Slade’s co-pilot for that race was a dope dealer who sat in the passenger seat, terrified and wondering what he got himself into. Slade didn’t care because when he’s competitive, he gets tunnel vision. His passenger could see the bigger picture and it scared him so much, he shit his pants in the car. That’s another thing that pissed Slade off that night. Two losses in one race.
Our crew guy, Kidd Candelario, rode shotgun in my car. He didn’t shit his pants; in fact, he didn’t give a shit at all. We laughed and had a great time. We had that kind of a team, back then. I could hang out with the crew guys and we took care of each other in strange ways, I guess. Kidd had my back and he was cool as a summer breeze on that ride. He was probably happy that we were going to make it to our destination in half the time it usually takes.
I have such a clear memory of that entire night. I really loved it. The racing part was cool and fun and has made for a good bonfire story over the years, but that was just the capper to a very pivotal gig and a great night of my life, overall.
After that, the hiatus began in earnest. Most of the other guys had side projects that they wanted to work on. But me, I didn’t have a Plan B and I didn’t know what to do for an income. I knew a dope dealer in the nearby town of Bolinas, who was growing a bunch of weed out behind his house. The plants were so big, I just couldn’t believe it. This was back way before the medical marijuana movement even started, so it was all the more brazen and radical. And definitely outlaw.
We both had time on our hands, so I used to go over there a lot and play him in backgammon and we got into some serious money with that game. I had a way of destroying him every time, and I was able to make enough winnings and take home enough free drugs to get me through those strange days. I never cheated and I’m not a gambler, but I sure knew how to win that game. I was on a streak. I had to win, because if I didn’t, I would’ve been in trouble. I would’ve squandered the only money I had to buy groceries and firewood—and I needed plenty of firewood because it got pretty cold out there on the waterfront. I was in the saltwater of it, so to speak. That suited me just fine: I’ve always been salt of the earth.
It was there in Stinson Beach where I got locked into a serious opium habit. The dealer who I played backgammon with would load me up. Before I knew it, I was smoking a ball of opium a day. Jerry was fully booked with his other bands and was also hard at work on what would become The Grateful Dead Movie. Bobby did some extracurricular touring of his own and he now had his own home studio that he could record in whenever he wanted. I’m not sure what the other guys were up to. But, me, I was playing backgammon and getting blissed out on opium.
I can’t remember when heroin entered the picture for me, personally. Or for any of the other guys, for that matter. I just remember that I started doing some around the time of the hiatus. It’s a damn shame that I ever got into that horrible stuff and I’m lucky in that I never got in too deep with it. I never shot up. I snorted it, but I preferred opium, which some people will say is the same thing, but it’s not. “Not quite,” anyway. They’re both opiates and they’re both crap. I don’t recommend either.
I never did heroin with Jerry. It’s well documented how deep he got with it and how it would continue to plague him and affect the band for the rest of our career. But I never did any with him or saw him do it. We never scored together and I’ve always felt this instinctual feeling that he was kind of looking out for me, on that level. He didn’t want me to do what he was doing, because he knew what it was doing to him and he knew how bad it was. That was the feeling that I got, anyway. It was always a strong feeling. But I also know that heroin is a solitary drug. It’s a dark drug. It’s not a social thing. It’s not like acid or ecstasy or any of those true consciousness expansion drugs. It’s not even like coke, which carries its own share of demons. Heroin is much darker, I’m afraid.
I didn’t have enough money during the hiatus to go out and do anything lavish. I was just barely getting by as an amateur backgammon player. There were few gigs and the ones I played didn’t pay. At least, not much. I was pretty isolated. I think I was in both shock and denial about the band. I was just kind of … waiting.
Susila and I started hanging out again. She started coming down to the beach and then, all of the sudden, she was with me again. I don’t understand how these things work, of course. Nobody really does. But before I knew it, we were serious again. I knew that I liked that, and I knew that it made me happy, so we decided to go with it. Then we took it further: We wanted Justin to live with us again and to be a real family. Susila’s parents, Justin’s grandparents, helped us buy a new house in Mill Valley and the three of us moved back there for round two. A new start.
