Palo Alto High School, at 50 Embarcadero Road, as it looks today, where Jerry Garcia saw Joan Baez in concert in 1961 in the auditorium. The old auditorium has long since been replaced. |
Like any great musician, Garcia had giant ears, and he learned from numerous musicians and recording artists throughout his career. Yet most of the live music he heard was played by musicians on the same bill with him. Early in his career, Garcia had very little money, and as he attained a level of success, he worked so much that he rarely had the time to go out. When the Grateful Dead achieved a certain level of economic success, Garcia responded by forming other groups--the New Riders, Garcia/Saunders, Old And In The Way, and so on--so he still had little time to see other artists.
Because Jerry Garcia's live appearances have been so carefully studied, just about all the times that Garcia has sat in with a band as a guest artist have been documented. However, Garcia was so forthcoming about his interests, and his performing history has been so well known, that we are generally aware when seeing another performer has influenced Garcia's music. At different times, for example, Garcia had mentioned how seeing a Pentangle or a Miles Davis when they shared a bill with the Dead had influenced his music.
Yet there is a short but important list of concerts and performers that Garcia was known to have seen that appears not to have been written out. Garcia liked to perform, and didn't like to hang out, so the number of times Garcia saw a show without playing is surprisingly few. Particularly in later years, I think Garcia attracted an extraordinary amount of attention, and going backstage or sitting in regular seats was probably not a relaxing experience for him. Nonetheless, Garcia did get out once in a while. This post attempts to document every known performance where Jerry Garcia attended the show, but did not perform, nor was scheduled. The emphasis is on different performers, rather than specific dates, although of course I am tremendously interested in actual dates where they are known. Anyone with additions, corrections, insights or entertaining speculation on this subject is encouraged to Comment or email me.
[update] Numerous readers have Commented or emailed me, and the entire Comment thread is at least as interesting as the post itself, and well worth a read. I have updated the post accordingly. Thanks to Light Into Ashes, Jesse, JGMF, ChicoArchivist, Nick, Legs Lambert and the ever-present Anonymous
[update] For a fascinating companion piece to this list, see this amazing post on Jerry Garcia's Record Collection.
ca. 1959, Fillmore, San Francisco and Roseland, Oakland, CA: Rhythm & Blues shows
[update] Tireless scholar and fellow blogger Light Into Ashes seems to have uncovered the earliest concerts that Garcia attended:
In the late 50s, round the time Garcia was going to the School of Fine Arts in SF, he was also going to see R&B shows: "Me and a couple of friends used to go out to black shows, not only at the Fillmore, but also at Roseland over in Oakland. I'd usually hear about the shows on the radio." (Troy, Captain Trips p.14) No bands named.
Joan Baez, circa 1961 |
Jerry Garcia was a struggling musician and former GI in 1961. However, he saw Joan Baez at the Palo Alto High School Auditorium and was instantly struck--this was something he could do. Joan Baez had gone to Palo Alto High School, but she hadn't graduated, as her academic father had moved the family to Boston for her senior year. However, she was still a local girl made good, and that had to give some inspiration to Garcia as well.
Both Pigpen and Bill Kreutzmann went to Paly High. Pigpen was probably a student at the time, although he was expelled and did not graduate. Kreutzmann did graduate from Paly (as did I, somewhat later). Paly High (as we all called it) was Palo Alto's first high school, opened in 1898. The old auditorium was replaced in the early 70s (and has probably been replaced again). Paly was not impossibly far from either downtown Palo Alto or Santa Cruz Avenue in Menlo Park, so for a mostly-carless bohemian like the model 1961 Garcia, the fact that he could have walked there if he had to must have made it a relatively attractive event.
[update]: LIA:
Charlotte Daigle also remembered the Joan Baez show at Palo Alto High School in summer 1961:September 1961, Monterey County Fairgrounds, Monterey, CA: Monterey Jazz Festival, with Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Dave Brubeck, John Coltrane with Wes Montgomery, and many others
"Jerry wanted to go to the Joan Baez concert and sit in the front row so he could watch her. He watched her intently, commenting, 'This is great, I can out-guitar her.' Jerry wanted to see what kind of musician she was...he was terribly excited that she was well-known and he was as good on guitar or better." (Troy p.30)
[update] LIA
In September 1961, Garcia went to the Monterey Jazz Festival. Charlotte Daigle recalled: "It was Jerry's idea to go to the festival. He bought the tickets for us, and we went two days. We had reserved seats, and Jerry took it very seriously. Jazz fans were very formal at the time, and other people were dressed up. Our crowd from Palo Alto was very beatnik-looking, and we stood out from the rest of the audience. It created something of a stir." (Troy p.34)1962, Fox And Hounds, San Francisco, CA: Peter Stampfel
[update] In a recent and yet-to-be published interview, original Holy Modal Rounder Peter Stampfel says that Garcia told Stampfel he saw him play at the Fox And Hounds, a San Francisco folk coffee house. LIA also found a Garcia quote about that time
"'61 or '62, I started playing coffeehouses, and the guys who were playing around then up in San Francisco at the Fox and Hounds, Nick Gravenites was around then - Nick the Greek they called him - Pete Stampfel from the Holy Modal Rounders, he was playing around there then. A real nice San Francisco guitar player named Tom Hobson that nobody knows about...I am not aware of any other performers that Garcia saw between 1961 and '64, other than nights he was performing. The Top Of The Tangent opened in early 1963, and a fair number of folk performers must have passed through. I would be very interested to know how many of them Garcia actually saw, outside of the nights he was performing. Garcia was married and living hand-to-mouth in 1963-64, and would not have been able to afford to go out much. [update: there are some interesting points in the Comments about this subject].
[update]: As ever, LIA was able to shed some light
David Nelson recalled Garcia taking him to see Jorma Kaukonen at the Tangent around the summer of 1962 [sic--it actually had to be 1963, The Tangent did not open until January '63]
"Garcia grabbed me and said, 'You gotta hear this guy.' I said, 'Who is he?' Garcia said, 'Jerry Kaukonen, he plays that Reverend Gary Davis and Blind Boy Fuller stuff, he does it right.' I remember going to the Tangent and peering out from the back room, which is where we put our instruments, and hearing him play and looking at Garcia who is looking at me, and we're just going 'Wow!'" (Troy p.39)
1963 or '64, unknown venue, San Jose, CA: New Lost City Ramblers
[update] LIA
One of Garcia's guitar students at Dana Morgan's in 1963/64, Dexter Johnson, recalled, "He turned me on to Mike Seeger and the New Lost City Ramblers. I remember once coming to a lesson and he wasn't there, and on the music stand was a note: 'Gone to New Lost City Ramblers concert in San Jose. See you next week.'" (Greenfield p.41)
Hard to say when Garcia would have first seen the Ramblers - he was already enough of a fan to do songs from their albums in his shows in 1962, so he wouldn't hesitate to go see them if they were anywhere in driving distance. As his folkie friend Marshall Leicester said, "In those days we all wanted to be Mike Seeger."
The first Jim Kweskin Jug Band album, released on Vanguard in 1963, which in its own way spawned a tiny revolution. |
The Cabale, at 2504 San Pablo Avenue, was not Berkeley's first folk club (that was The Blind Lemon), but it was the first important one. Although a tiny little cavern of a place, all the important early 60s folk acts played there. The city of Berkeley was very suspicious, and to this day it is illegal to have a business in Berkeley named "Cabale."
The Jim Kweskin Jug Band had released an album on Vanguard in late 1963, and their unexpected popularity all but single-handedly made jug band music popular. Mother McRee's Uptown Jug Band Champions followed shortly afterwards. Jerry and Sara Garcia and others made a pilgrimage to Berkeley to see them, and it triggered a lot of excitement about the possibilities of making music your own way.
Kweskin Jug Band singer Geoff Muldaur, later a good friend of John Kahn's and an occasional guest with Garcia/Saunders, reflected in a recent interview with Jake Feinberg about the importance of The Jim Kweskin Jug Band for folk musician in general and Garcia in particular. Up until then, even folk performers had "acts:" they dressed a certain way, they had onstage "patter" and a somewhat fixed set. The Jim Kweskin Jug Band was none of those things. The Jug Band wore whatever they happened to be wearing that day, bantered with the audience and generally did the music they felt like playing at that moment. In so doing, Garcia saw the nascent possibility of the existence of the Grateful Dead, even if it wasn't clear to him at the time.
Bluegrass legends Jim and Jesse McReynolds |
Sandy Rothman and Jerry Garcia took a trip across America in Garcia's white 1961 Corvair, and it was perhaps the only time in his life that Garcia was more music fan than musician. The principal purpose of the trip was to tape bluegrass musicians. After a stop in Bloomington, IN, to see old friend Neil Rosenberg and visit the "Mr. Tapes" of Bloomington (TV repairman Marvin Wollensak), Jerry and Sandy drove to visit old friend Scott Hambly at an Air Force base in Panama City, FL. Garcia in fact played his first out-of-California gig at an Officer's Club at Tyndall Air Force Base.
In any case, Jerry and Sandy's next stop was Dothan, AL, where they saw and recorded Jim And Jesse. Jim and Jesse McReynolds were one of the great brother duos of bluegrass, and for this week, anyway, Jerry was like the rest of us, hitting the road for the next gig so that he could come back with a good tape.
May 24 1964, Brown County Jamboree, Bean Blossom, IN Bill Monroe and The Bluegrass Boys/other artists
Garcia and Rothman returned to Bloomington for Bill Monroe's annual bluegrass festival, the Gathering Of The Vibes for that crowd. Apparently their tape was ruined, per McNally, and of course Garcia was too shy to approach Bill Monroe for an audition, but it was a great day of bluegrass, and Garcia was just a fan like everyone else that day.
late May 1964, White Sands Bar, Dayton, OH Osborne Brothers
Garcia and Rothman's next stop was Dayton, where McNally says they got a great tape of the Osborne Brothers. I wonder if copies of these tapes have survived?
early June 1964, Bluegrass Festival, Union Grove, PA
Near the end of their little trip, Garcia and Rothman went to another famous bluegrass festival, in Union Grove, Pennsylvania (near Lancaster). This was where Garcia met David Grisman, so the event would have been historic in any case, but after struggling to hear real bluegrass on the West Coast, Garcia must have enjoyed hearing the real thing in prodigious quantities.
The posthumous 1975 live album of the Kentucky Colonels, Livin' In The Past, recorded November 15, 1964 at the Comedia Theater in Palo Alto, CA |
We know for a fact that Jerry Garcia saw the Kentucky Colonels at the Comedia Theater in Palo Alto. We know that because an excellent album was released featuring recordings from that show, and on that album we hear the band introduced by Jerry. It's not impossible one of Garcia's bands opened the show, but for now we will treat it as belonging on this list.
The Comedia was a tiny theater on Emerson Street. I think it may have become the Aquarius Movie Theater later in the 60s (for any of you old Palo Altans). Garcia had done the lights there at one point in 1961 (apparently for "Damn Yankees"), and that was where he first met Robert Hunter.
