Bobby remembers living at that house with us for a little while but I don’t. He’s probably right. He probably did. I was so happy all the time and in love with the band and in love with Susila, that I wouldn’t have noticed a detail like that. Phil was in Fairfax and Jerry was someplace with Mountain Girl. Mickey found a ranch in Novato.
Even though we were scattered around a rural county, we were still friends and would still hang out. My place on Lucas Valley Road was tucked away from other houses, so some of the guys would come over and we’d do stupid things, usually involving guns or firecrackers, and drugs or alcohol. Take your pick. Mix and match.
In the summer one time, when the wild oat grass was tall, Jerry and Bobby came by. We taped cherry bombs to old LPs that weren’t any good, threading the fuse through the hole. You know where this is going. We lit them and threw them like Frisbees over the field, down the hill. When the inevitable flames broke out, we ran like all hell to get the hose and we managed to put out the fire by the skin of our teeth. There were other days like that, too. Plenty of them.
I enjoyed living there but then the damnedest thing happened. We were making our third record, Aoxomoxoa, and we were down in a studio in San Mateo, which is a town in the South Bay—about an hour from my place in San Rafael, on the opposite side of San Francisco. We were recording studio tracks that I’m not even sure if we ended up using, but we may have. (We ended up recording that album twice, as you’ll read about in the next chapter). Anyway, I got this message that I had just gotten busted for marijuana and I said, “Shit! That’s now the second time I’ve gotten busted when I wasn’t even there.” Except when 710 got raided, I wasn’t actually busted. This time, I was. I just wasn’t around when the police swarmed the house and raided it. Unfortunately, Susila was home and she was arrested and taken down to the station and thrown in jail. She was pregnant with Justin.
This time we weren’t busted just for possession. I had pot plants on the property. I was trying to grow my own, so I had a small outdoor grow down behind the house, about 100 yards down the hill, facing north and everything. What happened was, the landlord who rented to us was this really uptight motherfucker—I don’t even think he wanted to rent to us in the first place, but he did. He came over one day and it happened to be the same day that, like an idiot, I’d left the garden hose running down there to water the plants. The landlord was the kind of guy who, once he saw the hose, decided he needed to check it out. He followed it to the end, discovered the plants, then ratted me out to the police. Goes to show, you don’t ever know. Right?
Well, that was the end of that. The pot wasn’t even any good anyway. It was never going to yield anything too kind or dank. I didn’t know a thing about growing weed. I don’t think I even knew the difference between male plants and female plants. I probably would’ve raised a male, thinking, “Oh, this is cool,” not knowing any better.
But anyway, that happened there and I got a spanking for it. They put me in jail for ten days in Marin County for that one. They made Susila serve time, too, separately, right after she gave birth to Justin. We had to take him over to his grandmother’s so he wouldn’t be taken to family services or something. To her immense credit, Susila is able to laugh it off now, remarking that at least the jail was in the new Hall of Justice building, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Almost two decades later, the Grateful Dead would record our bestselling album in that same complex. (In the Dark was recorded at the Marin Veteran’s Auditorium, which is part of the Marin County Civic Center complex that Frank Lloyd Wright designed.)
There’s another twist to this. Right before I went to serve, I had been busted again—oops—this time in New Orleans, with the whole band. The New Orleans incident happened in January 1970. I did my time for the Lucas Valley grow just a couple weeks after that, because I remember the fucking prosecution said, “You know, Mr. Kreutzmann was just arrested for marijuana possession in New Orleans.”
So what if I was? I hadn’t been tried on that charge yet and, in this country, you’re supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. Granted, I was guilty. Of course I had marijuana on me, and with me, and certainly in me during our stay in New Orleans. Still, what happened that time was such a setup, such a scam, such complete nonsense.
We were playing our first shows in New Orleans and, usually, no matter how late it is, you can’t sleep for hours after playing a gig. So you go out and you look for more trouble—you look for a reward. You just played this great concert, you’re feeling great, you want to go out and celebrate. I’m always one to celebrate. So after one of those gigs in New Orleans, Mickey and I went out together after the show. We went nightclubbing on Bourbon Street, checking things out and having fun. When we walked back into the hotel, I remember looking around and I knew something was amiss. I said, “Hart, how come all these guys are standing around this lobby, in suits? It’s four in the morning. They’re not tourists. What the fuck is going on?” He said, “Oh, don’t worry about it, Bill.”
