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

by Bill Kreutzmann

  Back in Palo Alto, when I was around eight years old, my mom displayed an unusual piece of artwork in one of the bedrooms. And by “unusual,” I mean, disturbing. It was a diorama of a human skull with a hole in it. Next to the skull, sitting peacefully on a doily, was a pistol. An actual skull and an actual pistol. I realize that artwork often speaks in metaphors and that true art is supposed to encourage individual interpretation—art isn’t supposed to be incriminating; it’s supposed to be liberating. Expressive. But, at age eight, I wasn’t much of an art critic. I didn’t exactly interview my mom about the dark folds of her artistic expression. In fact, I didn’t mention it at all. Years later, the collective artistic output of the Grateful Dead would often include skull and firearm imagery. I didn’t question that stuff, either.

  Around 1988, my mom started writing me letters asking for money. She’d threaten to kill herself if I didn’t help out. I took those threats seriously but, after about two or three years, I stopped hearing them. I continued to send her money anyway. I knew what she needed it for. She used it to buy drugs and alcohol. To keep her habits going. I realized, on some level, that I had become her enabler. But I continued to send her money anyway. I loved her unconditionally and I wanted to be a good son. It was simple. Besides, if she didn’t spend the money on drugs and alcohol, I would’ve spent it on that stuff, myself. We both had our vices. And I had the money.

  Things were about to change. For both of us. As I’ll explain in more detail later, I cleaned up in 1990 and spent the next three years sober. After a stint in rehab, I started going to appointments with a drug and alcohol counselor in Fort Bragg, a forty-minute drive from the Comptche ranch. She wasn’t a psychiatrist. She wasn’t even a psychologist. She was just a counselor. Not an M.D. I had already straightened out, but I still needed some support. She helped keep my nose free from foreign objects and made sure that my water did not turn to wine. I was doing this for myself, not for anybody else, so it was important to me.

  I confided in this counselor and I trusted her. I had to. One day, she advised me to stop sending the checks to my mom. She said I needed to stop being the enabler. Against my own instincts and inclinations, I took the advice. I didn’t know what was wrong or right and I still don’t. I just wanted to be a loving son. The counselor insisted on tough love and I listened. I stopped mailing the payments.

  About two weeks later, my mom took her life. She shot herself in the head with a .38 pistol.

  I was salmon fishing near Albion, not too far from my home, when I got the news. I was by myself, on a little inflatable single-motor boat, and I had just caught my first silver salmon. It was a very proud moment for me. And I was clear-eyed that day, which made it even better. I was heading home with the prize when I got a call on my VHF radio. This was before cell phones, of course. They reached me as soon as they could: “Mr. Kreutzmann, you need to come back right now. Something’s happened.”

  I flew to Biloxi and went straight to my mom’s house. The one I bought for her. Nothing was cleaned up. There were a couple dozen codeine pills on the side table, and blood all over her bed. It was a crime scene. And, of course, the cops were being dicks: “You should go into her bedroom and check it out.”

  I had to identify her body at the morgue. It was my first time seeing her in a few years. I know it’s common for people to say how peaceful corpses look, after they’ve been embalmed, but it’s true—they hid the gunshot wound by wrapping a towel around her head and the weight of that was juxtaposed by just how incredibly peaceful my mom looked. There was no pain on her face. No sorrows, no struggles, no strife. None of the strain that was in her voice when she’d call me and start yelling about how I needed to send her more money.

  I stopped by the police station because they said I needed to go there and pick up some of her belongings. I got there and they handed me the gun that she had used. They said, “Here, you can have this. You can take it home with you.” Assholes.

  My mom bought the pistol at a gun shop about a block away from her house. She was looking to buy a .22, but when she told them what she wanted it for, they recommended that she buy a .38 instead. Bigger caliber. They must’ve thought she was joking. She wrote about the interaction in a crazed, drug-fueled note that she scribbled in the weeks leading up to her suicide.