Buck Owens and The Buckaroos, outside of Carnegie Hall, presumably when they performed there on March 25, 1966. The Buck Owens album Carnegie Hall Concert was released on Capitol in July 1966 |
According to writer John Einarson, Garcia went with Herb Pedersen and David Nelson, among others, to see Buck Owens and The Buckaroos at the Foresters Hall in Redwood City. The Foresters Hall is at 1204 Middlefield (at Main), and it is still there.The concert was around 1964-65, but I don't know an exact date.
Buck Owens and The Buckaroos were hugely popular, particularly in the West. They were proponents of "The Bakersfield Sound," a more swinging, rock-oriented approach to country music. Although some of the early 60s corniness of their music grates to modern ears, the Buckaroos are as good as a band ever got. Lead guitarist Don Rich and pedal steel guitarist Tom Brumley were hugely influential for rock and country music. Indeed, the Eagles and most of modern (Garth Brooks era) country music owes more to Buck Owens and The Buckaroos than they do to any other band. Even the Beatles had a hit with the Buck Owens song "Act Naturally."
1965, The Ash Grove, Los Angeles, CA: The Kentucky Colonels
[update] Intrepid scholar and Commenter Light Into Ashes reports that Blair Jackson writes, "On a couple of occasions in 1965 he traveled down to the Ash Grove in Los Angeles to see his friends the Kentucky Colonels." (Garcia p.75). The Ash Grove was the legendary folk club at 8162 Melrose Avenue (now The Improv, a comedy club), which was the hub for serious Southern California folk musicians. Garcia also probably saw the Colonels at the Cabale in Berkeley in 1964.
The hugely popular first album on Kama Sutra by The Lovin' Spoonful, called Do You Believe In Magic after the hit single of the same nam |
Mother's was Tom Donahue's night club in North Beach, at 430 Broadway, near the future site of The Stone (at 412 Broadway, then called The Galaxie). It was the first avowedly psychedelic night club, although its version of psychedelia was somewhat different than what would follow. The Lovin' Spoonful had a big hit with "Do You Believe In Magic," and the Spoonful played a week or two at Mother's. the Warlocks scrounged up enough money to go.The Warlocks were so impressed that they started playing "Do You Believe In Magic" (McNally p.86).
A poster for the second Family Dog dance, " A Tribute To Sparkle Plenty," held at San Francisco's Longshoreman's Hall on October 24, 1965 |
According to McNally (p.96), Lesh, Garcia and other members of The Warlocks went to Marin in the afternoon and then San Francisco. After a meal at Clown Alley, they went to Longshoreman's for the second Family Dog show. Midway through, Phil Lesh grabbed promoter Luria Castell and said "Lady, what this little seance needs is us!" He was right.
LIA (of course), found some great quotes from Garcia about the Family Dog show:
We ended up going into that rock and roll dance and it was just really fine to see that whole scene - where there was just nobody there but heads and this strange rock & roll music playing in this weird building. It was just what we wanted to see... We began to see that vision of a truly fantastic thing. It became clear to us that working in bars was not going to be right for us to be able to expand into this new idea." (Signpost p.20-21)
And, talking to Ralph Gleason in March '67, he looked at the show from a technical perspective:
"We went to the very first Family Dog show stoned on acid, or maybe it was the second one, the one where the Lovin' Spoonful were... We'd been playing out in these clubs - and we went in there and we heard the thing. And from the back of the hall you couldn't hear anything. You could hear maybe the harmonica. As you moved around you could hear a little of something, a little of something else, but you could never hear the whole band, unless you were right in front of it, and in that case you couldn't hear the vocal. So in our expanding consciousness we thought, the thing to do obviously, when you play in a big hall, is to make it so that you can hear everything everywhere. How do we go about this, we thought? And the most obvious thing was, we just turn up real loud. But that's not exactly where it is... It's more important that it be clear than loud." (GD Reader p.28-29)
July 4, 1966 Greek Theatre, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA: Jefferson Airplane/Greenbriar Boys/others
[update] The UC Berkeley Folk Festival was an annual weekend extravaganza from 1958-70. In later years many rock bands played. On the final afternoon concert of the 1966 Festival, the headliners were the Jefferson Airplane, who at the time considered themselves "Folk-Rock." Also on the bill were the Greenbriar Boys, probably featuring Frank Wakefield, which likely explains why there is a photo of Jerry Garcia hanging out backstage with Jorma Kaukonen and Marty Balin (yes I have seen it). Jerry saw the Airplane all the time, but the Greenbriar Boys would have been special.
July 26, 1966, Cow Palace, Daly City, CA: Rolling Stones/Standells/McCoys/Trade Winds/Jefferson Airplane/Sopwith Camel
Jerry Garcia attended the Rolling Stones Cow Palace show as a roadie for the Jefferson Airplane, apparently the only way he could afford to see the Stones.
October 6, 1966, Basketball Pavilion, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA: Butterfield Blues Band/Jefferson Airplane
Anonymous
The Airplane and Butterfield played at Stanford on October 6, 1966, the day acid became illegal in California. They split a $2,500 fee. Garcia sat right behind me.The Butterfield Blues Band and the Jefferson Airplane headlined three memorable weekends at the Fillmore and Winterland in October of 1966. They had different opening acts on the bill, and on the middle weekend the Dead were booked. On Thursday, October 6, however, Butter and the 'Plane were at the Stanford basketball pavilion. This was the old gym at Serra and Galvez, now called Burnham Pavilion. The facility is currently used for other sports, as the Men's Basketball team plays at nearby Roscoe Maples Pavilion, which opened in 1969.
October 6, 1966, was quite a day. As the Commenter says, LSD was declared illegal in California. The Grateful Dead played a free concert in the Golden Gate Park Panhandle for thousands of people, and the entire hip, long-haired community in the Bay Area found out that there were a lot more of themselves than they had thought. Since October 6 was a Thursday, Butter and the Airplane could play Stanford, but Garcia would have been done by the afternoon, and would have been available to see the show. Legend has it that Mike Bloomfield borrowed Jorma's guitar that night.
Garcia's presence at the Stanford show may have been no coincidence. I know that Ken Kesey was at the Panhandle show. I have heard reliably that there was a free midnight concert scheduled for the San Francisco State campus, with the Dead, Airplane and Butterfield, effectively an Acid Test, if now an illegal one. Supposedly the police were very concerned with security, and Kesey and the bands agreed to cancel the event. Strange as this may sound, on the previous weekend the police had killed a young black man, and there had been riots in the Fillmore district, so the atmosphere in San Francisco that week was hardly peaceful.
June 1967, Garrick Theater, New York, NY: The Mothers Of Invention
[update] LIA:
Lesh wrote in his book that he took Garcia, Weir & Kreutzmann to see Frank Zappa & the Mothers at the Garrick, upstairs from the Cafe au Go Go in June '67. He says it was the day before they started their Cafe au Go Go run - but that would make it the evening of May 31, the day the Dead arrived in NY?The Grateful Dead's first beachhead in Manhattan was a two-week run at the Cafe Au Go Go in Greenwich Village. At the very same time, Frank Zappa and The Mothers Of Invention had a summer long residency at the tiny Garrick Theater, above the Au Go Go. The marquee said "Absolutely Free." The lineup in June of 1967 would have been the classic early Mothers, with Ray Collins on vocals, Bunk and Buzz Gardner on horns, along with Motorhead Sherwood, Don Preston on keyboards, Roy Estrada on bass, and Billy Mundi and Jimmy Carl Black (the Indian of the group) on drums. I doubt Ian Underwood or Artie Tripp had joined yet.
My cousin actually attended a Garrick show on July 18, his 13th birthday (his notoriously cheap father thought the show would be free). To open the show, the quite unattractive Mothers came out in dresses and did a Supremes medley. Then it got progressively weirder. So whichever night he went, Garcia probably saw a pretty way-out show. A reasonable facsimile (albeit with Underwood on board) would be the album Tis The Season To Be Jelly, recorded on September 20, 1967 in Stockholm.
Ramrod and some other crew members would apparently participate in some of the madness with the Mothers when the Dead were not playing. According to the memory of Dead manager Rock Scully (in his book Living With The Dead), Frank Zappa’s enmity for the Dead partially stems from these two weeks when The Mothers were playing upstairs at The Garrick while the Dead played in the basement at the Au Go Go. The perpetually anti-drug Zappa resented that the Mothers would sneak downstairs to get high with the Dead. The Mothers were deathly afraid of being caught by Zappa, knowing that the punishment was more rehearsal.
August 22, 23, 24 or 25, 1967, Fillmore, San Francisco, CA: Butterfield Blues Band/Cream/Southside Sound System
August 29,30, 31 or September 1, 1967, Fillmore, San Francisco, CA: Cream/Electric Flag/Gary Burton Quartet
[update] LIA reports
Garcia definitely saw Cream at the Fillmore in September 1967, apparently more than once; he lavished praise on Cream's shows in an interview later that month. Cream played at the Fillmore from August 22-September 3, 1967 - the Dead were out of town for a couple weekends, but Garcia would have had ample opportunities to see Cream during the week.The Dead played Lake Tahoe on August 19 and August 25-26, and, somewhat amazingly, the hotel was so tacky that Garcia and Mountain Girl camped for a day or two. However, LIA has found a strong suggestion that Garcia saw Cream both weeks, suggesting that he zipped back to San Francisco for a few days.
"I would say the Cream are damn near the best group there is... Their music is really strong. I mean, really strong... They're much better musicians than Jimi Hendrix... You should have seen them at the Fillmore...cause they played with a lot of very heavy bands. They played with Gary Burton's band. They played with the Electric Flag. They played with Paul Butterfield's band and with Charlie Musselwhite's band. And they made them all sound pretty old-fashioned..."
So he lists all of the bands who played with Cream in the two-week run, and they all came up short... That's what makes me think he saw Cream in both those weeks.Cream's incredible two-week stand at the Fillmore made them. Already popular from the first free-form FM rock station, KMPX-fm, the format of two hour-long sets induced Cream to jam out their songs, since they had so few. The results were sensational, for the band, the audience and the music industry as a whole. The Gary Burton Quartet, with Larry Coryell on guitar, was also a brilliant, groundbreaking group. The Paul Butterfield Blues Band were still powerful, featuring Elvin Bishop on guitar and David Sanborn on alto sax, and Harvey Mandel and Charlie Musselwhite led the Southside Sound System, so it was a truly impressive weekend at the Fillmore. The Electric Flag, with Mike Bloomfield and Nick Gravenites, were very talented, but notoriously erratic live.
December 1967, Carnegie Hall, New York, NY: American Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski perform Charles Ives' 4th Symphony
[update] LIA has another remarkable addition
It's not rock, but Phil mentions that he & the rest of the band went to see a performance of Charles Ives' 4th Symphony when they were in New York in December 1967 (at Carnegie Hall, the American Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski) - this was a key influence on the Anthem album.
