Looking back, we already had a good thing going with Bruce for a few years before Brent died. Bruce Hornsby & the Range opened for us nine times, from 1987 to 1990, and he sat in with us on half a dozen different occasions during that time, as well—on both piano and accordion. Naturally, it pleased me to learn that Bruce was a big fan of the Grateful Dead long before he met us. He used to attend shows, on the other side of the barricade, going back to the 1970s.
By the time he made it to the stage with us, Bruce already had a couple of hit songs and multiplatinum albums under his belt. He was established. When he joined the Grateful Dead, albeit part time, everyone in the stadium already knew songs like “The Way It Is” and “Mandolin Rain.” They were all over the radio. For whatever reason, we left those songs alone. We did try to bring several other Bruce originals into our repertoire—“The Valley Road,” and “Stander on the Mountain”—but neither of them stuck.
It was hard for me to play those songs and I don’t think Phil ever figured out the right feel for them, either. Matter of fact, I don’t think anyone in the band ever got them right. I never really felt like we were able to pull those songs off the way Bruce intended them and I think that he probably felt the same way. I’m pretty sure it bothered him. He could nail any of our songs with ease but we couldn’t do the same for his. It’s not that they’re such complicated pop songs, it’s just that they have a certain Virginia vibe to them—the same sound that Dave Matthews Band later perfected—and it was hard for a bunch of Bay Area natives to get that groove just right.
One more note about Bruce: Every other Grateful Dead keyboardist left their post only when they died or were dismissed. Bruce Hornsby was the only one who walked away. Respect.
20
There are a lot of deaths in this story, darn it. I guess that makes me something of a survivor. Unfortunately, Bill Graham was not so lucky. On October 25, 1991, he was killed in a horrific accident. He was on his way home from work which, for him, meant taking a helicopter back from a Huey Lewis and the News concert in the East Bay. The crash, attributed to bad weather, killed everyone on board. As fast as lightning.
Shortly after the crash was reported and news spread, I realized that I was aware of the exact moment it happened, because the lights in my house in San Anselmo flickered. That was the result of the impact, as the helicopter slammed into electrical lines. But I also knew that it was Graham, flickering the lights as if to say, “Everyone take your seats. The show must go on…”
About a week later, a few hundred thousand people all gathered in Golden Gate Park for a big memorial concert that featured many different acts, including Journey, Jackson Browne, and Santana. The common denominator being that they all worked with—and loved—Bill Graham. He launched more than a few careers and nurtured many more. He transformed the concert industry, time and again.
In the Grateful Dead world alone, he took turns being our manager, our booking agent, our promoter, our coach, our pain-in-the-ass, and our friend. Bill Graham’s work with the Grateful Dead was substantial. He was one of the few people who could tell us what to do. We didn’t always obey, but we always listened.
As for his memorial concert, I know I was there, because we played it. And I know we played it, because there are recordings. Photographs. Setlists. I must have been lost in the mourning process and caught up in the sadness of it all, because I don’t remember one damn thing about that day. According to the data, John Fogerty sat in with us for nearly half the set, on a series of Creedence Clearwater Revival covers. How’d it go? Your guess is as good as mine.
It would be convenient if we could make a poetic statement about how Bill Graham’s send-off effectively served as a jazz funeral for the Grateful Dead as well, but we still had worthwhile music in us, and still had a few paragraphs to add to the rock ’n’ roll history books. We weren’t done. No, not yet. However, we may have been showing signs of wear and tear after more than twenty-five years of nonstop touring, which encouraged and supported unhealthy lives of excess and abuse.
Jerry, in particular, looked torn and frayed. We were supposed to be the spokespeople for personal freedom, but we were getting worried about our brother. After the Summer ’91 tour ended in Denver, we reluctantly staged an intervention.
It was difficult. It felt like throwing stones, as Bobby might say. Had we become politicians? Or, worse yet, hypocrites? “You’re busted!” said the kids from the Acid Tests. “You’re busted!” said the mailman who used to shoot speed. “You’re busted!” said the military drum student who was suspended from the band when drugs got the best of him.
