Deal: My Three Decades of Drumming, Dreams, and Drugs with the Grateful Dead

by Bill Kreutzmann

  We also became the soundtrack band for a reboot of the television classic The Twilight Zone. That whole thing was suitably weird. Our friend Merl Saunders—whom I played with in one of Jerry’s solo lineups in 1974—was the musical director for the revived TV series. The original was a classic and we were all big fans; especially Jerry, if I remember right. But its revival in the 1980s wasn’t quite the same. The creator, Rod Serling, didn’t have anything to do with it anymore.

  We recorded sound effects and other odd background noises at Front Street. I would just play whatever Merl told me to play. It was an enjoyable experience; quite the opposite of the Apocalypse Now sessions.

  Phil may have sat this one out, because he was opposed to the idea. I don’t know why he had such opposition to stuff, but to his credit, the new series wasn’t nearly as good as the original. If that was Phil’s reasoning or concern, it’s certainly valid.

  It’s funny: all these things are part of the Grateful Dead story, sure. But they’re not necessarily my story. They were just some of the many things we did, as a band, in the 1980s. From our vantage point, it was a pretty incredible place to be. And looking back on it, we weren’t wrong.

  By the middle of the decade, we had become an American institution and even though we were a different band every single night, we had learned what it meant to be the Grateful Dead. Both sonically and aesthetically. We were getting bigger and bigger while our history was getting deeper and deeper. First fifteen, then twenty years deep.

  We were now tremendously famous and making a lot of money. There was this feeling that there was no end in sight. We didn’t think that we looked like the rock stars you saw in all the magazines, but we were in all the magazines. We didn’t think that we acted like the kind of celebrities you saw on TV—we thought we were better than that nonsense—but the fact was that we could do anything we wanted, whenever we wanted, and get away with it. And we knew it, too.

  Our fame afforded us the stuff that money alone could not: it let us live by a different set of rules. When Jerry seemed to be drifting even outside of those lines, we had an intervention for him. This was in January of 1985. He agreed to enter rehab but decided to have one last binge. He was parked in his BMW in Golden Gate Park, by himself, when he got busted by the police—initially because the car didn’t have proper registration. But because he was “Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead,” his arrest didn’t amount to much. He had to go to some counseling, something light and easy that didn’t get in the way of his habits. Or his life.

  I had a similar thing happen a few years earlier. I played a club gig in San Francisco with a small side project that our soundman, Dan Healy, had put together. The Healy Treece Band. Afterward, my friend and future Grateful Dead publicist, Dennis McNally, asked me for a ride home, because he didn’t have a driver’s license. We decided to stop and pick up some beers. We had just enough time to make it to the liquor store … maybe. Dennis was riding shotgun and shouting out directions. Suddenly, it was like being in Paris with Phil navigating. “Go left! Okay, now right!” One misguided direction, though, and we ended up going the wrong way down a one-way street. “Oops, that’s not going to work.” I slammed into reverse and got us out of there. But not before a cop noticed. I noticed him noticing me, so I parked and got out of the car before he even had his lights on.

  I drank a couple Heinekens earlier that night, sure, but I wasn’t drunk. Though I probably still had beer on my breath. I thought my driving was on point and that I pulled a smooth exit maneuver. It was precise and controlled. I didn’t argue with the cop when he took me down to the station. If I had been drunk, I probably would’ve. He gave me a Breathalyzer. I passed it. He threw me in the slammer anyway, where I spent the night. If they think you’re drunk, you get an automatic four hours in the tank. I was just glad they put me in my own cell because I could hear some truly terrifying screams coming from some of the other jail cells.

  Shelley was freaking out this whole time because this was before cell phones—she didn’t know what happened, only that I never made it home from the gig.

  Eventually, I had to go to court over it. I didn’t have an attorney or any kind of representation. I don’t think I took any of it all that seriously. I was beginning to understand that that might not have been the best approach. I was watching all these attorneys give their clients all this serious advice, even though nobody was in there for anything all that big—nobody was shackled or anything. I began to realize that I had no idea what I was going to say and that I’d probably end up putting my foot in my mouth. I started getting the feeling that I was going about this all wrong.