Cream's immortal Wheels Of Fire album, released on Atco Records in August 1968. The live half of this double album was recorded March 7, 8 and 10 at the Fillmore and Winterland in San Francisco |
March 1 or 2, 1968; Winterland, San Francisco, CA: Cream/Big Black/Loading Zone or
March 10, 1968: Winterland, San Francisco, CA: Cream/James Cotton/Blood, Sweat & Tears
Cream was the biggest and most exciting touring live act in 1968, and the band that really cemented the synergy between FM airplay and live performance as a pathway to huge record sales, all without benefit of a conventional hit. We know for a fact that Garcia saw Cream during the historic run in 1968 when they recorded the live parts of Wheels Of Fire over two weekends at the Fillmore and Winterland. We know that because Mickey Hart talked about it. The indispensable Deadessays blog has a complete account, but the key quote is this one, from Mickey Hart in a 1981 interview in the great English fanzine Comstock Lode:
"Ginger Baker did it for me once at the Winterland with Cream, we'd just finished mixing Aoxomoxoa or one of those [sic-it was actually Anthem Of The Sun], and we walked in just as he was getting into his solo. It was amazing. I turned to Jerry and said, 'They have to be the best band in the world,' and he said, 'Tonight they are the best band in the world.' They were that night.It's hard to be certain of the exact date that Garcia saw Cream, and it's not impossible he saw them more than once. Cream played two weekends at Winterland, with some shows at the Fillmore as well. Cream played Friday and Saturday March 1-2 and then again on March 8-9-10 (they played Fillmore on Sunday March 3 and Thursday March 7). Since the Grateful Dead played the Melodyland Theater at Disneyland on March 8 and 9, we know that Garcia and Hart couldn't have seen those shows. There's also a photo of Garcia and Eric Clapton hanging out in Sausalito on the afternoon of March 10 (Cream was staying in Sausalito), so that seems to add to the likelihood of Garcia going to Winterland on Sunday, March 10, and maybe he did.
However, I would like to submit the possibility that Garcia and Hart saw Cream at Winterland on Friday March 1 or Saturday March 2. Most analysts routinely assume that the Grateful Dead were playing that weekend, since Deadlists shows them performing at the mysterious Looking Glass in Walnut Creek. In fact, JGMF has looked into this, and there is no sign that those shows ever took place, whatever The Looking Glass may have been, if it even existed. Whatever may have been scheduled and canceled in Walnut Creek, I think the Dead preferred to work on Anthem Of The Sun that weekend, rather than scramble to find another gig. Thus, when the night's work was over, Garcia and Hart would have been free to check out Cream. Anthem was being remixed at Columbus Recorders, at 906 Kearny Street (at Jackson), just 2 miles from Winterland (at Post and Steiner), so dropping by after work was done would have been easy.
A poster for the Bill Graham-produced Ornette Colenan show at Fillmore West on August 5, 1968 |
In the recent book Owsley And Me: My LSD Family (by Rhoney Gissen Stanley and Tom Davis, Monkfish Press, 2013), Rhoney Gissen says that Garcia and other members of the Grateful Dead "family" attended the Ornette Coleman show at Fillmore West.
This Monday night jazz show at Fillmore West does not usually appear on Fillmore West lists (excepting the best one, of course), because those lists are mostly lists of posters, not concerts. However, Graham promoted this show, and even printed a poster, but it was not part of the collectible rock series, so the event has been obscured. I have no idea how many people attended the show.
Ralph Gleason's column in the SF Chronicle from Sunday, November 9, 1969 |
The Rolling Stones played two shows at the Oakland Coliseum, an event described in detail by Sam Cutler in his book You Can't Always Get What You Want (2010: ECW Press). Keith Richards blew his amp during the first show, so the second show was delayed while the Grateful Dead's crew raced back to Novato to get Garcia's rig as a replacement. The late show was immortalized on a legendary bootleg called Liver Than You'll Ever Be.
The Byrds Untitled album was released in September 1970 |
I read in a Wolfgang's Vault comment thread that I can't recover that Garcia dropped in to see The Byrds when they played The Ash Grove. I'd love to get confirmation of this. Freddie King had an extended booking there that week, and The Byrds were added at the last minute. The Byrds were too big to "need" to play an LA club date, but sometimes they did such things, to work on new material or just have some fun. According to Christopher Hjort's indispensable Byrds chronology So You Want To Be A Rock And Roll Star (2008: Jawbone Books), the Byrds were supposed to have played "Fiesta Da Vida" in Anza, CA, in Riverside County. It was apparently supposed to be held at the Cahuilla Indian Reservation, but the Riverside County Sheriff blocked it at the last minute, so the Byrds were available.
The Kentucky Colonels had been good friends with Jerry Garcia and Sandy Rothman since 1964, and indeed they had driven across much of the country together. Clarence White, a true guitar giant on both electric and acoustic guitar, was a significant influence on Garcia as well. White played some amazing electric guitar with The Byrds--if you haven't heard live Byrds from 1969-73 with Clarence, you're missing out--and if this sighting was accurate, it's nice that on one of his rare "nights out" Jerry went to check in with his old friend. I don't know what Garcia would have been doing in Los Angeles, but perhaps he had business with Warner Brothers. Certainly the Dead were not booked, since their sound system was on tour with the Medicine Ball Caravan. In any case, the Dead did play an acoustic show in Los Angeles the next weekend, so Garcia's presence isn't so far-fetched.
[update] LIA found the link to the Wolfgang's Vault Comment
I was at this show. Freddie was the opening act for the Byrds! Jerry Garcia was in the audience. One of the most memorable shows I had the good luck to be at. Freddie tore the place down. Hot pink satin suit, white frilly shirt with French cuffs. He took his coat off after the first song and ripped! I never saw anyone sweat so much. just BURNIN!
1970 or '71, The Crossroads, Bladensburg, MD: Roy Buchanan
[update] Guitarist Roy Buchanan had been a legendary guitarist in the 50s and early 60s with Ronnie Hawkins and others, but by the late 60s he was a family man. He pretty much only played at one bar in suburban Washington, DC. Over time, visiting rock musicians, particularly English guitarists, passed the word around, and many guitarists made a pilgrimage to see Buchanan when they were in town. Eventually, Buchanan became such a legend that PBS made a documentary about him. LIA reports
Garcia apparently saw Roy Buchanan at the Crossroads nightclub in Bladensburg, Maryland sometime in 1970-71.
Garcia appeared in a TV documentary on Buchanan that aired in November 1971, saying, "He's probably just the most original country-style rock & roll guitar player, a Fender guitar player. He has the nicest tone, the most amazing chops technically, super fast. And much neglected."
The thing is, Buchanan didn't have any albums out yet. He'd been playing in the houseband at the Crossroads since summer/fall 1970 - I'm not sure when Garcia could have been in Maryland in 1971, but possibly he made a trip during the Dead's fall 1970 east-coast tour. (At that point Buchanan was an unknown, but word-of-mouth about him was going around the Washington DC area - the Washington Post ran an article on him in Dec 1970 - and some folks were even traveling from New York to see him.)
Kenny Burrell's classic album Midnight Blue, released on Blue Note in 1963 |
Tony Saunders was interviewed by journalist and scholar Jake Feinberg, and he had a variety of interesting revelations (continued here). One of the interesting details was that when Garcia found out that Merl Saunders knew Kenny Burrell, Jerry and Merl went to see Burrell play live in San Francisco, and hung out with him either before or after the show. The El Matador was the upscale jazz club in North Beach, at 492 Broadway, from back when jazz was popular music. They still had fine music, however, if not always particularly far out.
Kenny Burrell is one of the deans of jazz guitar, inevitably funky and sophisticated, but in a cool, laid back way, where the notes he doesn't play are as important as the ones he does. Garcia's playing in the earliest incarnations of the Garcia-Saunders band seems to owe something to Burrell, and it seems it was not a coincidence.
[update] LIA found the quote from Merl Saunders, in Robert Greenfield's oral biography of Garcia:
I found more details on the early-70s Kenny Burrell show, from Merl Saunders:October 14 or 15, 1971, Berkeley Community Theater, Berkeley, CA: Crosby And Nash
"One night, Jerry called me. 'Merl, you know Kenny Burrell?' I said, 'Yeah, I know Kenny Burrell, he's at the El Matador. Why don't we go see him?' After the show was over, Jerry wanted to meet Kenny Burrell. He asked him questions, and Kenny didn't know who in the hell Jerry was until after I talked to Kenny the next day." (Greenfield p.139)
[update] LIA: in the Signpost to New Space interview (p.49, my edition), Garcia says, "I saw Mickey last night, he was at the Crosby & Nash concert."
"Killing Me Softly With His Song" was a big hit for Roberta Flack in early 1973 |
This one is a little different. The Grateful Dead were between gigs--September 30 in Washington, DC and October 2 at Springfield Civic. On the night off, however, and the night before the Dead's Springfield gig, Roberta Flack was playing there. The sound man was an old pal of the Dead's, former Fleetwood Mac sound wizard Stuart 'Dinky' Dawson, who by this time had his own sound company in Boston.
Garcia and Owsley sat at the mixing board with Dinky, checking out his state-of-the-art system, thinking about how they could build their own, research that would lead to The Wall Of Sound. Roberta Flack is a fine singer and had a great band, so even if Garcia was there for the PA, he probably enjoyed the music (there is a tape of it on Wolfgang's Vault). I have a post about this night, drawing from Dinky Dawson's description of the night from his fine book Life On The Road (for the record, Dawson's biggest problem was that he was very thirsty, since he refused to drink any liquid with Owsley around).
October 1973, The New Matrix, San Francisco, CA: Bob Marley And The Wailers
[update] Garcia was apparently intrigued enough by Bob Marley and The Wailers to check them out at the New Matrix, where they played several shows in October of 1973 (17, 18, 19, 20, 29 and 30). The Matrix had closed in 1971, but it reopened in 1973 on 412 Broadway, an address that Garcia and his fans would come to know well some years later when it became The Stone.
Planet Waves, by Bob Dylan and The Band, was released on Asylum Records in January 1974 |
Joel Selvin of the San Francisco Chronicle reported that every San Francisco luminary was at the two 1974 Bob Dylan concerts in Oakland (early and late shows), although I no longer recall if he explicitly mentioned the Dead. So Garcia's presence is unconfirmed for now, but I would be pretty surprised if he didn't make it. I posited the idea that Garcia's presence at the show caused him to bring back "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" a few times in 1974.
May 29, 1976, Paramount Theater, Oakland, CA: Bob Marley And The Wailers
[update] JGMF: There are also eyewitness accounts to Garcia seeing BMW at the Paramount in Oakland in, I think, May 1976.
The Paramount, built in the 30s, was restored in the mid-70s, and Bill Graham put on a fair number of shows there for a while. Its a beautiful theater, but the sound isn't great, and deserved or not, downtown Oakland wasn't an appealing destination for many suburban fans. Nonetheless, seeing a show at the Paramount remains a treat. Marley and The Wailers did two shows. Garcia would have been rehearsing with the Dead over at the Orpheum, so he probably caught the late show.