I had just come out of rehab and yet I was going to join in on that refrain? “You’re busted?” Sure. But weren’t we all busted flat, at one time or another?
As you can see, participating in the intervention made me very uncomfortable. Jerry wasn’t exactly happy with the proceedings, either. He was defensive and angry. That was okay. I would’ve felt that way, too. But we weren’t there to punish him; we were there to help him. Not for nothing, but after the intervention, Jerry started going to a methadone clinic back at home. Drove himself there, even. We were optimistic.
A year later, the pendulum had swung back the other way. Shortly after the Summer ’92 tour—which had its share of great moments—Jerry came close to slipping into another diabetic coma. He was living in a plush pad in San Rafael with his then-girlfriend Manasha and their daughter, Keelan. Manasha was a genuine spirit, but had some pretty far-out beliefs.
When Jerry’s life-force started to dim, she insisted that he stay home, out of the hospital and away from modern medicine, while an acupuncturist attended to him instead. It wasn’t our place to interfere, so all we could do was cross our fingers and stay close to the phone. Naturally, we were thrilled when we found out his health was improving. He lost some weight and had regained some of his spark, but we still had to cancel the fall tour to give him the time and space needed to really recover.
Earlier in the year, we had talked about taking another hiatus. Jerry wanted us to consider it, and I spoke up in favor of a six-month break. The idea was shot down because our operation was a big one, with a lot of overhead, mouths to feed, mortgages to pay, and so on. This is where it gets good: Jerry’s health had a wicked sense of humor because it forced us to sit out for a season anyway. To hell with operating costs.
I’m not going to sugarcoat things. Our tours during this period weren’t our best. We still had some transcendent jams in us, and they would occasionally breach the surface, but they were becoming increasingly rare sightings. In fact, before Jerry’s new set of health concerns came up, Bruce Hornsby called us out on everything. In the Spring of ’92, he relinquished his part-time position with us, in part because he was unhappy with our playing.
Remember: Hornsby was a fan of the Grateful Dead. He was in our audience before he was on our stage. Which meant that his complaints had extra bite to them because they came from someone who loved the music, who loved the songs, and who loved us. He wasn’t afraid to recognize that we weren’t delivering to our capabilities. Like Ornette Coleman had said, we stopped listening to each other, on stage and off. And the shows suffered because of it.
And yet, our numbers continued to grow. We had more people vying for tickets, not less. After taking medical leave during the Fall of ’92, we resumed touring that December, and then played eighty-one shows in 1993, followed by eighty-four shows in 1994. It was business as usual … even though nothing about us was usual.
This was the era where we would take over entire hotel floors and throw post-show parties in the Hospitality Suite (aka “the Hostility Suite”). A lot of famous people found their way to our hotel parties, and that was fun. A lot of girls did, too, and that was even more fun. We could do whatever we wanted to in the hospitality suites—especially in the bathrooms—but we didn’t need to take the party home with us. When we were done with it, we could pull a French Exit and escape to sovereign territory: our own priv
ate rooms.
When the band first started hosting hospitality suites at the hotels, Jerry would go up there and hold court. And he was brilliant. People were as transfixed by his conversations as they were by his guitar playing. He’d entertain thoughts until he settled on a topic, and he’d start riffing on it, turning a tangent into a verbal guitar solo in which he’d play with your expectations as he wrapped your attention around his words. All eyes were on him. Or most of them, anyway—as I listened intently, I’d also be checking out girls on the sly.
Bobby couldn’t compete with Jerry—none of us could—but he came up with his own thing: he assembled a portable, custom sound system to power these parties. It was a giant cabinet on wheels. He’d roll it into the center of the room, open it up, and start DJ’ing. He’d turn the fucker up, and suddenly it was a party. We had more fun in that room than Pee-Wee had on his entire Big Adventure.