We went into one of our rooms—I forget whose, exactly—and naturally we started smoking some pot. It wasn’t seeded or stemmed, so we used the drawer to clean it—it was probably a couple ounces. Pretty soon there was a knock at the front door. Since this was in the French Quarter, there was also a back door, which, naturally, I started going for. But the cops were there already, too. We were surrounded. Oddly enough, they were rather nice to us, despite the circumstance. They didn’t beat us up or do anything weird to us and they were actually quite polite throughout the whole ordeal. They booked Owsley that night and it turned out that’s who they really wanted—they knew he was the big gun and they were after him. It actually ended his career with the Grateful Dead, a second (but not final) time.
Eventually, they dropped the charges for everyone but Owsley, even though I don’t think they caught him with anything big. He never traveled heavy, as far as I know. We didn’t go back to New Orleans for a long time after that, although I never took that bust personally—they knew the Grateful Dead were coming to town, they knew the Grateful Dead meant drugs, and they were right. It’s simple. To this very day in New Orleans, marijuana is a big no-no. You can’t smoke a joint on Bourbon Street and expect to get away with it.
My thing, and it’s important that I talk about this, is that I think you should be able to smoke a joint on Bourbon Street. Or anywhere else, for that matter. I think pot should be legalized in this country. It’s time for the prohibition to end. I follow this stuff closely and I applaud all the states that support medical marijuana. I live in Hawaii and I have my card.
Listen, the medical benefits of cannabis are no joke. For instance, I know firsthand that smoking cannabis is extremely effective for treating a staggering variety of ailments, from nausea to insomnia. It’s also a proven pain reliever. Furthermore, cannabis can now be made into a medical preparation using strains that are very high in CBDs and low in THC, which means there’s no psychoactive effect; it’s medicine. It can be given to kids instead of prescribing them harsher and more dangerous pharmaceutical drugs such as Ritalin. And it’s significantly more effective.
Medical marijuana laws are not just a loophole to get high. Of course, I also like to get high just to get high, and I feel strongly that recreational use should be legal. If anything, it’s a crime that it’s not. As for the recent wins in Colorado and Washington, well, you can bet those states are going to see my dollars. Good-hearted Americans have used the democratic process in two states to say, hey, stop wasting my tax dollars prosecuting something that is more harmless than alcohol. Instead, tax it and regulate it and generate millions of dollars in state revenue at a time when we need that most. More states will soon follow. Hopefully by the time you read this.
Whether you smoke it, vaporize it, eat it, or even use it as a salve, there’s nothing wrong with cannabis—if anything, there are a number of things right with it. I’m not afraid to say that. So, for the record, the drummer from the Grateful Dead smokes weed and think
s it should be legal—is that any surprise?
7
The year 1969 was a huge one for the Grateful Dead and it started off with a couple of bangs—literally. First, there was the Led Zeppelin photo shoot that we photo bombed in our own way, you could say. We didn’t mean to scare off Led Zeppelin but we scheduled a photo session at Herb Greene’s studio on the same day that they did—it was their first time in San Francisco and maybe even in America. They weren’t really well known over here quite yet and they had a gig at the Fillmore West that ended up being some kind of breakout show for them.
Their photo shoot was first, before ours, and we were getting tired of sitting around. Every successful band has dealt with the “hurry up and wait” methodology that afflicts the music industry; there’s just no way around it. This has led to a lot of truly destructive (and/or self-destructive) behavior by a lot of bands over the years, including us. At that photo shoot, I remember that Pigpen brought a .22 Colt-style six-shooter with him. He used to flaunt that thing around and scare people with it. Anybody who knew him would’ve found this amusing because Pigpen was the sweetest guy in town. He never would’ve hurt a single living thing and he never once did. But he did love to have fun with this gun—when he got restless, he’d sometimes shoot it off for amusement. He’d brandish it in conversation and then fire one off in some direction just to make his point. And for humor. At the Led Zeppelin photo shoot, when we all got tired of sitting around, he fired a round into the ceiling, I believe. It was all horseplay. But that was enough for Led Zeppelin. They ran. It’s comical and ironic to think of now, given some of the truly unruly and outright evil behavior they later exhibited, once they became big enough to get away with it. We were harmless in comparison. But don’t tell them that.