The Last Waltz, by The Band, was a triple album commemorating their "final" concert at Winterland on November 25, 1976 |
The Last Waltz was the can't miss rock event of 1976 in San Francisco. Once again, Selvin reported that "everybody" was there, although I'm fairly certain he mentioned the Grateful Dead this time. Once again, I'd be surprised if even the homebound Garcia missed this one, but I don't have confirmation.
April 1, 1979, Old Waldorf, San Francisco, CA: Dire Straits
[update] LIA found an interesting quote from Garcia, in the 1985 Jas Obrecht article
Q: Any bands you'd go out of your way to see?I'm guessing a little bit about the date, but Dire Straits did not play the Bay Area very much. They played The Old Waldorf on March 31/April 1, and Reconstruction had a show the first night, so that points towards April 1. At the time, "Sultans Of Swing" was hitting, and Dire Straits was already a kind of retro sensation. For that initial tour, the Straits were just a simple four-piece.
Garcia: "There are a few, yeah. Let's see - the last band I went to see is Dire Straits. That was the last band I went to see live, a couple of years ago. There are others that I would, but most of the time I'm out working and stuff. So I don't really get a chance. But there are more that I would go to see if I were in a situation where I wasn't working nights so much. I would go out more. But yeah, there's actually a lot of music that I would go to see. It's just the opportunity doesn't present itself that often. That's the problem. Time and space, you know."
The River, by Bruce Springsteen, released in 1980 |
I have never gotten confirmation on this. The San Francisco Chronicle used to have a great column called Question Man, and in one 1982 edition, backstage at The Bammies, she asked various musicians who was the best performer today. Jerry Garcia said the best performer today (in 1982) was Bruce Springsteen. I had the yellowed clipping for years, but I can't find it now.
This raises the question of when, or even if, Jerry saw a Bruce show. For years I had assumed he had seen one of Oakland shows on The River tour (October 27-28, 1980), but in fact the Dead were at Radio City Music Hall. Bruce did not play the Bay Area until 1984, so when did Jerry see him, if he did? The Dead were in Southern California in August 1981, so maybe Garcia saw one of the Sports Arena shows, right before the Dead's Long Beach show. Given how few concerts Garcia saw from this point on, I really hope Garcia got to see Bruce and the E Street Band in their prime.
[update] Given that we have learned that by 1985 Garcia had not seen anybody since Dire Straits, when did Garcia see Bruce? Maybe he just saw a video or something, and drew his opinion from that. Too bad, if it was the case.
July 28, 1981, The Stone, San Francisco, CA: High Noon
A commenter on a different post noted
Michael Hinton posted this little vignette at Facebook: "Played all 3 [Keystone family] venues in 1981 w/Mickey Hart's band High Noon. Most memorable was when Jerry Garcia came backstage and shook my hand at The Stone. Mickey said "we actually got Jerry to leave his house!"" Based on your list, this had to have been 7/28/81.Mickey Hart put together a little band called High Noon, which I have written about them extensively elsewhere. High Noon mostly featured the original songs of Jim McPherson, who also played piano and guitar. Other band members included Merl Saunders, guitarist Michael Hinton, bassist Bobby Vega, harmonicat Norton Buffalo and percussionist Vicki Randle, with almost everyone singing.
June 1985, Opera House, San Francisco, CA: Wagner's Ring Cycle
[update} LIA
Also, in June 1985, Phil persuaded Garcia & others in the Dead to see Wagner's Ring opera done by the San Francisco Opera, even canceling some Dead shows in Sacramento to do so. Garcia didn't make it through the whole series though, even falling asleep during the performance on the third night: "In the end Jerry didn't make it back for the final opera of the cycle, having made previous plans to take his daughter Annabelle to see Phil Collins at the Oakland Coliseum. 'What?' I asked when he told me. 'You're going to pass up 'Twilight of the Gods' for Phil Collins?' 'If it was just me - but I promised Annabelle.'" (Phil's book p.273-74)
McNally mentions that 'Ride of the Valkyries' started popping up in Dead rehearsals...
In a unique occurrence, Garcia used his status to take his daughter to see Phil Collins at the Coliseum on his No Jacket Required world tour. Although Collins' music was far from Garcia's normal fare, Collins is an excellent musician who had a top-flight band (anchored by Darryl Steurmer, Pete Robinson, Leland Sklar and Chester Thompson), so there's no doubt Garcia could at least appreciate the professionalism
The Detroit Free Press from June 29, 1986, reporting on Jerry's assessment of Bob Dylan's show with Tom Petty at The Greek on June 14, 1986 |
June 14, 1986 Greek Theatre, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA: Bob Dylan with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers
[update] Grateful Seconds reported that Garcia attended the second of two Bob Dylan concerts in Berkeley, apparently in anticipation of Summer touring.
December 19, 1986, The Omni, Oakland, CA: Go Ahead
In July of 1986, Jerry Garcia had a very close brush with the other side, but he returned. By December 19, he had already performed with both the Jerry Garcia Band and the Grateful Dead. Yet, perhaps in a different frame of mind, he made a rare trip outside to see Go Ahead, the new band with Brent Mydland and Bill Kreutzmann (for the complete Go Ahead story see here).
The Omni, formerly an Italian-American social club built in 1938 as Ligure Hall, was on 48th and Shattuck in Oakland. The owner was John Nady, who had made a fortune inventing wireless guitar pickups. He decided to use the money to open a rock club, and more importantly, a rock club near my apartment at the time. Unfortunately, The Omni was a terrible dump and mostly featured metal bands. I'm not surprised Jerry never set foot in it a second time.
September 1987, unknown venue, New York, NY: Suzanne Vega
[update] Per JGMF, Garcia caught Suzanne Vega while the Dead were in New York for their Rainforest benefit.
[update] Chico Archivist: Some people I knew saw Jerry at the Peter Gabriel show at the Oakland Coliseum Arena [sic] Sept 23, 1988. Supposedly Jerry liked the show enough to ask around if anybody had taped it.
Bruce Springsteen, Peter Gabriel and Sting played several stadium shows in support of Amnesty International, although Sting had to miss the Bay Area show. I wonder if Jerry got his tape?
[update] The Dead were playing MSG this night, so Jerry couldn't have been at this specific show.
March 14, 1989, Oakland Coliseum Arena, Oakland, CA: REM/Robyn Hitchcock and The Egyptians
[update] This was confirmed by a couple of correspondents. Supposedly, when Jerry and Bob entered through backstage, a security guard who did not recognize Jerry told him to put out his joint. I saw this show, and it was great. So I can say that Jerry, Bob, me and my sister saw REM together.
March 15, 1989, Fox-Warfield Theater, San Francisco, CA: Gipsy Kings
[update] Legs Lambert: Jerry and Bob Weir attended a show by the Gipsy Kings at the Warfield in San Francisco (I'm told Bill Kreutzmann was there as well, but I did not see him).
During this period, Garcia seems to have gotten out to a relatively large number of shows. I believe it was the period when he was living with Manasha Matheson.
August 5, 1990, Concord Pavilion, Concord, CA; Bruce Hornsby And The Range
According to McNally, shortly after Brent Mydland's unfortunate death, Phil Lesh and Jerry Garcia went to a Bruce Hornsby concert "in the Bay Area" to offer him the Dead's keyboard chair. Garcia had played that afternoon at the Greek Theatre, and I'm not even sure if he stuck around for the concert.
May 11, 1994, Zellerbach Auditorium, Berkeley, CA
[update] various people pointed out that Jerry showed up to watch Phil Lesh guest-conduct the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra in two selections - the Infernal Dance from Stravinsky's "The Firebird" and Elliott Carter's "A Celebration of Some 100 x 150 Notes,"
Coda
Thanks to all the Commenters, we know that Garcia got out a little more often to hear music than I had originally feared. However, it seems to have been largely confined to a relatively brief period from 1987-90, and then he retreated into isolation. Although Garcia himself preferred playing over watching, it's still a telling sign that Garcia could not simply go out and enjoy some artist he would like without attracting a ruckus. In the larger picture of Garcia's life and career, it's not a big thing, but it's still a clear sign of how isolated Garcia had become once the Grateful Dead became truly iconic.
It is striking how much Garcia's concert attendance drops off after the mid-70s. Mickey Hart has the key quote, from as early as 1981: "We actually got Jerry to leave his house!" It's also notable that the few bands he did see in that decade included Mickey's band, Kreutzmann's band & someone who'd previously opened for the Dead - that's a really limited scope!
ReplyDeleteI'm sure there are other scattered references to Garcia sightings that will be found, though.
For instance, in the Signpost to New Space interview (p.49, my edition), Garcia says, "I saw Mickey last night, he was at the Crosby & Nash concert."
I believe Crosby & Nash were at the Berkeley Community Theater October 14-15, 1971?
It's not rock, but Phil mentions that he & the rest of the band went to see a performance of Charles Ives' 4th Symphony when they were in New York in December 1967 (at Carnegie Hall, the American Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski) - this was a key influence on the Anthem album.
Also, in June 1985, Phil persuaded Garcia & others in the Dead to see Wagner's Ring opera done by the San Francisco Opera, even canceling some Dead shows in Sacramento to do so. Garcia didn't make it through the whole series though, even falling asleep during the performance on the third night: "In the end Jerry didn't make it back for the final opera of the cycle, having made previous plans to take his daughter Annabelle to see Phil Collins at the Oakland Coliseum. 'What?' I asked when he told me. 'You're going to pass up 'Twilight of the Gods' for Phil Collins?' 'If it was just me - but I promised Annabelle.'"
(Phil's book p.273-74)
McNally mentions that 'Ride of the Valkyries' started popping up in Dead rehearsals...
Garcia definitely saw Cream at the Fillmore in September 1967, apparently more than once; he lavished praise on Cream's shows in an interview later that month. Cream played at the Fillmore from August 22-September 3, 1967 - the Dead were out of town for a couple weekends, but Garcia would have had ample opportunities to see Cream during the week.
I would imagine that during the sixties, Garcia was constantly seeing bands in San Francisco on the Dead's off-nights, but these would mainly be unrecoverable.
There definitely was a comment on Wolfgang's Vault about Garcia seeing the Byrds & Freddie King at the Ash Grove in late August 1970 - the 12/15/09 comment here:
http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/freddie-king/#concerts/ash-grove-august-25-1970.html
It was not the first time Garcia had seen Clarence White in action at the Ash Grove - Blair Jackson writes, "On a couple of occasions in 1965 he traveled down to the Ash Grove in Los Angeles to see his friends the Kentucky Colonels." (Garcia p.75)
Re: the Ornette Coleman show on 8/5/68 - the Dead had played in an SF jazz music festival with the Ornette Coleman Quartet & other bands shortly before, on 7/14/68. Garcia must have been an admirer of Coleman already to go see him again a couple weeks later.
LIA, thanks as always for your encyclopedic comments. I knew there was more out there! I have updated the post accordingly.
DeleteThe one thing I wonder about is your assertion that Garcia might have constantly been seeing bands on his off nights in the 60s. Much as I hope that turns out to be true, back in the day almost every show was on a weekend, and all the bands, Dead included, were working. So I think Garcia had far fewer opportunities to see groups than we might think. However, I'm hoping this post will tap the collective memory and we can get a fuller picture.
