athens, Ohio, T.C. started playing with us, live. He and Pigpen shared organ duties and it also freed Pigpen up to just sing and rave and wail away on harp and percussion.
There are conflicting views about T.C.’s official role but, in my mind, he was never a card-carrying member of the Grateful Dead. He just didn’t fit the template. He was a transitional player for us, someone who was able to provide the keyboard parts that Pigpen couldn’t and someone who showed us that that role did, in fact, need to be filled. But it wasn’t going to be T.C. All in all, he would play with the Grateful Dead for just over a year—his tenure ended on January 30, 1970. There was no big blowup or anything; no showdown. He just left. We felt no animosity toward him and I hope he didn’t feel any toward us—it just wasn’t the right fit.
I got along really well with T.C., as I did with most people, and I thought he was a cool enough guy. However, he had this thing where, for whatever reason, he would perform at rehearsals pretty darn well, but then, when we’d be in front of an audience, it was like he froze or something. He just couldn’t let go. When things got strange and strayed from form, he couldn’t trust the music to lead, with the faith that it would all go somewhere wonderful and then somehow we’d be able to bring it all back home. That’s what jamming is all about. That’s what the Grateful Dead was all about. If you can’t do that, you can’t be in the band.
That said, I used to like getting drunk with T.C. on airplane flights. We’d drink cocktails and he’d loosen up. There’s no mistaking that he was a strange dude. I don’t remember ever taking acid with him but he was the straightest far-out character I’d ever met, to the point of being awkward, and he often seemed uncomfortable in his own skin. But he was smart as hell. He understood music theory and, in theory, he had a solid foundation for all the avant-garde stuff that we were getting into. But comprehending the concepts and being able to play the parts isn’t enough to make you a good musician. You also have to have that feeling—you have to get in contact with who you are inside, somehow, and let it connect to the music and then the music will connect to the audience. That’s how I see it, anyhow. I sometimes wanted to tell T.C., “Forget everything you know; forget what you learned in school. Forget yourself.”
I also found it interesting that T.C. was a Scientologist. He often seemed unresolved to me, and I wondered if his religion was partially to blame for that. Scientology can browbeat you, giving you the feeling that you’re not good enough so you need to be audited and you need to clean up, or whatever their trip is. If God really is an outer space man, then so be it. But auditing just sounded like punishment to me.
It’s not Scientology that I have a problem with, though. It’s all religions. All organized religions, anyway. Some have said that the Grateful Dead was a religion but what they mean by that is simply that it was a spiritual experience for them and certain things about it became rituals in which they would get some kind of fulfillment in their lives—be it the act of filling out mail-order ticket forms, or of traveling thousands of miles to ring in the New Year with us, or of dancing all freaky in an arena concourse while we played to the tide. But, despite the analogy, the Grateful Dead were never an organized religion. We offered an alternative to all that noise.
I want to make it clear that we were not a cult. Jerry Garcia was not the messiah. We weren’t gods. We were there every night for the same reason the Deadheads were. We wanted the music to take us to a place of transcendence and elegance. We wanted to reach that group consciousness so that we could realize that there was something that was bigger than us—and whatever it was, we all were an equal part of it, from the guys sweating it out onstage to the girls in line for the bathroom. We are all the same and we are all just a bunch of atoms. As I’ve said many times befo
re, I was actually the first Deadhead, going all the way back to that night in 1965 when I saw Jerry play banjo at the Tangent.
Feeling IT: I love the Deadheads just as much as they love us. (Jay Blakesberg)
Back to the plot, shall we? After all, this is an action tale, and a lot of big moments were just around the corner for us, from Woodstock to Altamont. But first, another thing that happened during 1968 that had a significant impact on the band, both in the immediate and in the long term, is that we all began migrating to Marin County. One by one we left the city and one by one we left each other to find spaces of our own. Most of the effects of the move out of the city and away from each other were subtle but they were also myriad and insidious. Our days of being a San Francisco band ended in the Spring of 1968. After that, we were a Marin County band. Again.
We loved Marin during our stays in Olompali and Lagunitas and so when everybody started moving up there, I found a place in San Rafael on Lucas Valley Road. It was right across the street, basically, from where George Lucas eventually built Skywalker Ranch. This was way before he was there—the name of the street is just one more weird coincidence. I moved into that house with Susila and the way the Grateful Dead had our finances set up back then, the band covered rent. So it was great.
Deal: My Three Decades of Drumming, Dreams, and Drugs with the Grateful Dead Page 11