  My sister didn’t come down to face the music with me in Biloxi. She’s an entire generation younger than me—thirteen years—so she lived with my mom long after I left home. I know she loved her as much as I did, but I think the aftermath of the suicide was just too much for her to bear. It’s not an easy thing to have to deal with. I had to tell myself to stay strong and get through it, to deal with whatever needed to be dealt with first, then work through it later. Like, for years. Since neither my sister nor my father could be there, I had to do it alone.

  I did bring one person with me—a sponsor, to help keep me clean and sober. I can tell you I really would’ve loved a stiff drink or two. Or three or four. But I stayed true. Dealing with the cops and the cremation and the other necessary arrangements was the final thing I could do for my mom, as her son, and I wanted to do it right.

  You’re damn right, I blame the counselor for overstepping her bounds and for giving me professional advice that she wasn’t really qualified to give. I don’t know, maybe it looked like a good idea on paper. Or in a textbook somewhere. But humans are complex creatures and you can’t treat them like programmable robots. Every one is different. I don’t know. I should’ve never taken that advice. It was bad advice.

  If I hadn’t cut my mom off, would she have drunk herself to death instead? Would she still have shot herself? It hurts too much to dwell on such things and, besides, there’s really no point. They’re questions that are impossible to answer. But it will always be there, in the back of my mind. My soul knows it’s there, my body still carries its weight. And it’s heavy.

  Darker days were still to come.

  19

  Our next album was a mistake. I take comfort in knowing that the material was easily as strong as anything on In the Dark, but we weren’t able to give those songs their proper due. I don’t think I need to give a spoiler alert here, because we all know where things were heading … but had the Grateful Dead survived through the 1990s and into the 2000s, some of the songs on what would become Built to Last would’ve certainly grown into veritable beasts. Some of them did anyway. On a good night, “Blow Away” could breathe dragon fire, while fiery versions of “Standing on the Moon” could thaw the heart of even the most unruly creature. Two new Garcia/Hunter tunes—“Foolish Heart” and “Built to Last”—had all the makings of future classics. The songs could’ve and should’ve been the foundation of a great album.

  Instead, we came off the success of In the Dark by taking everything that worked for us, recording-wise, and throwing it out the window. We reverted back to using Front Street as a studio, and we regressed back to recording our parts individually, one at a time, piecemeal. Tracking by stacking is pretty much standard procedure for most albums, but it didn’t work for us and we knew that and we did it anyway.

  Jerry and Cutler agreed to co-produce again, but Built to Last was the antithesis of doing things our way. It wasn’t much of a band effort. We barely even saw each other at all during the recording process—we went in on different days, recorded our parts, and then split. There was no joy in it. The music on Built to Last betrays that. It’s not the sound of thick air; it’s the sound of plastic. A manufactured product. It took us the better part of a year to complete and it dropped on Halloween night 1989. Fitting for such a Frankenstein of an album.

  Our live shows from that era, however, were nothing to fuck with. We were named one of the top-grossing live acts in America, by people who keep track of such things, and we’d reach number one on that list in a few short years. We had some massive nights in the late 1980s, sonically as well as commercially. A couple of those tours, between 1988 and 1991, dealt winning hands night after night—r
oyal flush after royal flush.

  During the storied Spring ’90 tour, Brent played the best organ I’ve ever heard anybody play. He had the piss and the vinegar in him and he brought it to the table every night. The band, as a whole, had come alive again. Those shows had energy, with thunderbolts of electricity to spare. We didn’t wreck drum sets or smash guitars or dress up in elaborate stage costumes; our shows were always about the music and the music during that period was adventurous. It dared listeners to ride shotgun as we went around hairpin turns, whizzing past ever-changing landscapes. Some nights, I could look out from my perch on the drum riser and see the whole house rocking back and forth in unison, a giant wave of people, and those were the nights you knew it was working.