Garcia did specifically mention the other bands playing with Cream in the 1967 Fillmore run:
Delete"I would say the Cream are damn near the best group there is... Their music is really strong. I mean, really strong... They're much better musicians than Jimi Hendrix... You should have seen them at the Fillmore...cause they played with a lot of very heavy bands. They played with Gary Burton's band. They played with the Electric Flag. They played with Paul Butterfield's band and with Charlie Musselwhite's band. And they made them all sound pretty old-fashioned..."
So he lists all of the bands who played with Cream in the two-week run, and they all came up short... That's what makes me think he saw Cream in both those weeks.
Mountain Girl's account of the Lake Tahoe camping trip (in Greenfield's book p.109) sounds more like a one-night camping trip than one week to me.
Good point that, with most shows on the weekend, Garcia probably mainly just saw the bands the Dead were billed with. Which was still a pretty wide variety.
A couple small additions:
ReplyDeleteGarcia talked a bit about the Cabale in Berkeley in the March 1967 Ralph Gleason interview, though not mentioning whom he saw, just illustrating the scarce folk scene of the early 60s: "The problem was, who wants to hire Flatt & Scruggs, or who wants to hire John Lee Hooker, you know? I mean nobody out here knew about him, there were one or two places. The Cabale would maybe have somebody good once in a long time and it was like really scarce. I'd go way out of my way to see somebody good if they were around."
In the same interview, he discussed jazz at the Fillmore: "The thing of having Charles Lloyd at the Fillmore Auditorium is really fantastic. And a jazz group can't hardly play at the Fillmore without tearing the place down. When Bola Sete's little trio played there, they just ripped it up."
Garcia said later that year he was a fan of Charles Lloyd; but that doesn't mean he'd seen Lloyd prior to the Rock Garden shows. (Lloyd played the Fillmore with the Butterfield Blues Band on January 20-22, 1967, and the Dead were free a couple days that weekend, but may have been in LA).
Bola Sete had played the Fillmore (with Country Joe & Buffalo Springfield) on November 11-13, 1966; the Dead had shows on two of those dates, but it sounds like Garcia may have made the Nov 11 show. (The Dead also played with Bola Sete a couple other times, but not at the Fillmore.)
In the other March '67 interview at 710 Ashbury, Garcia was asked what he thought of Buffalo Springfield, and replied, "I like them a lot. Have you heard Moby Grape? They're really good."
I'd assumed he had heard Buffalo Springfield on record (and the Dead had played with Moby Grape plenty of times), but perhaps he did see them live as well, at the Bola Sete show.
I think it's quite possible the Dead had seen the Butterfield Blues Band before being billed with them in October 1966. Weir said (in the book Michael Bloomfield: If You Love These Blues), "I became a fan of Michael Bloomfield when that first Butterfield Blues Band record came out. We were all just awestruck... He was also sort of a teacher because we'd all go and watch him, and learn how he was doing some of the things that he was doing, making some of those wonderful sounds. Within about six months everybody copped all his licks...so he was certainly a big influence on San Francisco music." (Weir's account is corroborated by similar tales from Country Joe, Jorma Kaukonen & Santana, who all similarly worshipped at Bloomfield's feet when he played.)
Butterfield had first played the Fillmore in March '66 when the Dead were in LA, but returned on April 15 & 17, and I don't know of Dead shows on those dates, so it's likely they went.
Garcia may have seen the Beatles, too. Weir & Lesh had gone to see the Beatles' show at the Cow Palace on August 31, 1965 with the Pranksters, but Garcia wasn't with them.
However, Weir has said that the whole band went to see the Beatles' Candlestick Park show on August 29, 1966. (The Dead had no show that day, I believe - it was a Monday. It also turned out to be the Beatles' last live show.) I don't think anyone else in the Dead has mentioned it, though, so maybe it was just Weir...
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DeleteA couple more brief comments!
DeleteIt strikes me that the Butterfield Blues Band was probably playing around LA in Feb/March 1966 - I haven't tried to look up dates/venues, but the Dead could well have seen them down there.
In the March '67 Gleason interview, Gleason talks a bit about the Byrds - Garcia doesn't say whether he's seen them (although Gleason asks him the name of their dancer, implying he had). However, Weir has said in a recent interview, “The Byrds were pretty cool as far as we were concerned. We went and caught them every chance we could.” (No specifics, though I'd imagine this was '65/66.)
Garcia does comment on the lame LA dance scene to Gleason - "They don't have any dance things in LA. The extent of the dancing in Los Angeles is ten feet off the floor in a glass cage. Everybody watches, like the movies..."
Even in the winter of 1966 the Dead thought the LA rock clubs were pathetic compared to San Francisco. Don't know what bands they might've seen, though.
Lesh wrote in his book that he took Garcia, Weir & Kreutzmann to see Frank Zappa & the Mothers at the Garrick, upstairs from the Cafe au Go Go in June '67. He says it was the day before they started their Cafe au Go Go run - but that would make it the evening of May 31, the day the Dead arrived in NY?
Frank Kofsky asked Garcia in the Sept '67 interview whether he had seen Zappa there, but Garcia didn't say directly whether he had, in fact he avoided the question - he just said, "I really admire Zappa. He's got a good head. He's a smart guy in a recording studio. And he's got his thing going. I myself am not - I don't like topical shit, you know? I really don't like it. I would like to hear Zappa do a thing that was pure music, 'cause I think he could do a good thing. But I think what he's doing is less than he's capable of, and I don't like that that much."
(Lesh had a much more positive account of Zappa's show in his book! In any case, the Mothers had also been at the Fillmore with the Dead back in June '66.)
And lastly - Garcia commented a couple times on seeing the Lovin' Spoonful show (10/24/65) - it was a very significant show in a couple of ways.
ReplyDeleteFirst, it was the Warlocks' introduction to the new SF rock scene (in a way that the Mother's show in August hadn't been) -
"The first time that music and LSD interacted in a way that really came to life for us as a band was one day when we went out and got extremely high on some of that early dynamite LSD and we went that night to the Lovin' Spoonful...at the Family Dog, Longshoreman's Hall, it was one of the first ones, and we went there and we were stoned on acid watching these guys play. That day, the Grateful Dead guys, our scene, we went out, took acid and came up to Marin County and hung out somewhere around Fairfax or Lagunitas or one of those places up in the woods and just went crazy. We ended up going into that rock and roll dance and it was just really fine to see that whole scene - where there was just nobody there but heads and this strange rock & roll music playing in this weird building. It was just what we wanted to see... We began to see that vision of a truly fantastic thing. It became clear to us that working in bars was not going to be right for us to be able to expand into this new idea." (Signpost p.20-21)
And, talking to Ralph Gleason in March '67, he looked at the show from a technical perspective:
"We went to the very first Family Dog show stoned on acid, or maybe it was the second one, the one where the Lovin' Spoonful were... We'd been playing out in these clubs - and we went in there and we heard the thing. And from the back of the hall you couldn't hear anything. You could hear maybe the harmonica. As you moved around you could hear a little of something, a little of something else, but you could never hear the whole band, unless you were right in front of it, and in that case you couldn't hear the vocal. So in our expanding consciousness we thought, the thing to do obviously, when you play in a big hall, is to make it so that you can hear everything everywhere. How do we go about this, we thought? And the most obvious thing was, we just turn up real loud. But that's not exactly where it is... It's more important that it be clear than loud." (GD Reader p.28-29)
Digging through the Garcia books, here are a few more finds from Garcia's early days.
ReplyDeleteThis one doesn't really count, but what the hell - Garcia's cousin Daniel recalled that in 1956, "I remember going down to the Fox Theater on Market Street and 11th, where they had the debut of Rock Around the Clock, and that place was jumpin'! Jerry and I and two girls went to see it together. We came out of that movie with the burning desire to be rock & roll musicians. I remember him telling me, 'We can do that; we can play like that.'" (Jackson, Garcia p.18)
(However he didn't get his first guitar for another year!)
In the late 50s, round the time Garcia was going to the School of Fine Arts in SF, he was also going to see R&B shows: "Me and a couple of friends used to go out to black shows, not only at the Fillmore, but also at Roseland over in Oakland. I'd usually hear about the shows on the radio." (Troy, Captain Trips p.14) No bands named.
Alan Trist: "In early 1961, the then organist at the Vatican came to Grace Cathedral in San Francisco for a series of 14 concerts where he played the complete organ works of Bach. I remember going with Jerry to three or four of those. It was incredible." (Greenfield, Dark Star p.17)
Circa 1961, David McQueen recalled: "I'm sure Jerry was influenced by some of the music he heard in East Palo Alto. Sometimes he'd go to the Anchor Bar - white-owned, black-run - which had music on weekends. There was a house band, but anyone with a union card could sit in, and name players would come by and jam after hours for drinks." (Jackson p.42)
In September 1961, Garcia went to the Monterey Jazz Festival. Charlotte Daigle recalled: "It was Jerry's idea to go to the festival. He bought the tickets for us, and we went two days. We had reserved seats, and Jerry took it very seriously. Jazz fans were very formal at the time, and other people were dressed up. Our crowd from Palo Alto was very beatnik-looking, and we stood out from the rest of the audience. It created something of a stir." (Troy p.34)
That year, the festival included Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Dave Brubeck, and John Coltrane w/ Wes Montgomery, among others.
Charlotte Daigle also remembered the Joan Baez show at Palo Alto High School in summer 1961:
"Jerry wanted to go to the Joan Baez concert and sit in the front row so he could watch her. He watched her intently, commenting, 'This is great, I can out-guitar her.' Jerry wanted to see what kind of musician she was...he was terribly excited that she was well-known and he was as good on guitar or better." (Troy p.30)
David Nelson recalled Garcia taking him to see Jorma Kaukonen at the Tangent around the summer of 1962:
"Garcia grabbed me and said, 'You gotta hear this guy.' I said, 'Who is he?' Garcia said, 'Jerry Kaukonen, he plays that Reverend Gary Davis and Blind Boy Fuller stuff, he does it right.' I remember going to the Tangent and peering out from the back room, which is where we put our instruments, and hearing him play and looking at Garcia who is looking at me, and we're just going 'Wow!'" (Troy p.39)
(continued)
ReplyDeleteGarcia talked a bit about the local players at that time:
"'61 or '62, I started playing coffeehouses, and the guys who were playing around then up in San Francisco at the Fox and Hounds, Nick Gravenites was around then - Nick the Greek they called him - Pete Stampfel from the Holy Modal Rounders, he was playing around there then. A real nice San Francisco guitar player named Tom Hobson that nobody knows about...
In Berkeley there was Jorma playing coffeehouses about the same time that I was, and Janis. They played at the place in Palo Alto I played at a lot called the Tangent. They came in one night and I just flipped out. Janis was fantastic, she sounded like old Bessie Smith records, and she was really good. And Paul Kantner was playing around; David Freiberg was playing around... I wasn't really hanging out with them but our paths would be crossing, playing at the same place the same night..." (Signpost p.7)
This is a rather ambiguous inclusion, since Garcia would have mostly seen these guys at the same spots he was playing, so it's not like he was "attending" per se. But given that he probably never walked into a folk club without a guitar or banjo in hand, can't be helped!
