The Grateful Dead didn’t hit our actual pinnacle until sometime in the late 1980s. Size-wise, early 1990s. But in the mid-1970s, we hit a certain plateau. Success took a heftier toll on Jerry than it did on me, personally, because I could always retreat or go hang out with the crew or something. But everyone wanted a piece of Jerry, all the time, until he had nothing left for himself. He used to take time to talk to that random fan who had taken too much acid and who needed to discuss the universe with him, or thank him, or just have some kind of personal exchange. If they were too high, Jerry would talk them down. If they were too low, Jerry would help them up. When they demanded his full attention, he’d try to give it to them. That was really admirable. Heroic. But when your audience swells to a certain size, you can’t do that sort of thing anymore. There’s just not enough time and there was always someone else in line, raising their hand, demanding attention. By the end of 1974, Jerry was done being that kind of hero. He was ready for a change of scene. He needed a break from it. I honored his decision and the rest of us did, too.
I could tell that Jerry’s spirit had turned restless. He was no longer satisfied with the music, and if the music isn’t working, then the rest of it isn’t working, either. Overall, Jerry didn’t seem as happy as he once was. Looking back, neither was I. We needed to get our hunger back, so it was time to go on a fast.
The risks were certain: If we kept going, we ran the possibility of coming to a standstill. Of course, by stopping, we risked the same thing. There was always the chance that we’d never start back up again.
Before the hiatus began, we played five hometown shows at the Winterland Arena. They were our good-bye shows and we even advertised them as such. It wasn’t a marketing ploy—nobody knew when or if the Grateful Dead would ever return. We sure didn’t. We each had our own ideas about it and I’d venture to say that even those thoughts varied wildly from day to day. Whatever we told others about regrouping, we didn’t always believe ourselves. Sometimes it was just wishful thinking.
The Winterland shows were October 16 through 20, 1974. Our performances from that run, as always, were varied. Highs and lows. I’m sure we rode the emotional roller coaster, as well, those nights. The atmosphere inside the venue was charged, not just because these were our “last shows until…?” but also because Jerry had decided that this might be his only chance to live out his filmmaker fantasies, so he had Rakow hire camera crews to document the entire run. Bill Graham was not happy about that and neither were some members of the audience. The cameras were big and cumbersome and got in some people’s way. People weren’t used to tripping out or freaking freely with big, professional camera crews around, capturing everything. People weren’t used to seeing cameramen onstage instead of just the band. It was a distraction. Graham saw it as a divisive issue and sided with the small group of fans who minded.
But there was a bigger issue at those shows, specifically at the final one. Somebody had convinced Mickey Hart to show up and to bring a drum kit with him, in the back of his car. The thinking was that if this really was the last Grateful Dead concert, Mickey should participate and be a part of it. I was not cool with that. At all. I’ve never really spoken publicly about this, but I’ll be clear, here: I objected to having Mickey sit in with us that night and I think I was probably somewhat vocal about that, backstage.
I enjoyed being the only drummer and I didn’t want that to change. I got territorial about it. Mickey didn’t know the new material and we hadn’t rehearsed or played with him in years, so I didn’t think that it could possibly be any good—and it wasn’t, that night. Personally, I was insulted that everybody else backstage rallied behind Mickey. The whole situation became really uncomfortable for me. And that was the last Grateful Dead show before our hiatus.
13
The hiatus officially began on October 21, 1974. There were points during the hiatus when I honestly didn’t think the Grateful Dead, as we knew it, would ever get back together. Maybe it had run its course. Jerry was content and busy and musically satisfied—he had several active bands, including the Jerry Garcia Band and Legion of Mary, and he was touring as much as ever.
I played in a band with Keith and Donna for a little bit, but then they both defected into one of Jerry’s bands. Jerry recruited me, too, for some shows that were billed as “Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders”—just a few at first and then not at all. Pretty soon, I was a drummer without a band.
