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

by Bill Kreutzmann

  At some point, probably in early 2000, I happened to be in the old Coca-Cola Bottling Plant in Marin that the Grateful Dead business arm was still holding on to, God knows why. I eventually did a little bit of recording in there and I bet I wasn’t the only one, but imagine the album that the Grateful Dead could’ve recorded in there … I tried not to. I don’t know why I stopped by there that day, but the Other Ones happened to be rehearsing and it also so happened that they were looking for a new drummer. Not knowing this, and without an agenda of any kind, I decided to jam with them for a song. It was total happenstance. But the moment I sat down behind the drums, it already felt different from the Shoreline disaster. Phil couldn’t make that tour and a great bassist named Alphonso Johnson had joined in his place. I wanted in. I was ready. I think it was actually Alphonso who said, “The original drummer? Oh yeah, let’s take him!”

  And so it is that I had come around and joined the Other Ones for their Summer 2000 tour and those were really enjoyable gigs. Initially famous for his membership in Weather Report, Alphonso had also played in a band called Jazz is Dead, which reinterpreted Grateful Dead songs in a sort of jazz-fusion way. So he knew how to go down that razor-thin line between respecting the song and reinventing it entirely. Every night. After all, it was a practice that we had adopted from jazz in the first place. (Of note for a few paragraphs down the line: a guitarist by the name of Jimmy Herring was also in Jazz is Dead).

  Touring with the Other Ones in 2000 was nothing like touring with the Grateful Dead during any of our thirty years. Individually, none of us were all that risky anymore. Onstage or off. We had grown up. We weren’t quite rock ’n’ roll. At least, not on that tour. Nobody would’ve wanted to make a reality TV series about being on the road with the Other Ones. There wasn’t much in the form of backstage craziness. None of us nodded off onstage or lit any fireworks in the hotel lobby after the gig. It was a professional enterprise run by a bunch of aging adolescents. But it was still a pleasant tour and I’m glad I did it.

  Alphonso Johnson had a lot to do with that and, after the tour, I sold him a Jeep that had been sitting in my Mendocino property for far too long. I still feel guilty about this, but I warned him in advance that the truck was unsalvageable. It looked all right on the outside and the engine ran fine, too. But a small nation of mice declared sovereign territory for themselves under the hood and even when I launched a war on them and ran every last one of those fuckers out, they left the Jeep with an intolerable stench. I told this to Alphonso, but he didn’t seem too concerned. He liked fixer-uppers and said he’d be able to work on it and restore that new car smell by the time he was done.

  I saw him years later and he admitted that he had to junk the car. He couldn’t do a damn thing about the smell. I felt so bad, I wanted to offer him his money back—but I didn’t.

  The Other Ones took a year off and then regrouped for the Summer of 2002, this time with Phil back on bass. The Other Ones had become all of us standing. All of the originals, anyway—we didn’t have Vince Welnick or Bruce Hornsby because we opted to have both Rob Barraco and Jeff Chimenti on keys instead. Jimmy Herring on guitar. Susan Tedeschi on backing vocals. While the tour is worth mentioning—and we (both the band and the audience) had a great time that summer—there is nothing in particular that was particularly remarkable.

  The year 2001 fell between the two Other Ones tours, and I always thought 2001 was supposed to be some sort of space odyssey … from the future. But by the time that future arrived, I had gotten together with some friends of mine from the Bay Area and haphazardly formed another band. It was almost by accident. Neal Schon, the guitarist from Journey, wanted an excuse to fuck around with a bunch of effect pedals and other gear that he had recently acquired and Journey’s manager, Herbie Herbert, just wanted to be in a band, period, I think. Herbert called himself Sy Klopps and became our vocalist. The remarkable thing about Herbert is that he had worked his way up from being a security guard at the back door of the Fillmore to being manager of a really successful, platinum-selling band—Journey. But by the time he sang in a band with me, it seemed like all he really wanted to do was roll joints. Which was fine by me. We smoked a lot of weed.