I remember this one time, we were raging in the hospitality suite and I was enjoying myself in the company of strangers. There was a big sign on the door that read, “Presidential Suite,” which was in clear view when I was introduced to JFK’s son, John F. Kennedy Jr. He had spent a summer working at John Perry Barlow’s Wyoming ranch—or something to that effect—so he was, strangely, connected to our circles. I blurted out the obvious joke: “Oh, look at this! The future president, in the Presidential Suite!” If I had been just a little more coordinated and a little less inebriated, I would’ve taken my left foot and shoved it into my mouth. (Kennedy—a president’s son, of course—was a good sport about it. He even pretended to laugh.)
The hospitality suite was for after the show. Before the show, it wasn’t always the crazy backstage scene that you might imagine. We weren’t driving Rolls Royces into swimming pools or getting our private parts plastered for posterity. It had been years since we all took acid together, ritualistically, as if it was a sacrament. Acid had become too risky. We had lost the freedom to fuck up, and to take giant musical chances. It felt like the band began to lack the confidence to take psychedelics and step onstage in front of a large number of people, or to go off the deep end, improvisationally. Were we playing it safe? Maybe.
At a certain level—like, when clubs turn into arenas—you become a cog in a very big, little “engine that could.” Every band member becomes a cog. And in order for the wheel to turn, churning out music like the player piano on a merry-go-round, every one of those cogs must be well greased and perfectly calibrated to interlock. There are a lot of other moving parts as well, all powering an engine that is dependent on that wheel going ’round. It’s a fragile operation.
If the operation fails and the wheel doesn’t turn, then you just disappointed 25,000 fans—or more—in one evening. Some of whom drove across the country to see you, some of whom quit or willingly got fired from their shit jobs just to be able to go to the show, many of whom went through considerable effort just to be there in the back of that lawn. Are you really going to risk letting them all down? Well, as the recordings may reveal, some of my band members thought that was okay. And I’m not saying I always had perfect shows. I didn’t. But I sure did try. It was an enormous amount of pressure. I think we all felt that weight, regardless of how we carried it.
I would maybe do a bump or two of coke—oftentimes between songs, right onstage—for energy, and sure, I’d have a couple beers to help me ease on into things while getting ready for the show. Maybe I’d take a couple puffs off a joint, on my way to the stage, just to tap into that creative mind-set. But any serious partying would wait until afterward. Instead, I spent the time right before curtain call (and during set break) in my own little onstage cubicle, just gathering my thoughts, warming up, maybe practicing a few patterns with my sticks, maybe doing some stretches.
Every band member had their own cubicle—with curtains for walls—at the back of the stage, and we could do whatever we wanted in them. They were our own private oases, designed to give us an additional protective layer from the backstage scene, which, at that level, was no more private than the parking lot. The best friend of the promoter’s daughter wanted her picture with you; someone you slept with once wanted to introduce you to their new lover; someone you had never met before wanted to share their drugs with you. It was a parade of one after another, and it was never ending.
Since the cubicles were on the actual stage, access was extremely limited. Each band member’s cubicle had a different vibe. Phil mostly kept to himself, often on his computer, and stayed in his area. Jerry’s cubicle was on the opposite side of the stage, and he was often in there cracking jokes with his roadie or various esteemed guests. I liked having my own area because it was a place where I didn’t need to be social, didn’t need to grip and grin, and didn’t need to be some kind of host. Although, sometimes, different celebrities would stop on by, just to get a private meeting, and that could be pretty cool. Robert Downey Jr. wandered into my cubicle one night. We hung out and talked for a few minutes. Then I played the show.
And even though we had been on the road for more than a quarter century, road life was never completely routine. There was always some kind of adventure—or misadventure—waiting for us at the hotels.