Somehow, a decision was made to get the band back together. In typical Grateful Dead fashion, I don’t remember having a conference about it or anything. I think somebody just gave me the word: “Hey, come on down to Front Street for rehearsal.”
Then I realized that Mickey was going to be a part of that. Somehow, it seemed like Mickey had just weaseled himself back into the band, full time. I wasn’t too pleased about it. I didn’t think it was a good idea. Shortly before all of this, he started coming around to my house in Mill Valley, here and there, and I started getting the feeling that he wanted to hit me up for something, or get me to form some kind of alliance. Maybe he was trying to warm me up to the idea of having him rejoin. Parts of me came around a little at a time and then, of course, I did come around. I don’t remember exactly when it happened. Years into it, we started getting far-out together and the “Drums->Space” part of our shows became this phenomenal thing that I looked forward to every night. It was the most reliably psychedelic, improvisational, and experimental part of our show. Consistently. So Mickey earned his keep. But at first, I can tell you that I didn’t like it one bit.
One reason I let it go and didn’t fight his return, or raise as much of a stink about it as I probably wanted to, is that I was still dabbling with heroin and certainly was locked into my opium habit. It made me very malleable; very easy to convince to do something. Here was Mickey going, “Okay, Bill, I’m going to be back in the band,” and instead of objecting like I wanted to, I just gave a very stoned, “Okay, whatever you say.”
In the end, of course, everything worked out for the best. Eventually. As I’ve said, “Drums->Space” became some of the most far-out moments of Grateful Dead music, and that would never have happened had I remained the only drummer in the band. That was Mickey’s doing more than anything. He’s a full-on shaman of that world.
But at the time, I hated it. I remember Phil once told me off the cuff that we made a mistake by having Mickey come back in the band, and maybe he just said that in the heat of a moment. But there were times when it was really challenging to have two headstrong drummers in the same band. It’s really hard to achieve subtlety with an extra man on the job, and quiet moments are difficult to execute. Especially when both drummers have very strong personalities and attitudes and want to play as much as they can—you know, two minds powering eight limbs.
Jerry had his stuff, too, with letting Mickey back in. He made Mickey get rid of some of his crash cymbals because they were right at head height, which made it difficult for the singers, given how hard Mickey could hit those things. There were other problems with having two drummers—we’re talking purely on a technical, musical level here—but eventually we worked it out. It got better. I was really thankful when it did, and also thankful to have Mickey in the band. All in time.
That first rehearsal was just awful, though. It wasn’t just Mickey. I remember that first get-together clearly. It was at Front Street, before we had a chance to really fix it up and make the necessary adjustments to make it a good practice spot. There were no sound curtains or anything at first; it was just concrete. Once we renovated it and it became our permanent place, we had it dialed in. But when we first regrouped there, the actual sound in the room was impossible to get with. And with two drumm
ers making a racket, I just thought, “God, this is terrible.” I mean, it was really, really bad.
Then we played that Great American Music Hall show, and things started looking up—except that that’s when the hiatus really began. In late September, a month after the Great American gig, we agreed to a quick one-off in Golden Gate Park with our friends, Jefferson Starship. A free blowout just like the good ole days. This was the one where a woman gave birth in the field while we played. So they say, anyway. But if anyone got pregnant during or right after that show, they could’ve had the child at our next gig—we took about nine months to return. (“Hey man, when’s your next show?” “When that lady over there gives birth.”)
The Grateful Dead may have been on hiatus but our floundering record label was not. In an effort to keep hope alive, Rakow spearheaded a live album, culled from those “final four” Winterland performances at the end of 1974. It was to be the sound track for the movie that Jerry was working on. The source recordings were problematic to say the least, but somehow we were able to get enough material for an extended live release. I say “we” very loosely there. That was Rakow’s project and I think Phil and Bear mixed it. I’m not conveniently distancing myself from the process just because the resulting album, Steal Your Face, may have been our worst. I really had nothing to do with it. It wasn’t long before our little record label experiment came to a fiery conclusion. Rakow was fired. He cut himself a big fat check with Grateful Dead Records’ remaining funds, thereby crippling the label, and then he split. And that was that.