  We rehearsed at that Coca-Cola Bottling Plant in Marin; the Grateful Dead owned it and I figured I might as well get some use out of it. Sy Klopps used the space to twist up doobies and we’d smoke them, one right after the other. I suppose he was just trying to live up to our band name: the Trichromes. The core band included Ralph Woodson on guitar and Ira Walker—and, later, Michael DiPirro—on bass. They all came with decent enough résumés and they all could play. We released one EP and one full album. The feather in our cap was our lyricist: Robert Hunter.

  Schon was the odd man out in that group; he used to bust our balls for smoking so much weed, but you play in a band called the Trichromes, with the drummer from the Grateful Dead, what do you expect? I think he was too embarrassed to be a full-timer with us, but he helped write some of the songs and he did some recording. Pete Sears participated in that project as well.

  When the Other Ones regrouped to tour again in 2003, we decided that we might as well call a spade a spade, which meant, in this case, call the Dead the Dead. Without Jerry Garcia in our midst, we could never again be the Grateful Dead. But with Bobby, Phil, Mickey, and me all in the band, we felt like a part of the Dead had risen. We called up Joan Osbourne instead of Tedeschi but, other than that, we kept the same roster from the previous Other Ones tour. We were a band again. Out of reverence to the dead, we were no longer the Grateful Dead. But we were the Dead. Again.

  We kept it going the next year, too, and kept things fresh by adding Warren Haynes on guitar. Warren came from the Allman Brothers Band and was also in the process of building his own band, Gov’t Mule. No matter what band Warren plays with, he’s always comfortable just being himself. That much understood, you could still say that Warren was brought in to be Duane Allman’s replacement in the Allman Brothers and now we hired him to fill in for Jerry Garcia in the Dead. I never talked to him about his feet, but he obviously wears big shoes.

  So now we had both Warren Haynes and Jimmy Herring in the band. Two insanely talented guitarists with their own respective styles. They didn’t sound alike and, more importantly, neither of them sounds like Jerry.

  Interestingly, a few years before this—in 2000—Herring substituted for Haynes in the Allman Brothers. When Haynes returned, Herring transferred to Phil Lesh and Friends. Not long after that, Haynes also joined Phil and Friends. So it seemed natural—if somehow incestuous—to have them both playing in the Dead. The problem, as I saw it from my drum riser, was that both of them were so hyperaware of the other, that neither of them took charge. They were careful not to step on each other’s toes; perhaps too careful. It didn’t work, in my opinion. The music was fun and it was great to play our songbook again, but there wasn’t much risk in it. We didn’t jump off of any cliffs—and, as you know, cliff-diving music is my favorite. Instead, everyone played it safe. Because they could.

  After the 2004 tour, we put the Dead to rest again, this time for a five-year hiatus. To be honest, I’m not sure why we let five years pass. It took a politician and a presidential election to raise the Dead from our slumber. Maybe we had learned a lesson back in 1972 when we refused to get wrapped up with George McGovern’s campaign, but then complained something fierce when Richard Nixon won the office. Or maybe things had just gotten so much worse on Capitol Hill in the years since. But after two terms of George W. Bush in the presidency, all of us had become completely fed up with the government. We all wanted change. And, just as it was for a brief but brilliant moment in the 1960s, we could feel in the unrest of our fellow citizens that change was, indeed, afoot. We decided to do whatever we could to chime in and make that happen. So, for the first time in any of our careers, we endorsed a presidential candidate when we endorsed Barack Obama. And then he brought about change before he was even elected: he brought back the
Dead.

  It was once again obvious throughout that tour just how much things had changed. I mean, things always change—that’s been the nature of our music and that’s just the nature of life. But in the Grateful Dead, even when things changed—the drugs from fun to terrifying, the money from rags to riches, the friendships from everything to nothing—we were still a band of hippies. There were certain things about us that were too intrinsic to our identity to change beyond recognition. We were proudly leaderless. We cared about our fans and wanted to give them an experience that was worth a thousand lifelong returns for every fleeting penny they spent on tickets. We gave them music for free, but we charged for the experience. Under the new guard as just The Dead, however … it became a business. A corporation. And corporations have never been good at making music. And they’re not exactly known for their customer service.