  We also had a lot of special guests join us during this period. Actually, we had always invited guests to the stage, going back to the likes of Janis Joplin, David Crosby, and Elvin Bishop in the late ’60s, early ’70s—people that were in our close-knit scene back then. It was fun to play with all our friends and hear what they could bring to the land of the Dead. But now, either spawned by our high-profile collaboration with Bob Dylan or perhaps due to our general mainstream acceptance and popularity, we were pulling in people from other musical universes entirely.

  Bruce Springsteen’s saxophonist, Clarence Clemons—the “Big Man” of the E Street Band—sat in with us half a dozen times in 1989. The year before, we had an all-girl pop band, the Bangles, join us in New Orleans. They sang backup while looking awkward during a lively version of “Iko Iko.” They may have known how to “walk like Egyptians,” but they danced more like soccer moms.

  Neil Young, Huey Lewis, John Popper, Edie Brickell, Hall and Oates, Bonnie Raitt, Steve Miller, and our old friend Carlos Santana all joined us on various occasions. Some of them multiple times. And there were others, too, of course. But the two special guests that really stand out in my mind are Branford Marsalis and Ornette Coleman. We’re talking about jazz legends who really knew how to blow their horns. They were professional improvisers. So were we. So we got along.

  The first time Branford Marsalis sat in with us was on that hot Spring ’90 tour, when everything was firing just right and the wheels were fully greased. It was at the Nassau Coliseum in Long Island on March 29. We brought Branford up for a now-legendary version of “Bird Song” during the first set, and it was so good, that we invited him out for the entire second set. The “Eyes of the World” that followed was of such a caliber that we even included it on our next live compilation (1990’s Without a Net). Branford played with us four more times over the next four years, usually for the entire show. Those were good nights.

  Branford became a friend of ours and he said something about us that I’ll never forget: he said we all had big ears. Coming from a monster jazz guy like that, it was a monster compliment. We may have helped introduce improvisation to rock ’n’ roll, but the jazz cats had been jamming since before Chuck Berry even picked up his first electric guitar. Having Branford validate us like that really meant something to me. He told us that we showed him what’s possible within rock ’n’ roll and that playing with us was one of the greatest thrills of his life. That, in turn, was one of the greatest thrills of mine.

  One of the nights that Branford played with us, he walked outside the backstage door at set break to shoot some hoops at a basketball court that was right by the loading docks. We were using expensive, state-of-the-art, in-ear monitors at the time, which were like earbuds with your own, personal mix in them. Branford put his down on the curb or something and, while he was distracted on the court, someone stole them. We laughed about it and probably cracked a joke or two at his expense, but we didn’t make him pay for them or anything. We just gave him replacements. “Nah, you’re cool. Here’s another pair. Don’t lose ’em.”

  I was clean and sober in those years—which, of course, we still have to talk about—but because of it, I have a really sharp memory of those nights with him. With someone like that on stage, you always want to do your best. It challenges you to perform at your peak level, and it really lifts your game. And although Jerry wasn’t necessarily clean and sober at that point, Branford really brought out the best in him, too. Jerry’s face always lit up at the sound of a sax cutting through our little hippie stew.

  Ornette Coleman was a slightly different deal. He still brought out the best in Jerry, I think, and the two had obvious mutual admiration for each other. Ornette checked out one of our gigs at Madison Square Garden and, shortly thereafter, asked Jerry to lay down guitar on a few tracks on Virgin Beauty, which Ornette recorded with his double-ensemble group, Prime Time, in 1988. Ornette’s influence on free jazz is impossible to overstate and by the late-’80s he had become a vanguard of free funk, as well.

  After my first time seeing him live, I got my hands on a recording of the show—kind of like what Deadheads did for us—and I couldn’t stop listening to it for the longest time. He had this 6/8 rhythm thing going on that I just loved. Still do.

  Ornette Coleman is an icon and we all respected him a great deal. That’s why I really took it to heart when, during one of our performances, he turned to our manager, Cameron Sears, and said, “Man, those guys don’t listen to each other when they play.” So much for having the big ears that Branford thought we had.