  Just then, a guy came up to me, shot me a look of recognition, and said, “Hey, you’re Bill Kreutzmann!” He was an attorney. Suddenly I had representation. We met in his office down by the piers and he told me that I had nothing to worry about. “You’re going to like this judge,” he said with a knowing smile.

  When we went back to court, the judge said, “Mr. Kreutzmann, there is no proof that you were drunk that night. I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt. By the way—I love the Grateful Dead.”

  While we were still in court, the judge said she was going to make me go to a driving school. “They’re going to send you a card in the mail and it will have further instructions.” I could swear that, right after she said that, she winked at me. I never got the card in the mail, never got contacted by any school, and never had anything else to do with it. The judge threw it all away while everyone else just looked in the other direction. Just like they did with Jerry when he was busted in the park.

  We weren’t flashy rock stars, but everyone knew who we were. I remember seeing our numbers posted in Pollstar and reading that we were one of the highest grossing live acts in the world. Eventually, we became the highest. That used to blow my mind. We’d come a long way since playing on flatbeds in Haight-Ashbury. And that, back then, seemed huge. Those early gigs were easily just as rewarding and exciting for us as any of our sold-out stadium tours. The money was astronomically different, but the spiritual paycheck may have been even bigger back then.

  Despite the intentions of various people around us—perhaps—for the members of the band, making money was never our number-one objective. For some, like Jerry, it wasn’t even an objective at all, beyond making enough to get by. Even in the middle of the “Me Decade,” we were never greedy.

  Our crew was the most spoiled crew in rock ’n’ roll. Our roadies would come home from tours with suitcases full of crap that they bought on the road, and even the suitcases themselves would be charged to the band. It was supposed to be taken off their pay—“on account”—but sometimes it was and sometimes it wasn’t.

  A lot of times, stuff would be bought in the name of the band but the band never saw it. Jerry once commented, when someone told him that there were forty cases of Heineken backstage, “I didn’t even drink one.” The point is, we had so much money, it didn’t matter. We could just waste it and it was fine. I don’t think we were all so fine with it deep down, but by that point it was a snowball that nobody could catch. It just picked up speed and mass as we rolled on down the road.

  Nothing was going to stop the train from chugging along until, finally, Jerry got sick. We all saw very quickly how fast the whole thing could derail. Money had become an enabler. Jerry could eat anything he wanted. So he did, and then he became a diabetic. Jerry could get any drugs he wanted. So he did, and it began to take away the one thing he couldn’t buy—his health.

  And then, in July 1986, Jerry Garcia slipped into a diabetes-induced coma.

  18

  During the 1960s, we were just a bunch of kids with our own ideas about what you could do with rock ’n’ roll music. During the 1970s, we became the Grateful Dead. During the 1980s, we became genuine rock stars. From seed to flower to fruit.

  It was a bitter fruit, though, as Jerry’s coma came just days after we had completed a summer tour that included five stadium shows w
here we invited Bob Dylan along for the ride. Dylan hired a backing band that went by the name of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and we alternated headlining slots, depending on the market. We sold an astounding number of tickets.

  It felt like we were halfway to the moon when, suddenly, our rocket ship had to be grounded. Our hot-air balloon, deflated. Jerry was in the hospital, in a coma and near death. He stayed that way for five days. It was a scary five days. A lot of stuff went through my mind, most of which I don’t care to remember. At first, only family members were allowed to be in his room, so I was left pacing around the hospital. My only comfort was Justin, who kept me company. We talked about anything we could think of, trying to distract each other from the real reason we were there. We were frightened. Nervous. Helpless but not hopeless. Jerry’s coma was induced by diabetes but the excessive use of all those recreational drugs couldn’t have helped—we were pretty reckless in 1986, that’s for sure.