Before the break, Susila and I bought a second property up in a remote area of Mendocino County, in the small Wild West logging town of Comptche. Today, Comptche has less than 200 residents. Back then, it was probably half that. Booker T. was one of them. Also, Rita Coolidge’s sister, Priscilla, lived in the area. Their father, Pastor Dick Coolidge, held Sunday services at the grange. Not that we went. But that meant that Rita and her husband, Kris Kristofferson, were no strangers to the land. It was an odd mix of people and took a certain type. There wasn’t much in terms of modern luxuries and it’s the type of place where the only gas station is also the general store. Susila describes the town as “kinda Norman Rockwell with an edge.”
Comptche is about fifteen miles inland from the Pacific and 140 miles north of San Francisco. Realistically, it takes almost four hours to get to the city limits from up there. That’s why we chose it. I wanted to be close to the coast but away from the bay and the band and the whole lifestyle. It was our escape hatch; our getaway. A place to relax and recharge during downtime. A place to run away after a long tour.
The house was physically built by another drummer, John Barbata, who was known for his work in the Turtles and Jefferson Starship—one of those many post-OG incarnations of Jefferson Airplane. He was also Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s drummer for a while and worked sessions for legends like Eric Clapton. He may have been a better drummer than a home builder, though.
Here’s another crazy connection: Barbata allegedly built the house with the help of the real-life Indiana Jones, the real-life Han Solo. Yes, Harrison Ford. Before Ford was a famous actor, he was a starving carpenter.
Susila and I were attracted to the house because of its unusual architecture. It was made of all redwood, with wooden decks, wooden rails, wooden everything. It was like a pirate ship turned upside down. None of the walls were the same size. The windows leaked. It was funky. It was odd. We loved it. We bought it from Barbata and used it as our retreat. All told, I had it for something like twenty-five years and lived there full time for a long time, over different periods.
I built a big barn next to the house, which I used for music when I wasn’t on the road. We had more than twenty acres to play around with. Throughout the years, I grew a little bit of marijuana up there and played a lot of music in local places and kept things pretty low key. But, at first, it was just our little adventure place; we’d get cabin fever in Mill Valley and feel the urge to wander around, like hippies do. But instead of getting into a Volkswagen bus, we had alternate lives as ranchers in Mendocino County. It was rustic luxury.
But then Susila and I broke up. This was right before or around the time that the hiatus began, so it was perfect timing. Sometimes you need those kinds of sea changes. The tide comes in and sweeps away your footsteps as you retreat to higher ground. It’s not unlike wisdom gleaned from Grateful Dead shows—you can never truly predict where the jam will go next, but you must always know what to do when you get there. Or else it ends and you move on to the next jam.
Susila had been drifting away from me and she wouldn’t come home a lot of the time. I drove forty minutes down the road, to the actual town of Mendocino, after I had gotten word that she was there with some other guy. I went to his apartment and found them both in bed together. I had a check for $35,000 with me, because we had just sold the Mill Valley house and I needed her to sign off on it, so I could cash it. Due to the unusual situation that I had just walked in on, she was freaked out and signed the check right there and then, still in bed with this other guy. I left peacefu
lly and alone, and went straight to the bank. And that was the start of my bachelor period. I was around twenty-eight years old. I never really had a bachelor period before. I was ready for it, but it wasn’t quite what you’d think.
I didn’t get a playboy suite in a big city high-rise and live life inside a rock star cliché. Instead, I rented a little red house in Stinson Beach, about 100 yards from the beach, with sand all around it. I had to put in a fireplace because it was freezing there in the wintertime. Oddly enough, that’s yet another place from my past that has since burned down. I went back to Stinson Beach a couple years ago and decided to drive past it, for old times’ sake, and it was gone. I was told that it went up in flames. Ashes to ashes.