We had another comical encounter right after that, but instead of guns, this one involved Playboy Bunnies and LSD. We were invited to be the musical guest on a TV show called Playboy After Dark, hosted by Hugh Hefner. The show was totally weird and awkward. It was supposed to be a variety show that kind of brought the magazine to life and it tried to sell a fake version of what life was like at the actual Playboy mansion.
We arrived on the set and, again, were subjected to the “hurry up and wait” phenomenon. The show was conceived to look like a house party but it was actually filmed at CBS Studios in Los Angeles, on a giant soundstage that was kind of intimidating just by its size alone. One of the things I noticed about this place was that it had a giant coffee dispenser—one of those three-foot-tall things, for the union and for all the people working the show. And everybody was drinking coffee.
We went through the long and tedious process of getting ready: we had them put makeup on us, Mickey and I got our stuff together, we all agreed what songs we were going to play, and all of that. Bear—you know, Owlsey—was back with us at this point. He had a brief revival as our sound guy, until that bust in New Orleans. With Bear came his long delays with getting the sound “perfect,” so we had to put up with that, in addition to all the normal sitting around and doing nothing that is standard fare for television shoots.
Pretty soon, though, I noticed that some of the stagehands and cameramen were having a bit of trouble doing their jobs. They were saying things like, “Joe, you’re out of focus.” “No, number 13, you’re out of focus.” “Is this thing on?” “Hi! Who is this?” “Cameras are weird, man.” There was all this broken communication. I finally figured out that Bear, or at least someone in our ranks, had gone to that coffeepot and electrified it. Everyone was dosed. Including Hugh Hefner who, at the end of the night, tried to thank Phil and me. You could see he was really trying, and he really was being sincere, but he was also really high on acid and it was hard for him to talk. It didn’t quite come out right. All we could do was laugh, cackling the whole way to the end of CBS Studios, because we were really high on acid, too. Everybody was really high on acid—the entire film crew, the band, the actors and actresses, all the Playmates. They all got a surprise taste of Owsley’s finest that day. So it ended up being a fun time after all. Like a guerilla Acid Test. With bunnies!
Our performance from that broadcast found its way over to YouTube, if you care to watch it. We played “St. Stephen” and “Mountains of the Moon.” You can’t really tell that everyone was tripping their brains out … but they were.
I don’t condone dosing people without their prior consent, but consider the context. If you recall, the Grateful Dead started out as the house band at the Acid Tests, which were thrown by the Merry Pranksters. You could argue, then, that as a band, we were literally born out of a psychedelic prank. Therefore, certain things were just woven into our DNA. And when various members of the band stopped eating acid as part of their diets, well, the pranks, at least, continued.
Bobby was a natural prankster and going through hotel lobbies or airport terminals could be especially hazardous with him. Especially in the days before TSA, before 9/11 and all these heavy-duty regulations. One time, I think we were in Portland—I don’t know what year—Bobby thought it would be funny to pull out a toy cap gun. It looked just like a snub-nosed .38 and he whipped it out in front of the ticket counter and just started firing it off in the airport. He got arrested for that one. The rest of us went on to wherever and left him to pay for his sins.
I think Bobby was kind of afraid to prank me too much because he knew that my retaliation might up the ante beyond his comfort zone. Payback is a bitch. But he would tell front-desk clerks or airline ticketing agents that so-and-so, usually a tour manager, was stoned out of their mind and carrying a lot of drugs on them and things like that. Little things for amusement. His amusement.
One particular prank that I remember, very clearly, inadvertently involved former U.S. senator George McGovern. In 1972, McGovern was running for president on the Democratic ticket against Richard Nixon. It’s a presidential race that will always be remembered for Nixon’s scandal at the Watergate hotel. The Grateful Dead somehow managed to pull off our own little hotel scandal involving McGovern that year. Unlike Nixon, we didn’t get in trouble for it. Or, at least, not enough that we needed to resign.