We needed a new label, so we went with the now-legendary Clive Davis, who signed us to Arista Records. I guess he wanted to see if he could make us a hit band or something. He wasn’t too far off, although it would take a long minute—more than a decade. Still, the arrangement worked for us, I think, and Clive kept his word and let us do what we wanted, creatively. He preserved the sanctity of the Grateful Dead while enabling us to be us—and to sell a few records along the way. We met with him on our turf, at Front Street, and all I really recall from that meeting is that Davis spray-painted his hair black, because he didn’t want people to know that he was balding. He and Weir got into some kind of humorous discussion about it. As for the record deal, we got Davis to agree to our terms. From then until our breakup, the Grateful Dead belonged to Arista.
In the meantime, Jerry was still working long hours on The Grateful Dead Movie. It was his passion project but it became a sticking point within our ranks, as it was financed from the band’s pockets. Phil thought that it was an unnecessary expense and had some kind of issue with Jerry about the whole thing. It never bothered me that it went so high above the budget, because what are you going to do in that situation? Say, “Okay, you can only have this much money and if the thing’s not complete, who cares, wrap it up?” Or are you going to find more money for it and let it become a really worthy project that your band leader and good friend really believes in?
Nowadays, The Grateful Dead Movie is still shown in theaters around the nation once in a while and for decades every college dorm in America had at least one kid on every hall with a VHS copy on his shelf. It paid off. It became a huge thing and, as Jerry had known all along, it captured and defined our identity, since it had the visual element to go along with the music, the animation to go along with the interviews, and the B-roll that really showed viewers with their own eyes the circus that was a Grateful Dead show in San Francisco, circa 1974. We were watching the movie, and then we were in the movie.
As for my opinion on the movie itself, all I can offer is that it was a very good home movie. It’s not exactly a typical motion picture. It doesn’t have a plot; it’s a bunch of scenes that are kind of woven together. And still, today, the part of the movie that ate up the biggest slice of the budget and took the most amount of work—the animated sequence in the beginning—is my favorite part. Back then, animation was all done by hand, frame by frame. I like that whole segment the best, and I think most people who watch it agree. Producing that thing really consumed Jerry’s time, on a day-to-day basis, throughout the hiatus.
But then, suddenly, the Grateful Dead revved up again. Nine months without a show and we were fucking ready. I wonder if that lady had her baby. We started in Portland, Oregon, and plotted out a little theater tour, hitting our favorite markets for extended runs in Boston, Philadelphia, New York City, Chicago, and—of course—San Francisco. A couple months later we jumped the rest of the way into the lion’s den with a pair of sold-out shows at the Oakland Coliseum Stadium on a double bill with the Who. The Grateful Dead were back.
Those shows with the Who were memorable. Stadiums are always a big deal, and this one was on our home turf. Being on a bill with the Who just put it over the top. This was still during the Keith Moon era, and he was one of those guys that just went crazy on the drums. He was more of an entity than a drummer, but it really worked for that band. Those gigs were far-out, man. Jerry and I talked about them afterward and he felt that we had one “on” day and one “off” day. I thought we played well at both of them. There was just so much personality in those shows. They were afternoon concerts, so I could see all the faces in the crowd. Whenever I play in daylight, I develop a real sense of the connection between me, the band, the audience, and the music, because I can see it in action. Moving people to dance was how this whole journey started for me and I’m still on board that train.
The shows with the Who were in October 1976. Four months after our return and, man, were we ever back full force. It ushered in a whole new era that was, in hindsight, another great period in Grateful Dead history.
In fact, some people believe that one particular tour from that period—Spring 1977—is our best. Ever. Does 5/8/77 Cornell (Ithaca, NY) ring a bell? If you’re a fan, then of course it does. That recording is a prerequisite for every incoming class of Deadheads, and the jam between “Scarlet Begonias” and “Fire on the Mountain” is guaranteed to be on all of our final exams. You will be tested on all of this stuff. All we need is some Kool-Aid.