I really liked living there. It was the first time in my life I had a place to really call my own. I had never lived by myself before. I started dating a beautiful blond chick who would come over and stay with me sometimes. But overall, I was on my own. Jerry and Mountain Girl lived nearby. So did Keith and Donna. I wasn’t talking to Susila and Justin was living with his grandparents, so it was a far-out time for me. I didn’t have any idea if or when the Grateful Dead would get back together, and I didn’t have a steady income. I didn’t know what to do.
That was all right because the first part of the hiatus wasn’t much of a hiatus after all. After just four months off the road, we went into Bobby’s brand-new home studio. I’ve made it loud and clear that I have problems with studios, and it’s true, I do. As you’d assume, recording in a friend’s home studio can be laid back and loose—but then that becomes the problem. Since you’re not paying by the hour, it can be too relaxed. And too comfortable.
Bobby had a good setup, though, and we had a good working thing going on; we’d start in the afternoon and would play for as long as it was happening. The record that came from that, Blues for Allah, had a lot of really strong material on it, but I always felt that my own playing was weak. We should’ve let the new tunes breathe a bit more before we recorded them, because they really deserved better.
Once we started performing them live—“Help on the Way,” “Slipknot!,” “Franklin’s Tower,” “The Music Never Stopped,” “Crazy Fingers”—we turned a corner and it was a whole other ball game. Those songs are among our very best and they lived up to their potential. We had to play them live in front of an audience in order for that to happen. Once we let them outside and started taking them for walks, they each had a growth spurt during which they really discovered themselves. We got to know those songs rather well, over the years.
The album also contained a group of really experimental songs (“Stronger than Dirt,” “Unusual Occurrences in the Desert”) that bordered on acid-jazz composition. Wild stuff. Deep cuts.
Mickey wasn’t technically back in the band yet—actually, technically, neither were we. This was supposed to be our leave of absence. This was our idea of a break. Anyway, depending on who you ask, I’m sure, Mickey was just a “special guest” on Blues for Allah. Everyone, me included, remembers his contribution because of the crickets. Mickey and the crickets. He was starting to get into some of his true sonic pioneering by this point and he definitely was going as far out there as he could with sounds and stuff. He got a whole box of crickets to use as an instrument on Blues for Allah. To this day, I’m not sure where you actually can buy such a thing. Maybe a cricket farm. Anyway, he put a microphone inside the box and then manipulated the sound. That was cool and all, and totally Mickey. But I wasn’t thrilled about his presence.
We weren’t booking tours again, just yet, but we agreed to two one-off gigs, in March and June respectively. Both gigs were already weird and awkward, so we used them to showcase the new experimental numbers—“Blues for Allah” and “Stronger than Dirt.” Oddities that disappeared into the ether soon after. So long.
Then, on August 13, 1975, we played at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. A private, invite-only show, mostly for the music industry and, of course, our friends. Something about showcasing our new material for radio programmers and the like. You know, stuff I never actually paid any attention to. All I knew was that we were going to play a show. And it ended up being a great show. After cutting an entire album in the studio, we were like schoolchildren waiting for the last bell to ring before summer break. At least I was.
Mickey played the show with us and brought his box of crickets with him, to use as part of the live performance. At some point during the night, the crickets joined the revolution and staged a jailbreak. They liberated themselves and pretty soon there were crickets over the whole goddamn place. They made the Great American Music Hall their home for a little while after that. They were granted asylum.
We played the material from Blues for Allah that night and the band sounded great. We were all so into it. The Great American Music Hall is a tiny place with just a 600-person capacity, and we were really squashed on that stage without our usual amount of real estate, but the night was as good as you could ask for.
In my mind, that show was a crucial turning point. I wasn’t high on smack that night—I dabbled with opiates throughout the hiatus, which I’ll explain later in this chapter, but I stayed away from all that junk for the gig. It was a very bright, clear, expressive night for the whole band. It was also just a really big moment for me, personally. It was the first time that I thought we could be a band again. And the first time I thought having two drummers again could work.