  When Jerry finally came out of the coma, his senses were fuzzy and his motor skills were mush. He basically had to relearn how to play guitar, after first piecing together how music even worked. He told me that he had thoughts like, “Will I ever be able to play as well as I did?” At first, he wasn’t even sure that he’d be able to play at all. But then things came back to him, bit by bit. Merl Saunders helped him out in the beginning with that, sitting at the piano and going over chord changes and stuff with him until muscle memory kicked back in. And then Jerry’s neural pathways fired up again and he was the same old Jerry.

  In fact, when you consider the circumstances, his recovery was miraculously expeditious: Jerry returned to the stage just three months after knocking on death’s door. He got his feet wet by playing with his solo band—at a small club in San Francisco—that October. And just two months after that, we were able to resurrect the Grateful Dead. Again.

  Our “comeback” show was on our home turf, at the Oakland Coliseum Arena. It was a Monday night. December 15, 1986. We opened with “Touch of Grey” and immediately the song resonated on a totally new level—its refrain of “We will survive!” was appropriate, anthemic, and cathartic. That song, still relatively new at the time, suddenly became one of our anthems. It was destined for greater things, still.

  Meanwhile, we debuted “Black Muddy River” in that second set. It was the emotional counterpoint to “Touch of Grey,” in that the lyrics seemed to point toward death rather than survival. Or, at least, to some kind of inward reflection instead of outward proclamation. (“When the last rose of summer pricks my finger … I will walk alone by the black muddy river.”) Both songs seemed especially poignant that night. Both songs carried a message. And both songs ended up being right.

  That was a special night. There was a lot of emotion in the air—a lot of love and a lot of energy, especially toward Jerry.

  It was easy to take the scene we had created for granted. You start believing in its permanence and my, how quickly we all feel entitled. The Grateful Dead carved an arch out of rock, connecting the idealism of the 1960s, with the technology of the 1980s and the promise that music without politics could just be the most effective politic of all.

  People came from all different places—spiritually as well as physically—to the Grateful Dead arch, believing that crossing underneath it would lead to a utopian island where the gardens looked like amphitheaters, the mall looked like Shakedown Street and the houses were made out of tents. And every night was a celebration where we got to dance with Dionysus, wrapped up in a music that wrapped around our souls.

  Jerry Garcia was the keystone of this magical arch. You take that out, and not only does the arch come tumbling down, crushing all who are stuck beneath, but also, it crushes the only road that leads to that utopian dream. “Dark Star crashes / pouring its light into ashes.”

  Everything we loved was precarious. We know that now. But, that first night back, we also knew that it was glorious and that it was ours again.

  Jerry’s concern that he wouldn’t be able to play as well as he once did may have touched upon some deeper demon inside of him. I was his bandmate, not his therapist, so I’m not making any kind of formal assessment. But I do recall one time when we were playing at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California. Jerry had recently been released from treatment, so he was clean and sober. I’m not sure he felt entirely comfortable with himself when he was clean and sober, especially when performing for large, sold-out crowds. Maybe that’s why those phases never lasted too long. During soundcheck, he leaned over my tom-toms and said, “Bill, I’m terrified! I can’t play anything. What am I going to do?” He was really afraid—you could see it on his face.

  We had just worked through a tune and he sounded fucking brilliant. “Jerry, you sound great,” I told him. “Hang in there, man.” I think some things were really hard for him … and on him. He had a pinnacle of excellence to maintain, and so he felt a great weight. A responsibility. Two things he hated, for sure.

  At the last gig we played before his collapse—July 7, 1986, at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C.—Bob Dylan came out onstage with us to perform a couple of tunes: “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” and “Desolation Row.” Both of which were Dylan originals, so he had them in his wheelhouse, and we already had them in our repertoire. It was easy. Still, it was far-out—I got to play drums behind one of my childhood heroes.

  That was the second time that Dylan sat in with us. The first was just a few days earlier, on July 2, at a bowl in Akron, Ohio. It was the only time we played “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright,” and we had the honor of performing it with the songwriter.