When we began to get our heads around making another record, our new record label had a bigger influence on us than we realized up front. Clive Davis was used to being a not-so-silent extra band member with most of the acts he signed, but he kept to his word and generally let us make our own bed. However, his one sticking point was that we had to agree to work with outside producers.
For our first album on Arista, we settled on a producer by the name of Keith Olsen. If you’re a serious music fan, you know who he is. He has Grammy Awards and God knows how many gold and platinum albums to his name. He’s produced big ones for Santana, Ozzy Osbourne, Heart, Joe Walsh, the Scorpions, Whitesnake, Sammy Hagar, Journey, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, and I don’t even remember who else. He’s the producer behind that Rick Springfield ear-worm, “Jessie’s Girl.” But, at the time, that early in his career, his main claim was Fleetwood Mac. When Olsen came to our attention, he was riding the number one success of 1975’s Fleetwood Mac album, which was that band’s big breakout, really.
It was because of Olsen that Fleetwood Mac hired Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, forever changing that band. And it worked—it made them famous. So, as a producer, Olsen’s approach was hands-on. Since we had just made Clive Davis promise us that he would be hands-off, maybe the secret objective behind making us use outside producers was so that he could have an inside man and get some say with us, after all. Now, there’s a conspiracy theory for you.
Regardless, Olsen insisted that we use a studio in Hollywood that he liked, so we all moved down to L.A., again, and rented apartments within walking distance to the studio. It was pretty hard. I was down there by myself, I think. I’m not sure why Susila wasn’t there with me. We may have been on the outs again, by that point.
Those studio sessions were tricky because Olsen was kind of a wired fellow and he liked things to sound a certain way. His way. He was straitlaced and took a straitlaced approach to recording. He’d have
us play the same thing over and over again, and we’re not really the type of band that can put up with that. We can’t play the same thing, the same way, over and over. Our very identity is based on the opposite principle. So there was some friction there.
The album that we were recording became Terrapin Station. As for the song of the same name, he had us record the entire track from beginning to end, and it was something like fifteen minutes long. Olsen told me that I’d lost my time as the timekeeper; that my rhythm wasn’t steady. When we played it back, under the microscope, he realized it varied by 1/25 of a second from beginning to end. Even he had to admit that was amazing. This was before drum machines were big. I was the drum machine.
Olsen had his problems recording us, but the music came out great. Still, we struggled with that title track, with “Terrapin Station.” It’s a suite and a pretty epic piece of music; it was supposed to be the centerpiece of the album. But it’s a complex composition with different parts and all these different, interlocking sections. One night after we’d been wrestling with it, unsuccessfully, in the studio, I came to the conclusion that part of the problem rested on Mickey and me. We hadn’t agreed on a precise arrangement, and a song like “Terrapin Station” needs a precise arrangement.
Later that night, I went to Mickey’s apartment—we were all in the same basic apartment complex—and I told him that we were going to stay up and work on the song until we got it right. No more faking it. We sat down and mapped it out. I said, “This is how the song goes.” I showed him all the parts that I felt worked really well, he added a couple, and that’s what the song is today.
We went back into the studio, the next night, and got it right. With the drum parts worked out, everything else snapped together like puzzle pieces. The right pieces. The song was done.
Well … except for one little detail that’s not so little. Mickey had a cool timbale part that he recorded, with Garcia adding interplay on guitar. But Olsen had another idea. Without telling anyone in the band, he erased Mickey’s part entirely and then hired a string section to fill out that passage instead. I was pissed off about it, but Mickey was deservedly outraged. Outraged. I think that he and Olsen had some unspoken tension throughout those recording sessions and, in some way, perhaps this was Olsen just trying to get back at Mickey. Either way, it was a very stupid thing to do.
Deal: My Three Decades of Drumming, Dreams, and Drugs with the Grateful Dead Page 23