  The end of that tour spelled the end of the Dead. There are several reasons and, I’m sure, all of the involved parties have different perspectives on what those reasons are and why they exist. But you can bet that most of it involves money and egos and personality clashes. Very little of it has to do with the music.

  The head trips were so monstrous and so big in that scene, with everyone—including non-band members—fighting for another piece of the pie. Or for more power. Or for more control. Eventually I decided that, for me, personally, it wasn’t worth it. I don’t want to have to fight battles of the head just to play the music from my heart.

  I don’t want to be in a band where the musicians in front of me don’t get along and somehow manage to put up with each other just to do the gig. That’s no fun for anybody and the music suffers because of it. At that point, you’re doing it just to earn money and that’s not good enough. It doesn’t honor the music or the legacy.

  After the Dead dissolved again, people thought that Furthur was the next incarnation. But it wasn’t really. It included just half the surviving members of the Dead (Phil and Bobby). That was fine, but then they got a guitar player who they chose because of his ability to copy Jerry. That approach is automatically going to leave me out in the woods. Playing Grateful Dead music with a fake Jerry just seems disrespectful to me. If you want to hear those songs, with a guitarist that sounds exactly like Jerry, you can go online and stream or download the thousands of shows featuring the real Jerry Garcia. There will never be another.

  When I first started writing this book, I imagined that I would go into a little more detail about the reasons why the Dead dissolved after the 2009 tour and why, for years, there were never even talks of reforming. I had dinner with Bobby and Mickey a couple times and we’d text here and there, and we’re doing that more and more these days. During the Furthur era, there was very little direct communication between us. Even indirect communication was limited. That’s changing, lately.

  I felt—and still do feel—that Deadheads deserve to know certain things, like why their band is no longer a band. But I’ve decided that what I just said is enough. I’m writing this book out of love, and for love, and I’m not here to whine or complain about things I can’t control. In the end, it doesn’t matter anyway. I’d rather not have it distract from the music, or the memory of a show that you might have gone to, or the sanctity of the holy ship of the Grateful Dead. Even if we were, admittedly … joyfully … a ship of fools.

  The sad fact is that, after Garcia died, some people in my band changed. Others remained the same. And not all the pieces were compatible anymore. I have a lot of love and respect for everything that all of us accomplished together—together—but I decided that all I can do now is to just keep being me, and to keep being the same Bill Kreutzmann that I’ve always been. I get the honor of being Bill the Drummer. Bill the Organic Farmer. Bill the Fisherman. Bill the Surfer. Bill the Husband. I get to live in paradise with a wife that I am madly in love with and we spend our days with much happiness and laughter and our nights surrounded by great friends, great food, and great music. I’ve got no complaints. I am a lucky man. And I’m not done yet.

  I miss making music with my brothers in the Grateful Dead but I know that if I’m patient and put my intention out there, we’ll make music together again. When we’re all ready. I’m ready now. But until we all are, I still have a lot of other music in me and I’ve been enjoying walking down all of those avenues as well.

  In 2009, I formed a band called 7 Walkers. We released an album the following year. The 7 Walkers lineup included Reed Mathis—whom I think is perhaps the best bass player in the game today—keyboardist Matt Hubbard, and guitarist/singer Papa Mali. Due to scheduling conflicts, Mathis couldn’t go on the road with us. Somehow we managed to land, as his fill-in, legendary bassist George Porter Jr., from the Meters—one of the original architects of New Orleans funk. A hero, for sure.

  Just like the blues, just like jazz, just like any genre, really, no one musician or band invented funk. Not if you really know your history. But the Meters brought a particular brand of funk to the table. One that originated in New Orleans and that, arguably, was defined by the way George Porter Jr. plays bass. If you need an example, cue up “Cissy Strut” on Spotify. You’ve heard it before—it’s one of the most sampled songs of all time. When you play with the engineer of a genre like that, and at that level, well … it’s about as good as it gets. It was so much fun that I sometimes laughed out loud in the middle of songs. The syncopation grooved so hard that it was a drummer’s delight.