  Of course, both observations were correct, depending on the night. On the night that Ornette said that about us, his story checked out. He wasn’t being unfriendly, he was just telling it like it is. We had built a foundation on our ability to achieve a group mind, but by the early 1990s, nobody wanted to listen to anybody else, anymore. Not on our stage. It was tough hearing someone like Ornette Coleman call you out on something like that, and yet, I’m not sure that it changed a damn thing.

  Ornette sat in with us twice in 1993, and you can bet that we were all listening to him—and to each other—on those two nights. He got far out there, too.

  Let’s get back to 1990, where we were sailing on wind from such a great spring tour. For our summer jaunt, we hired acts like Crosby, Stills & Nash and Little Feat to open some stadium dates for us. The arenas and amphitheaters, we could sell out by ourselves. The machine marched on.

  It was a refreshing start to a new decade, and life was sweet like a rhapsody. The band was playing great, our albums were selling well, and our concerts were selling out. Also: I was healthier than I had been in years. To get to that spot, first I had to recognize that I had landed in a place where I was drinking way too much and downing way too many painkillers. Those two vices were always one of my favorite combos, unfortunately. Served with a side of blackout. It was time for me to call last call. I was ready to stop drinking. Not for always, but just for then. I made up my mind about it and phoned a recovery facility in St. Helena, California—which, ironically, is in Napa County, right in the heart of wine country—and booked myself a lovely month-long stay.

  But I had a big tour to do first, so I brought a sponsor on the road with me. He had been in AA for a while, so he knew the ropes. We went to meetings together almost every day, throughout the tour, in whatever East Coast town we were in that particular day.

  The first thing I learned by going to AA meetings was that nicotine and caffeine are okay. Two drugs with documented health hazards. But one of the first things you do at an AA meeting is go to the coffee machine and fill a cup, then you go outside and light up a cigarette. Many of the people in those meetings were there because a judge told them that they had to be. They were just logging their time and punching in so that they’d be free to go about their business. All the same, going to AA meetings in the midst of an arena tour helped me stay off the sauce.

  After the tour ended, I went and checked myself into St. Helena. My room came complete with a scenic view—of vineyards and wineries. You might as well line up slot machines around the perimeter of a Gamblers Anonymous meeting. At that point, it had been a few weeks since my last drink, but I had become increasingly addicted to Xanax. I was taki
ng a ridiculous number of milligrams per day. Way higher than any recommended dose. I was glad to throw that monkey off my back and kick him to the curb.

  Xanax is really a dangerous drug to take recreationally. You build up a tolerance faster than you can blink, and when the addiction kicks in, you stop counting how many you’re taking and you start popping handfuls at a time. Xanax is from the same family of benzos that Valium comes from, although it tends to come on quicker and it wears off before it wears out its welcome. It doesn’t feel as harsh as Valium, you start with a much smaller dosage, and you’re not as groggy the next day—all attractive properties to doctors who, upon its release in 1981, started prescribing it liberally to anyone that was anxious, or having trouble sleeping, or upset about their girlfriend, or worried about their pet, or a little too uptight about the world at large. “Here, take this and relax, son.”

  I was really happy to free myself of that particular addiction and I’ve never really gone back to it. I’ll take it here and there, like if I need to fall asleep after an acid trip, but I’ll never make a habit of it. Not again. And I didn’t drink for about three years, from 1990 to 1993. These recovery places are so good at programming you, it borders on brainwashing. They use scare tactics: “If you ever take another sip, you’ll fall down dead.”

  That kind of intentional and malicious misinformation makes me think that it’s high time—pardon the pun—to take a stand and stand up against Big Pharma and the DEA. How many years have they told us that pills are safe? And how long have they told us that cannabis is not?

  And how much longer will they tell us that cannabis isn’t medicine, while side effects from pills—that they’ve approved—kill us? They can keep telling us these lies, but as a nation, we’re finally beginning to see right through them. We’re locking up peaceful citizens for using natural medicine while doctors aid and abet the deaths of our friends and loved ones by prescribing stronger and stronger pills. Medicine should heal, not kill.