  I was a junior in high school when I first got turned on to Bob Dylan. I would put on Highway 61 Revisited and play it for my friends, in my apartment in Palo Alto. Afterward, they’d say things like, “This is garbage,” and “He can’t sing,” and I knew right then and there that there was a new divide between my old friends and my new scene. I didn’t give a fuck about his voice. I loved his words and his songs. They meant so much to me.

  In the Grateful Dead camp, to a man, we were all still in awe of him. He must’ve fancied the collaboration as well, because the following January—1987—he visited us at 20 Front Street just to fuck around for a couple days, run through some tunes, and maybe see where that got us. There was no grand plan, as far I know. “Let’s just jam and play and have some fun.” Sure—get our kicks with Bob Dylan. Why not?

  Jerry started working up the Beatles’ “Nowhere Man” like it was no big deal, and we had a good time with that one. I don’t remember what else we played at those sessions, although I’m sure we must’ve recorded them. Dylan didn’t come with an entourage or anything, just his dog—a cream-colored Great Dane that stunk to high heaven and that would sit at Dylan’s feet, licking himself, while we talked. It didn’t have much spunk and mostly just laid there in a big dog puddle, but it was Dylan’s comfort companion during that visit.

  From my perspective, Jerry and Dylan were really friendly with each other and had some kind of rapport going on. But the rest of us were pretty shy around him. The novelty didn’t wear off—there was our hero, in our practice space, running through songs with us. Dylan must’ve liked something about it, because he came back in May. And, this time, with a purpose: both of our organizations signed off on a six-date stadium tour, to be billed as “Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead,” for that coming July.

  I don’t know who came up with the idea, or which side initiated it, but we couldn’t have been more excited for the tour. We worked up more than fifty songs—perhaps even double that—during those May sessions at Front Street. Dylan was there for at least a week. I’ve read that he practiced with us for five days and I’ve read that he was with us for the better part of the month. I can’t testify about those kinds of specifics because my own sense of time was warped; each day was just so surreal that they all now melt into a dream.

  What I can tell you is that Dylan was a mess during this period, I’m afr
aid. He didn’t really remember his own songs all that well, but we did our homework, so Jerry would sometimes stand right next to him and whisper the next verse into his ear as we played. Dylan was really loose with all of his arrangements and tempos and everything. We were diplomats for improvisational music—twisting and turning songs on the fly—so we had the right résumé for the gig. We had a lot of experience with that kind of thing, hearkening back to the Pigpen days when he would go off on one of his rants by coming into it off-time, and we’d just have to adjust, dropping half a beat without ever dropping our game. That’s when the group-mind thing really came in handy. Still, Dylan threw even more curveballs at us than Pigpen. We knew better than to duck, so we just kept swinging.

  The idea for the tour was that we would perform one or two sets as the Grateful Dead, and then we’d come out again for a final set, in which we backed Dylan. During those sets we still sounded like the Grateful Dead—but we became Bob Dylan’s band. Just like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers had done the year before. Just like, perhaps more famously, The Band had done in the mid-’60s.

  The tour kicked off on July 4, 1987, at the now-demolished Foxboro Stadium, outside Boston. From there, we hit the Philadelphia, New York, Eugene, and Bay Area markets before wrapping up down in Los Angeles at Anaheim Stadium—I have particularly fond memories of that last show, for sure. That’s the night Dennis Hopper came backstage afterward and hung out.

  As has been noted and documented elsewhere, Dylan was drinking a lot that tour and he exhibited the same erratic behavior to us that he’s notorious for, publicly. Once or twice, he launched into songs that we never even rehearsed with him—in front of crowds as large as 90,000—and we just had to wing it. It was common for him to forget lyrics, so just like at band practice, Jerry would step up next to him and casually whisper the words into his ear. Right in front of the entire audience. Other times, Dylan would take unannounced left turns on tunes that we had rehearsed an entirely different way.