McGovern’s campaign had reached out to us, seeking the Grateful Dead’s endorsement. We weren’t ready to do that, even though none of us could stomach the thought of a second Nixon term. McGovern was the much better choice and we probably should’ve supported him, but we were an adamantly apolitical band back then. We ended up meeting McGovern in person, on an airplane—by coincidence, we were on the same flight. He invited us to play the White House if he won. We declined. He lost, anyway.
In late October 1972, with both campaigns in overdrive, the band happened to be booked at the same hotel as McGovern. Two different types of parties—the Democratic and the Dead. This was somewhere in Wisconsin, around Milwaukee. I don’t recall the name of the hotel … but it wasn’t Watergate.
We were destined for trouble at that hotel. Perhaps as some kind of prelude, I got into a fight with Bobby on the way back from the gig after the first night. The argument was over the very important distinction of which freezes first—asphalt or metal. I swore up and down that it was metal. Bobby swore up and down that it was asphalt. To settle it, we jumped out of the van and I wrestled Bobby to the actual asphalt. I had him pinned to the ground and I was trying to smash his head against the curb when one of our roadies, Ram Rod, very carefully put his boot under Bobby’s head so he wouldn’t get hurt. We were into it pretty heavy. Ram Rod’s boot snapped us out of it, and we dusted each other off and continued being rowdy.
That kind of energy followed us back to the hotel the next night, too. We didn’t know McGovern was there at first, so that had nothing to do with it.
We were in the middle of a tour and we must’ve gone through states where fireworks were legal, because we were stocked up on them. Band and crew alike. We had pounds upon pounds of firecrackers, and just as many pounds of bottle rockets. The hotel was horseshoe shaped, with an atrium in the middle, so t
he rooms all faced each other on the inside, going however many stories up. There was that great wide-open space that overlooked the indoor courtyard or whatever. We kind of got wise to where we all were and we took stock of each other’s room numbers. Then, we opened our inside-facing windows and started shooting bottle rockets at each other. It was amazing. They were powerful enough that they’d go across the hotel atrium and into a room; not always the right room that you were hoping for. They weren’t exactly ballistic missiles and aiming them was a loose concept. So there would be some poor guy with his windows open who suddenly had a bunch of bottle rockets explode in his room. We proceeded to battle, launching bottle rockets back and forth. We’d light strings of firecrackers—hundreds of them—and chuck them down on the courtyard or mezzanine below and they resonated so beautifully, it was like firing cannons in the Grand Canyon. There was this incredible echo. And because we just played a show, we had all this energy that we were letting out.
While I haven’t told you about Keith Godchaux joining the band yet, and we’ll get to all that, he was our keyboardist at the time. This tangent should’ve come with a spoiler alert. Sorry. Anyway, Keith was with me in my room and we were just firing our ammunition away like crazy. We also had cases of Heineken with us and, as we’re drinking, we’re filling up the entire bathtub with broken beer bottles. That’s a lot of Heineken, I guess.
We’re drinking and we’re firing off bottle rockets and we’re lighting off firecrackers and nobody’s really getting the upper hand or anything. It’s just chaos. Apparently, downstairs and throughout the rest of the hotel, McGovern’s Secret Service men had heard the explosions and hit the deck. They thought they were under attack. If that Nixon don’t get you, then the Dead sure will.
Ram Rod’s room was right next to mine. Directly above him, one story up, was our lighting designer for that tour, Ben Haller. Now, as with many of those old hotels, air would get sucked into the room through the outside window and blow out under the door. So, being the smart guy that he was, Ben cut open a down pillow and emptied the whole pillowcase while leaning outside, right above Ram Rod’s room. Every one of those feathers got sucked into Ram Rod’s window and when he came out of there, it looked like he had been tarred and feathered. He had been sweating from the firecracker war, so the feathers stuck all over him—he was completely covered in them. Head to toe. It was the ultimate pillow fight. And that was the end of it: Ram Rod lost the war. Ben won. That’s how you win when you’re playing with us.
Deal: My Three Decades of Drumming, Dreams, and Drugs with the Grateful Dead Page 12