From a 1989 interview with Garcia & Weir, talking about the early sixties -
WEIR: I started hanging out in the folk scene in Palo Alto... I tried to pick up on [anyone who] came through town... Guys like Lightnin' Hopkins and Mance Lipscomb and Doc Watson would come through, and I'd be all over them, trying to pick up anything I could.
GARCIA: Those were great days, cause a lot of those old-timers like Mississippi John Hurt were still alive, and you could hear them. That was fabulous, the exposure to those players. (White, Rock Lives)
I'm tempted to include accounts of the Monterey Folk Festival in May 1963, since Garcia had a rare opportunity to see a staggering lineup of old-time, folk & bluegrass players there; but since he & his Wildwood Boys took part in an amateur competition there, it falls outside the boundaries of this post. I'll just mention that he walked out early on Dylan's set, since it wasn't purist enough... (See Greenfield p.36, Troy p.50, Jackson p.58.)
I often wondered just when Garcia first caught his old folk acquaintances after they'd formed rock bands. You'd think he might have seen the Airplane or Quicksilver before being billed with them. No accounts I could find, though, except for this one from Bill Thompson, from the opposite perspective, circa '65:
"The Jefferson Airplane were playing the Matrix, and two guys came in wearing leather who I thought were Hell's Angels. Marty Balin started laughing. He said, 'Bill, you're not going to believe it. Those guys have got a band.' It was Pigpen and Jerry Garcia." (Greenfield p.99)
I did find a story in Rock Scully's book about Scully taking Bob Weir to see the Butterfield Blues Band in Los Angeles in early '66; unfortunately very unreliable, but there's probably a grain of truth behind it.
I found more details on the early-70s Kenny Burrell show, from Merl Saunders:
"One night, Jerry called me. 'Merl, you know Kenny Burrell?' I said, 'Yeah, I know Kenny Burrell, he's at the El Matador. Why don't we go see him?' After the show was over, Jerry wanted to meet Kenny Burrell. He asked him questions, and Kenny didn't know who in the hell Jerry was until after I talked to Kenny the next day." (Greenfield p.139)
One last addition...
ReplyDeleteOne of Garcia's guitar students at Dana Morgan's in 1963/64, Dexter Johnson, recalled, "He turned me on to Mike Seeger and the New Lost City Ramblers. I remember once coming to a lesson and he wasn't there, and on the music stand was a note: 'Gone to New Lost City Ramblers concert in San Jose. See you next week.'" (Greenfield p.41)
Hard to say when Garcia would have first seen the Ramblers - he was already enough of a fan to do songs from their albums in his shows in 1962, so he wouldn't hesitate to go see them if they were anywhere in driving distance. As his folkie friend Marshall Leicester said, "In those days we all wanted to be Mike Seeger."
Jackson's bio suggests that Garcia & his friends went down to the Ash Grove in LA "many times" from as early as '62 to see acts like the Kentucky Colonels, the Stanley Brothers, Doc Watson & Bill Monroe. Nothing specifically dateable, though.
Blair Jackson writes that Garcia "was sufficiently intrigued by reggae that he attended one of the first American appearances by Bob Marley and the Wailers - then virtually unknown outside Jamaica - in a small Bay area club" in late 1973. (Garcia p.237)
ReplyDeleteThis must have been during Marley's shows at the Matrix in October 1973.
There are also eyewitness accounts to Garcia seeing BMW at the Paramount in Oakland in, I think, May 1976.
ReplyDeleteHe saw Suzanne Vega when he was in New York in October 1987 for the Lunt-Fontanne shows, I think. I just came across that, but can't remember where.
Some people I knew saw Jerry at the Peter Gabriel show at the Oakland Coliseum Arena Sept 23, 1988. Supposedly Jerry liked the show enough to ask around if anybody had taped it.
ReplyDeleteI got the date wrong - as referenced above, the 9-23-88 show was the Amnesty show. The Peter Gabriel show with Jerry in the crowd was 12-12-86. I think the tape was forwarded to him.
DeleteOne big addition: Don't forget when Jerry went out to see Los Lobos in San Rafael on 11/21/86, where he wound up sitting in. There's a really great story about it in Blair Jackson's Garcia "outtakes": http://www.blairjackson.com/chapter_eighteen_additions.htm
ReplyDeleteAnd some smaller things:
http://www.thejerrysite.com/shows/show/1971 has a scan of a ticket from the Hornsby show Jerry attended and a little anecdote about seeing Jerry at the show: it was 8/5/90 at the Concord Pavilion, same day as the JGB afternoon show at the Greek.
I recall reading somewhere that some members of the GD (or at least Phil) went to see Pink Floyd at Radio City Music Hall on 3/17/73, which was the night off during the Dead's Nassau Coliseum run -- presumably to check out their sound system (there must have been mutual professional curiosity, since PF folks were at the Dead's London shows in '74 checking out the Wall of Sound). I can't find any source for that one, though, and I don't know if Jerry was there or not.
And here's something cool that Garcia says in an fm interview from 1/21/83 about taking trips to LA to see Scotty Stoneman, presumably when he was playing at the Ash Grove with the Kentucky Colonels. The interviewer opens by asking what about Garcia causes fans to worship him:
J: …I can't really relate to why people are fans of mine, but I know exactly what it's like to be a fan of somebody else's. For me, being a fan and being in an audience and hearing somebody play really well, those moments have been some of the best moments for me in my life.
Q: What would be one that you could relate to? What experience in music did you hear that you felt--
J: Oh I used to go and see, there used to be this great bluegrass fiddle player named Scotty Stoneman who died quite a long time ago. I used to go and see, like typically, I mean he would be playing in LA and I would drive down from San Francisco to see him. That would be more or less normal. So that thing of going a long way to hear somebody play, y'know?
"More or less normal" does seem to imply that this happened several times, at least, and Garcia has certainly raved about Stoneman's influence on his own playing, so it makes sense that he would have made the trip down there more than once.
Blair Jackson mentions a Los Lobos show at the Warfield in San Francisco. I sat just to the right of the right-hand aisle; Garcia was a row behind me just to the left of the same aisle. I chatted with him before the Los Lobos set. I asked him whether the lyric in "Lady with a Fan" says "shed light" or "share light," and he said that people should hear it however they like: "I'm just the singer, man!"
DeleteI can add a few more:
ReplyDeleteJerry and Bob Weir attended a show by the Gipsy Kings at the Warfield in San Francisco (I'm told Bill Kreutzmann was there as well, but I did not see him). Don't have the exact date, but I'm guessing it was in the very late 80s or early 90s.
Garcia and Weir also went together to see R.E.M. and Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians at the Oakland Coliseum Arena on March 4th, 1989.
Jerry showed up (solo this time) to watch Phil Lesh guest-conduct the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra in two selections - the Infernal Dance from Stravinsky's "The Firebird" and Elliott Carter's "A Celebration of Some 100 x 150 Notes," at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley on May 11, 1994.
Legs, Jerry was playing the Orpheum on 3/4/89.
Deletehttp://www.thejerrysite.com/shows/show/1925
Thoughts about how to reconcile?
Thanks for sharing!
3/14/89
DeleteAddendum to my previous post: it appears that the Gipsy Kings show in question was on March 15th, 1989.
ReplyDeleteWell, never mind my question above, then!
DeleteGarcia did say in 1987 that he was a big Peter Gabriel fan.
ReplyDeleteHe also said, "When I was in New York I went to see Suzanne Vega… I love her. I offered to produce her next record. I'd love to do it, and I really have huge respect for her. I found her so real...I thought she was a wonderful performer. She is terrific, really really good.” (Nov '87 Eisenhart interview)
He talked a bit about his reaction to the Gipsy Kings:
"When the Gipsy Kings were touring, there was something about the way that guy stepped up and played his solos - yeah! So for the next couple of shows, I tried it - 'I'm just gonna snap these babies off like that guy.'" (March '91 interview w/ Elvis Costello)
From the same interview, he mentioned Don Rich & Roy Nichols, the C&W guitarists: "Both of them are important influences for me. I heard them both live lots of times. And Don Rich's attitude was always so cool. His fiddle playing was great too."
So that suggests he saw the Buckaroos and Merle Haggard's band "lots of times."
He also mentioned seeing Bill Monroe's band "a bunch of times" around '63/64, as one of his favorite bands.
It looks like he saw the Kentucky Colonels lots of times in the early 60s, too - sometimes playing on the same bill.
Blair Jackson wrote that after Garcia's daughter Heather was born in December '63, "Sara got a serious breast infection and had to be re-hospitalized for a few days. Still, Jerry went ahead with his plan to go to Los Angeles with the Black Mountain Boys, who were opening for the Kentucky Colonels at the Ash Grove." (from the Outtakes, chapter 3)
(Hmm - playing with the Colonels vs. a sick wife in the hospital? An easy choice, for Garcia!)
The Colonels also played at Berkeley's Cabale in April '64, and an extended run in Nov '64 where Sandy Rothman attended, & presumably Garcia did too. (At least, Rothman mentions Garcia being at a house party with the Colonels after the shows.)
Garcia often spoke about the Kentucky Colonels show where he was transfixed by Scotty Stoneman playing '8th of January,' and once specifically said that show had been released on CD - 3/27/65 at the Ash Grove, I believe, on "Scotty Stoneman Live in LA." (Stoneman had only just joined the Colonels in February '65, so Garcia wouldn't have seen him before.)
http://www.burritobrother.com/kentuckycolonels.htm
So yeah, Garcia definitely had a frame of reference for what being a deadhead & following a band around was like, especially when you throw in the taping aspect (all these Kentucky Colonels shows were taped, often by Garcia's friends).
The Airplane and Butterfield played at Stanford on October 6, 1966, the day acid became illegal in California. They split a $2,500 fee. Garcia sat right behind me.
ReplyDeleteAnon, this is a fascinating detail. The Dead had played the Panhandle rally early in the day, but Garcia would have been free that night. Oct 6 '66 was also the last concert in the old gym (now Burnham Pavilion). Supposedly, Bloomfield didn't have his guitar, and played Jorma's.
ReplyDeleteI have updated the post substantially with many of the great details provided in the Comments. Thanks to everyone for contributing.
ReplyDeletefrom http://woodstockrecords.com/woodstock122.shtml
ReplyDelete"Jerry loved bluegrass and bluegrass legend Jesse to the extent that he stopped on a cross country drive to watch the Grand Ol Opry TV show in a Dothan, AL motel room and record the McReynolds Brothers on his trusty Wollensak reel-to-reel."
The McReynolds brothers are from Dothan, AL.
I added this earlier as a reply but don't know if it went through. Bloomfield was playing, I believe, a gold top Les Paul and he hit the peg head on an amp and it broke. He finished with another guitar. Butterfield recordings of this period are pretty skimpy,but I remember on this night Bloomfield sang on a cover of I Got You, by James Brown. He also sang a Marvin Gaye song but I can't remember which one.