This one time, we were in Las Vegas for a run of shows at the Sam Boyd Silver Bowl. A stadium in the desert. We stayed someplace off the Strip, where we didn’t have to contend with the casinos. The point was to stay someplace where we could rest and relax between shows. We were awoken at some ungodly hour one night (err, mid-morning) because our rooms overlooked the swimming pool and all these fat, old ladies were in there doing water aerobics. They had floaters on and were paddling up a storm. A shit storm, if you ask me. Well now, Welnick must’ve had the same thought, because he bought a Baby Ruth from one of the vending machines, unwrapped it, and tossed it into the pool. When the ladies noticed the candy bar, they started screaming and squealing, making a mad dash for the exit. They thought there was a turd in the water. Good work, Vinny. With a freshly abandoned pool, I was able to go right back to sleep. We call that trick the Candy Bar Evacuation. It only works in swimming pools, although, to be fair, I’ve never tested it elsewhere.
I’ve gone through much greater lengths to ensure a full day’s sleep between gigs. The fuck if I remember when this was, but it was in the South somewhere. Years earlier. For some reason, we were booked in a Holiday Inn. We had just flown in on some little private jet and we didn’t get to check in until four o’clock in the morning. Naturally, I didn’t attempt to settle down for sleep until a few hours later. Around nine in the morning, I was woken by an intolerably loud noise outside—wars were being fought, bombs were detonating, and countries were being flattened, all in the immediate space outside my window. It wasn’t traffic and it wasn’t the neighbors. I opened my curtain, naked as the day I came into this world, and there was a guy with a jackhammer, right outside my window. He was taking down the Holiday Inn sign and changing it to a Ramada, or something like that. I needed more sleep and I had a show to do that night, so I started freaking out on the guy, but he didn’t pay me any mind. He couldn’t hear me. That made me crazier than a dog in heat, so I called the front desk and started barking at them. I explained my situation. Their response was that they were very sorry but there was nothing they could do and they couldn’t even move me into another room because the hotel was fully booked. I hung up. I was pissed. Full red flag anger alert. Houston, we have a problem.
The jackass with the jackhammer woke up some of the other band and crew members, too, but not all of them had been up as late as I was, and I seemed to be the most reactionary in that moment. I decided to retaliate. I unplugged the lamp and cut the end of the cord. Then I unscrewed the telephone box and ripped out the phone cord. I took the butchered end of the lamp cord, which was running 110 volts, and placed it on the 98 volts of direct current from the phone outlet. It was like a miniature battle scene. I just destroyed enemy lines. And by that I mean I blew out the phone line. It physically shocked me and l
eft temporary burn marks on my hands and wrists. But the operation was a success—I took down the hotel’s phone system. At just past nine in the morning, before cell phones, when lovers are trying to order champagne and Eggs Benedict from room service, when travelers are trying to call the front desk for a late checkout, when business guys are trying to make important business calls … when a rock band is trying to sleep. It was as disruptive as the construction, so I figured we were even.
To take credit for the attack, I took a big bowl of fruit that was in my room and put it in the middle of the hallway. Then I took the telephone that I had ripped out of the wall and balanced it on top. It was a memo to the hotel. Don’t fuck with tired musicians.
I went down to the front desk to assess how successful my disruption had been, and Lesh was there, complaining that he was unable to make a call. There were dozens of pissed-off business guys there, too. Mission accomplished. I went back to my room and went right back to sleep.
Of course, hotels weren’t only for sleeping. Rock memoirs are supposed to be filled with sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll, and we’ve already covered the drugs and the rock ’n’ roll. I was already married when the Grateful Dead formed and I went through a few wives during the band’s lifetime. But that’s not to say there weren’t nights on the road when stuff happened that, years later, people might want to read about in the book of rock ’n’ roll.
The story I’m thinking about involves our soundman, Dan Healy. We were in Boston, which meant there was no shortage of college girls. During the show, while he was mixing and doing his thing, Healy gave out his room number to every pretty girl he saw, and told them to come on by after the show. “You like to party, don’t you?”
Deal: My Three Decades of Drumming, Dreams, and Drugs with the Grateful Dead Page 34