That one gig spurred a whole lot of energy. Everybody really felt great about the music. Blues for Allah is one of the farthest out-there albums that we’ve ever done. I mean, it’s freaking out there. But, to this day, I still really love some of those songs. Maybe the live run-through of the album should’ve been the album itself. Sixteen years later, we came around to that idea—we released the show in its entirety as One From the Vault.
A friend of mine, this guy Slade, came up to me after the show. I drove my Alfa Romeo 1750 GTV to the venue and Slade had his BMW 2002 TII with him. I literally just walked out the front door and got in my car to go home, when Slade pulled up to me. We decided to race—from the Great American in San Francisco all the way to Slade’s house in San Rafael, some twenty miles north of there.
Gentlemen, start your engines: We raced the whole way. There was no holding back. We were going top speeds, like, 120 mph across the Golden Gate Bridge. On the Marin side of the Golden Gate, we took all three lanes to make the turns. We were going so fast, we couldn’t stick to just one lane. There was no traffic. Neither one of us got pulled over that night and that had more to do with blind luck than with karma.
The moment we left the Great American Music Hall, I could feel it. I knew we were going to push this as far as we could go. It was going to be a real, honest-to-God car race. By the time we hit Lombard Street, we were running all the lights. At first we went fast enough to make all the green lights. Then it didn’t even matter anymore. By the end of Lombard, we were running red lights. That’s an incredibly irresponsible thing to do and I can’t recommend it. No way. Frankly, I’m still amazed that we did that without any consequences. We got away with it and we know that now. But in the heat of the moment, there was no guarantee of any outcome. There was a reasonable possibility that somebody was going to end up in big trouble that night. Or worse.
By the time we reached the Presidio, at the edge of the city, I had the pedal touching metal. I was in fifth gear. “Show me what you got.” We raced through the toll booths—100 miles an hour through those fucking things—and I’m saying to myself, “Okay, I’m going to go to jail tonight. I’m okay. It’s okay. I’m going to jail. That’s all.” My seat belt was on, my balls were out, and I raced like hell. At the end of the bridge, I looked down—you can only take your eye off the road for a split second—and I saw the needle at 120. I kept that up through the tunnel on Highway 101, and could hear both of our cars echoing in there, roaring away like wild things. We were going racetrack speeds on streets that were made for daily commu
tes, rush hours, and gridlock.
When we got to San Rafael, Slade was just the tiniest bit in front of me. He had me beat by maybe a car length or less. We continued racing all the way through downtown, running everything again. There was no stopping for anything. In the last quarter of a mile of this big race, a decision had to be made. The road split and I had a choice. Left or right. Both sides led to Slade’s house. I don’t remember if I chose left or right but it was the right call. Slade went the other way. I came in hot around that turn just in time to slide in front of Slade’s car, effectively blocking him. He had to slam on his brakes. And that’s how I won that race.
It really pissed off Slade, though. Man, was he pissed. There was nothing he could do. I had him blocked. We both drove nonchalantly up his driveway, parked our cars, and got out. I can still remember this: there wasn’t a sound to be heard. No wind blowing. No dogs barking. And no police sirens. All I could hear were the exhaust pipes. They make this loud tinkle, tinkle, tinkle when the steel starts to cool down after getting red hot like that. I looked and the pipes were bright red. We looked up and thanked our lucky stars. I’ll never understand how we didn’t end up getting chased by the police. Maybe there were student riots planned for the next day or something. You watch—I’ll get a letter from the CHP once this book comes out. Of course, there’s no proof of any of this. It’s all hearsay. (Right?)
I’d like to think that a part of us getting away with it has to do with that manifesting spirit thing—if you worry too much, you’ll be busted for sure. But if you don’t, you won’t be. I’m not sure that it really works like that. But, regardless, that was a hairy race, man. It was really hairy.
Deal: My Three Decades of Drumming, Dreams, and Drugs with the Grateful Dead Page 22