ReplyDeleteFrom Jas Obrecht's interview with Garcia in January 1985 -
ReplyDeleteQ: Any bands you'd go out of your way to see?
Garcia: "There are a few, yeah. Let's see - the last band I went to see is Dire Straits. That was the last band I went to see live, a couple of years ago. There are others that I would, but most of the time I'm out working and stuff. So I don't really get a chance. But there are more that I would go to see if I were in a situation where I wasn't working nights so much. I would go out more. But yeah, there's actually a lot of music that I would go to see. It's just the opportunity doesn't present itself that often. That's the problem. Time and space, you know."
So Garcia saw Dire Straits sometime in the early '80s, '82 or '83, then no one for a couple years. It sounds like he regrets it, but apparently he didn't go to concerts on his own again til after the coma. I suspect good health was as much a reason as "time and space."
Fascinating. Garcia doesn't say where he saw them, but Dire Straits played The Old Waldorf on October 26-27, 1980, and then (according to the BGP list) not again in the Bay Area until September 13, 1985 at the Concord Pavilion.
DeleteHere's Rob Morse's 3/16/89 San Francisco Chronicle item about Jerry & Bob at the R.E.M./Hitchcock show (via The Golden Road #19, Summer 1989):
ReplyDelete"Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead attended the concert by R.E.M. at the Oakland Coliseum Tuesday night. At one point a young security guy in a blazer marched down the aisle, stormed up to Garcia, whom he obviously didn't know, and shouted: 'Put that thing out!' And Garcia put out his joint. 'I thought Jerry Garcia had a license to smoke dope,' said a stunned onlooker, 'like 007.'"
Jackson notes that Garcia & Weir also went backstage to say hi to Hitchcock.
Must have been 3/14/89. URL http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/rem/1989/oakland-alameda-county-coliseum-arena-oakland-ca-5bd68f50.html
DeleteGarcia apparently saw Roy Buchanan at the Crossroads nightclub in Bladensburg, Maryland sometime in 1970-71.
ReplyDeleteGarcia appeared in a TV documentary on Buchanan that aired in November 1971, saying, "He's probably just the most original country-style rock & roll guitar player, a Fender guitar player. He has the nicest tone, the most amazing chops technically, super fast. And much neglected."
The thing is, Buchanan didn't have any albums out yet. He'd been playing in the houseband at the Crossroads since summer/fall 1970 - I'm not sure when Garcia could have been in Maryland in 1971, but possibly he made a trip during the Dead's fall 1970 east-coast tour. (At that point Buchanan was an unknown, but word-of-mouth about him was going around the Washington DC area - the Washington Post ran an article on him in Dec 1970 - and some folks were even traveling from New York to see him.)
LIA, a great find--I had no idea that Garcia was in the Buchanan PBS doc. I updated the post.
DeleteI'm not sure if Garcia actually attended one of this band's gigs, but according to this and other sources, he sure dug The Pop-o-Pies--even posing for a picture with them in Rolling Stone--which, especially in 1983, is saying something. http://www.amoeba.com/blog/2010/04/jamoeblog/happy-birthday-joe-pop-o-pie-legendary-1980-s-sf-punk-music-figure-celebrates-his-51st-birthday-by-reforming-the-pop-o-pies-on-a-bill-with-faith-no-more-the-group-with-whom-he-was-the-original-singer-.html
ReplyDeleteJerry was at the Chick Corea Elektric Band show at the Greek (Berkeley)
ReplyDeletein the summer of 1988. I spoke with Jerry at this show. He was a fan of guitarist Frank Gambale, who was in the band.
Apparently this was Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea Elektric Band, George Howard, 6/11/88 (June 11).
DeleteI thought I remembered seeing Garcia at the Bulgarian female choir show at the Berkeley Community Theater in 1988, along with Grace Slick and David Crosby.
ReplyDeleteI'm not 100% sure about much that night, except the moon was near full and appeared only through a hole in the clouds right above the theater.
This was the Bulgarian State Radio & TV Female Vocal Choir at BCT, 11/18/88.
DeleteI believe Garcia was probably there with friends, especially since one newspaper reported, "Rumors were that members of the Grateful Dead, as well as fans like Linda Ronstadt, Grace Slick and Graham Nash, were to attend."
An announcement in the SF Examiner on 11/13 proclaimed, "The music has been praised by progressive American musicians from Linda Ronstadt ('the most wonderful music I've ever heard') to Jerry Garcia ('they're like angels') to Graham Nash ('every musician that considers himself accomplished should listen to these records and rethink everything he knows')."
Fascinating stuff as always! This article on Pat Martino mentions Garcia making a pilgrimage to see him. http://tinyurl.com/lo2tkdn
ReplyDeleteWould love to learn more specifics on this story.
"His world-music debut, Baiyina, which predated the multi-culti boom by 20 years, is considered one of the first successful psychedelic albums (not just by critics and fans--it inspired a pilgrimage from the young Jerry Garcia)."
http://www.gdao.org/items/show/379555
ReplyDeleteThis is Ben Fong-Torres interviewing Jerry ca. 1975-1976. Around 12-minute mark, BFT asks what he likes in the clubs these days.
"I usually go out to see guys like Joe Pass or George Benson. Somebody who's special, and who's an older player, because those are the ones that are most interesting to me right now. And the younger players are either like me or ... derivative, in the same sense that I'm derivative, really, and so, unless it's something like The Wailers or something hot that's coming into town ..."
Well, you stopped in 1990, but I came across an old post in the phishhook forum about Jerry being backstage for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, 4/30/95 at Shoreline.
ReplyDeletehttp://forums.phishhook.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=890987
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ReplyDeleteI remember reading about a Pink Floyd show in Oakland in BAM Magazine (possibly Relix, but I'm 90% on BAM) in either '87 or '88 that mentioned Jerry and Bob Weir being in the crowd. I know it was one of those years and the Momentary Lapse of Reason show because I saw the Floyd around the same time somewhere else.
ReplyDeleteI am trying to figure out when this could have been. Wiki gives following MLOR Floyd dates in Oakland:
Delete3 December 1987
4 December 1987
5 December 1987
6 December 1987
22 April 1988
23 April 1988
But, oddly enough, Garcia was otherwise occupied on all of these nights, in So Cal as it happens. Hard to see how he could have attended any of these.
This is only marginally related, but on 3/17/73, most of the Dead attended Pink Floyd's show at Radio City Music Hall in NYC, in-between their shows at Nassau.
DeleteOne fan reports that he was thrilled to see all the Dead there *except* Garcia. He talked to Keith: "I asked where Jerry was and Keith said he took off that morning and was probably hanging with friends." The Dead got up and left midway through Dark Side of the Moon; I think there's an audience tape where you can hear someone say, "The Dead just left."
Anyway, that's one show we know Garcia didn't attend!
I don't know whether he saw Pink Floyd in '87...
I'm pretty sure that Jerry and others in the GD saw the Rolling Stones at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia on 9/25/1981 which started late in the day and went into the early evening - The GD played Buffalo that same night, and flew up there after the show, arriving very late for their own show. Can anyone confirm ??
ReplyDeleteGD played Stabler Arena, Bethlehem, PA on 9/25/81. Sounds even more plausible.
DeleteActually the reference here is to the Dead's Buffalo show on 9/26/81. The Stones were playing a second show at JKF Stadium in Philadelphia that day; one reviewer on the Archive mentions, "The Dead came on stage about an hour or more late because they were catching a Rolling Stones concert in Pennsylvania or somewhere."
DeleteAnother source also mentions that the 9/26/81 show started late, but attributes it to an afternoon hockey game in the auditorium.
The Stones show started at 11am (with a couple opening bands), and the Dead show was scheduled for 7:30pm.
However I can't confirm that the Dead actually went to the Stones show. One uncertain online comment isn't much evidence - someone who was at the Stones show saying they saw the Dead there would be better.
Del McCoury (who was in Bill Monroe's Bluegrass Boys in 1963) tells the story of meeting Garcia in later years:
ReplyDelete'I went down to Columbia to see one of his Dead shows. And when he found out I was there, he had me come backstage in the greenroom and said, “You know, I wanted to play with Bill Monroe. I used to come see you guys at Ash Grove” - in Hollywood when I was working for Monroe in 1963. We played that like a week one time and two weeks another time. And he said, “Man, I was in the audience every night, watching that. I wanted to be a Bluegrass Boy!” And I said, “Man, why didn’t you tell us!”'
So apparently Garcia went to the Ash Grove in '63 to watch Bill Monroe's shows - "every night"!
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/pictures/jerry-garcia-most-astounding-paintings-and-sketches-20141124/sax-player-20141124#
ReplyDeleteAbout Jerry's sketch "Sax Player": "This beautifully articulated piece was drawn in the autumn of 1987 following a Sarah Vaughn concert at the Blue Note in New York City, which Jerry and Manasha attended with Clive Davis."
One of the residual observations about Jerry's improved health after 1987 was that he certainly got out to see a lot more shows.
DeleteYeah, if we had more complete data that'd probably be a great proxy for Garcia's level of engagement in life.
DeleteI remember talking to someone with whom I had a slight acquaintance in Marin around 1976-1977, and he mentioned that Garcia had recently been out to see Ry Cooder at the Great American Music Hall, was buying everyone near his table beers and praising Cooder's sound highly.
ReplyDeleteI think at least one of the places that Garcia saw Dire Straits was in Sacramento- this might be in Rock Scully's book?
Re: February 11, 1974 [not Jan. 14] - A Rolling Stone article confirms that Garcia and "members of the Grateful Dead" attended Dylan's Oakland Coliseum show, along with various other SF musicians. Also, Garcia tried to see Dylan again at the L.A. Forum a couple days later on February 13, but apparently couldn't get a ticket.
ReplyDeleteWhether or not Garcia got into the Forum, just the fact that he'd want to see two Dylan/Band shows in a row speaks volumes. The Oakland show must have made a strong impression on him.
Blair Jackson wrote in his Garcia bio that in 1986, "Garcia attended a Bob Dylan-Tom Petty show at the Greek Theater that spring and spent considerable time chatting with Dylan backstage." (p.344)
ReplyDeleteDylan played the Greek Theater on June 13-14, 1986.
Dylan & the Dead would play a few joint shows over the next month, so maybe Garcia & Dylan talked about that....or maybe they just reminisced about old songs...
Someone wrote on the Archive forum that they "sighted and spoke (very briefly) with Jerry and Bill Graham at Peter Gabriel show at Oakland Coliseum show shortly before Dec. '86 Jerry comeback shows."
ReplyDeleteGabriel played there on December 12-13, 1986, two days before the Dead played there.
ChicoArchivist also wrote above (8/15/13) that "some people I knew saw Jerry at the Peter Gabriel show at the Oakland Coliseum Arena Sept 23, 1988."
So we have a couple options - one of these dates is mistaken, or Garcia went to see Peter Gabriel in Oakland twice. (Which is possible - he did say in '87, "I'm a big Peter Gabriel fan.")