  The Meters opened up for the Rolling Stones but they never played with the Grateful Dead. The first time I met George Porter Jr. was at the first gig we did together with 7 Walkers, in Chico, California.

  Following the album release, 7 Walkers hit the road pretty hard but we were just a baby band compared to the gig I had for thirty years before then. We didn’t have much of a road crew and we couldn’t tour with a big production. There just wasn’t enough money for it. When I walked into the venue that afternoon for soundcheck, I was running a little bit late. George was already there and ready to go, so while he waited, he decided to put himself to use by setting up my drums for me. Boy, was I ever humbled. George Porter Jr.! Setting up my drums! (And I was glad he did, too, because I didn’t really know how to set them up that well—we were using a local rental.)

  Like many of the other post-Dead bands that I either formed or joined, 7 Walkers wore thin after a while and I called for us to disband. I needed time to write this book. Now that the book is almost over—for you and for me—I’m picking up the sticks again.

  I really enjoyed sitting in with Phish at Red Rocks back in 2010, although I had to keep telling Fishman to “play harder!” I guess I’m just used to Mickey beating the hell out of things. That set was a whole lot of fun, though.

  In the Summer of 2014, I sat in with the Disco Biscuits at a couple of shows, including Gathering of the Vibes. Their music is so different from what I’m used to, but it comes out of something that I was a part of with the Grateful Dead. It’s the next stop on the continuum, and the same adventurous spirit drives that train. It wears a different generation’s cloak, that’s all.

  The Disco Biscuits were early pioneers of a style of music known as livetronica (or jamtronica). Whatever you want to call it, it evolved out of the jam band scene. And that brings up a really good point: People often say that the Grateful Dead started the whole jam band movement and that our music remains influential, even today. No other band has managed to sound exactly like us, although plenty have tried … to sound exactly like us, I mean. There have been a plethora of tribute bands—perhaps too many—and then, too, a lion’s den of copycat bands.

  That’s a huge compliment and I’m respectful of that aspect, but it doesn’t make me feel especially proud, because those bands don’t really honor the true spirit of the Grateful Dead. The true spirit has more to do with innovation, experimentation, risk—and whole-band improvisation—than it does with a particular guitar sound, or having two drummers and a bassist that doesn’t play a repeating
pattern. It’s bands like Phish and the Disco Biscuits that really make me proud of what the Grateful Dead did, because they keep our spirit alive by taking what we created and doing their own thing with it. If people insist that we were the forefathers, well then the kids have all grown up and moved out and given birth to babies of their own. Music should never be stagnant.

  Right before 7 Walkers, I toured with a trio that I called BK3—featuring the Allman Brothers’ Oteil Burbridge on bass and Max Creek’s Scott Murawski on guitar—from 2008 to 2010. That whole thing started because of a benefit gig that I played with Phish’s Mike Gordon and Murawski, and it continued to evolve over the next couple of years. With BK3, I really liked to get as far out there as I could. I took a little bit of acid before some of those shows; just enough to get out of myself without losing myself. The very fact that I was taking psychedelics for gigs again really spoke volumes.

  I still feel that, because of business factors that weren’t handled as well as they could’ve been, some of the musical treasures that BK3 dug up were overlooked by the fans. People just haven’t heard those jams, but some of them open pathways to other dimensions. Psychedelic journeys. BK3 really owes its existence, in part, to Mike Gordon. He’s the one that introduced me to Scott Murawski and the three of us played a couple gigs together. The prototype for BK3. Then, Gordon suggested Oteil Burbridge as his replacement when he couldn’t commit to a tour, following a gig we played in Costa Rica. The Jungle Jam.

  There’s a funny story about that gig: Mike Gordon’s parents owned a place near Jaco, Costa Rica, not far from the festival site. They invited my wife, Aimee, and me to stay with them, and we took them up on the offer. But we only lasted a few days. Mr. and Mrs. Gordon were lovely folks, but it felt like a sleepover at your friends’ parents’ house when you’re in grade school. They were straight as an arrow. Mike’s stepmom told us warmly that they had stocked the refrigerator with beer for us. But when we opened it, there was only a six-pack. We were out of there pretty quick. Much love and respect to them, though.