The 9/23/88 date is wrong. Garcia was playing in Madison Square Garden with the Dead on that day.
DeleteApparently Bob Weir went to see Buck Owens along with Garcia back in 1964: "I remember a few dances in Redwood City when we used to go down there to hear Buck Owens that were a lot rougher [than a rock festival crowd]."
ReplyDelete(from This Is All A Dream We Dreamed, p.214)
This makes it sound like repeated trips - could be just Weir's memory, but I've found that when Garcia admired a band in the early '60s, he went to see them repeatedly (as with Bill Monroe or the Kentucky Colonels), so going to "a" concert is something of a misnomer.
David Browne mentions that in a studio session tape from Feb '75, Garcia "discusses a Don Reno and Chubby Wise bluegrass show he'd attended." (So Many Roads, p.236)
ReplyDeleteSince the tape isn't public, it's hard to be more specific; but it's worth mentioning that Garcia had just produced the Good Old Boys album, which had Reno & Wise on it. By extension, it's possible that when Browne listened to the tape he mistook Garcia talking about the album session for talking about a show. Hopefully this can be clarified someday.
Garcia went to the UC Berkeley Folk Festival on July 4, 1966, headlined by Jefferson Airplane. I suspect he went not to see the 'Plane, but to see the Greenbriar Boys, who included Frank Wakefield at the time. There's a photo of Garcia hanging out at the Greek with Jorma and Marty (from a roll of Folk Festival shots, the date is not in doubt).
ReplyDeleteYes, I've seen the photo, waiting for a better copy.
In 1964 Jerry met Grisman at Sunset Park in West Grove, PA, which was located in Chester County, PA. It's about an hour east of Lancaster.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteGD guys saw Hendrix at Fillmore East on 5/10/68, per http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2013/10/may-7-9-1968-electric-circus-23-st.html?showComment=1515689772560#c4425676866925903914.
ReplyDeleteJerry was backstage for CSNY at Winterland, 11/16/69. https://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=OL19691120.2.19&srpos=2&e=------196-en--20-OL-1--txt-txIN-grateful+dead-------1
To give a bit of context on that, the quote from the Santa Rosa Junior College Oak Leaf:
Delete"Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's long awaited Winterland concert was a success... [Played Nov. 13-16, sold out.] Sunday everyone in rock music was backstage to give the boys a good send off. Mama Cass, Jerry Garcia, Mike Bloomfield and a multitude of friends got into the act."
Grateful Seconds tipped me to a blog post that I missed, where it turns out that Garcia attended the Bob Dylan/Tom Petty show at the Greek on June 14, 1986. I updated the post.
ReplyDelete9/14/87, JG saw U2 at Giants Stadium.
ReplyDelete! ref: Steve Gett, "The Beat," Billboard, September 28, 1987, p. 26.
A bit of sixties color from the San Francisco Express Times, 6/12/68 ("Five Pounds of Rutabagas," p.17) - an article on the 35th (actually the First) Annual Old-Time Fiddlers' Convention of Berkeley:
ReplyDelete"Folk music celebrated its non-demise in Berkeley's Provo Park last Saturday. [6/8/68] Between 300 and 400 fans and musicians were there... I noticed representatives of the Grateful Dead, Notes from the Underground, Country Joe and the Fish, and Jefferson Airplane in the audience."
https://voices.revealdigital.com/cgi-bin/independentvoices?a=d&d=CCGHEDJ19680612.1.17
Though names aren't mentioned, I can't think of any likelier Dead member than Garcia to attend this event, hence this comment. (Owsley also attended.)
It wasn't really a convention of traditional old-time fiddlers though, with contestants like Diesel Duck, Family Cow, and other local outfits. "The Golden Toad is destined for great things with their fiddle-and-bagpipe duets, medieval fanfare and freak parade."
More accounts here:
http://www.berkeleyoldtimemusic.org/history
Oh, and JGMF located an account of some of the earliest concerts Garcia attended in the '60s:
ReplyDeleteAlan Trist recalls that a Palo Alto friend of theirs "had an incredible collection of classical music. We would go over and spend whole evenings listening to Bach. Endless Bach.
"In early 1961, the then organist at the Vatican came to Grace Cathedral in San Francisco for a series of fourteen concerts where he played the complete organ works of Bach. I remember going with Jerry to three or four of those. It was incredible. It was in the middle of a period when we were doing that young person's thing of seeing how many nights we could stay awake for, and I remember having a very psychedelic experience." (Greenfield, Dark Star, p.17)
The organist was Fernando Germani, the first organist at the Vatican, who performed in a series of organ recitals at Grace Cathedral from April to June 1961.
The 3/22/61 San Mateo Times reported:
"The complete organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach will be be performed in a series of 14 concerts beginning April 21 at Grace Cathedral...
Fernando Germani will play for the complete series which will take place on Friday evenings at 8:30 p.m. from April 21 through June 2 and Sunday afternoons at 3 p.m. from April 23 through June 4."
Admission was free, and the recitals were recorded by the Voice of America for world broadcasts.
Robyn Hitchcock mentioned meeting Garcia at the March '89 REM show: "“I could walk all over your music” he said, benignly..."
ReplyDeleteThe Dead had played a ramshackle cover of Hitchcock's 'Chinese Bones' with Suzanne Vega back on 9/24/88:
http://www.wheresthatsoundcomingfrom.com/2011/02/ballad-of-garcia-y-vega.html
Anyway, Garcia & Weir met Hitchcock backstage at the Oakland '89 show, and he recalled at the time: "Jerry said his daughter or his daughter's boyfriend was a fan. They seemed to enjoy it, actually, and he's a really nice chap, Jerry Garcia. He's on the case, you know? He's not an old spaceball. He's very humorous and self-deprecating. He said, "Ha, took us twenty-two years to get a hit record", he chuckled away. He's quite fast as well. I thought it would be like talking to someone who was moving through a bowl of viscous fluid, slow motion and things, but not at all."
http://www.wheresthatsoundcomingfrom.com/2013/03/a-personal-history-of-robyn-hitchcock.html
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ReplyDeleteI saw Jerry Garcia backstage at a Phil Collins concert at the old Cleveland Munipal stadium in in May of 1992. I didnt get to talk to him but I was wondering if anyone would know why he was there.
ReplyDeleteOne of Garcia's daughters, I believe Trixie, was a Phil Collins fan. At least once in Oakland Jerry used his status to get her into the show and backstage. It sounds like he did it twice.
DeleteIt was 5/25/92-Genesis..Jerry was playing at Shoreline.
DeleteJuly 6, 1968 Garcia attended the opening night of the FW under Graham's management. Kind of dings the sense I have had that there was some distance after the initial handover of the room.
ReplyDelete! ref: Wasserman, John L. 1968. An 'Unknown' Plays the Blues. San Francisco Chronicle, July 9, 1978, p. 38.
Dammit, that's July 5th for the gig.
ReplyDeleteGarcia attended the winter 1962 Berkeley Folk Festival:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.michaeljkramer.net/jerry-garcia-1962-winter-berkeley-folk-music-festival/
There's even a photo of him listening to Bessie Jones.
It may be safe to assume that Garcia attended every folk festival in the area, as listener or performer, between '62-64.
Union Grove was and is a Fiddler's Convention down in North Carolina, not Pennsylvania. I don't believe Garcia ever made it to Union Grove but he was certainly aware of it.
ReplyDeleteThere are many incorrect sources out there that list Union Grove as the place where Garcia & Grisman met but this in incorrect and I think the source of the problem is the name 'Grove' which appears in both West Grove and Union Grove.
Garcia visited Sunset Park in West Grove, PA where he met David Grisman (see McNally 'Long Strange Trip'). Also of note, the first bluegrass festival didn't happen until 1965. Sunset Park had one day events, sometimes with multiple artists but they weren't festivals and there wasn't camping.
I think the source of Union Grove being where Garcia and Grisman met is a December 1992 "Relix" interview with Grisman by JC Juanis in Vol 19 No 6. On p 26 he says
ReplyDelete"Jody Stecher and I were the hot mandolin players in New York City at the time. I joined a band called The New York Ramblers. We went down to The Union Grove Fiddlers Competition in North Carolina and we won the contest! Union Grove is a small backwoods town with about 50 people but on Easter weekend 6,000 people converged on the place. We just put a band together to play this show. We had Eric Thompson on guitar, Winnie Winston, the number one banjo player in New York, Fred Weiss on bass and Gene Longer on fiddle. Winning that contest is still the biggest thrill in my life. It was at Union Grove where I first met Jerry Garcia and Sandy Rothman, who were making their own field trip - only they had to travel a little further!"
In other interviews Grisman does give Sunset Park, West Grove as the location of the meeting so he is not consistent.
If Eric Thompson was present when Garcia and Grisman met, he is probably the mutual friend that introduced them.
Beyond your scope, but 4/22/91 Jerry took daughter Heather to Davies Symphony Hall to see Stephane Grappelli (w/ Grisman sitting in on a few tunes).
ReplyDeleteBig Steve Parrish mentioned on his show to attending a Pink Floyd show with Jerry in the early 70s at Winterland.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI add a couple of concerts not mentioned here. In an interview dated June 11, 1981, contained in the Italian version of Gans' book, Jerry also talks about the Doors very critically, saying that he listened to a couple of songs and then left because he didn't like them. In the film Festival Express then he can be seen in the audience watching the performance of Sha Na Na very amused. Luckily my phone translates English into Italian and I can finally read a lot about the Dead. Congratulations on what you write, always very interesting and accurate. Greetings from Venice in Italy
ReplyDeleteAugust 8, 1987: Los Lobos at the Warfield. David Hidalgo dedicated "Come On Let's Go" to ol' Jer, who was in attendance.
ReplyDeleteRitchie Valens was just a year older than Garcia.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAdd: Rolling Stones, Winterland, June 6 '72. Correspondent Jesse reports that an LA Times review of the show interviews a random fan, who likes the Dead, and the review mentions Garcia was a "special guest" (meaning backstage) that night.
ReplyDeleteFebruary 7 or 8, 1976, Garcia sees Bill Evans at little River City in Fairfax.
ReplyDeleteUpdate: Robyn Hitchcock just posted Twitter a birthday photo of him and Jerry backstage at the rem concert in 89. Other comments confirm indeed he and bob were there.
ReplyDeleteI knew a girl who swore she stood next to Jerry at a Philly u2 show w his daughter. This would have to have been the 87 jfk or early 92 spectrum. The dates match perfectly w the location and dates off for the band. In 87 the dead finished fall tour Philly 9/24...and u2 played 9/27. Spring 92 the dead were between stints in md.and ny and we're off that night.
ReplyDeleteAn addition: Bill Monroe & the Blue Grass Boys on 5/11/63 at Garfield Junior High School Auditorium in Berkeley. It was Monroe's Bay Area debut.
ReplyDeleteSandy Rothman: "During the spring of 1963, when Bill Monroe's band with Bill ("Brad") Keith on banjo came through California, almost every banjo player attending the concerts, including Jerry Garcia, was blown away by Keith's revolutionary playing. ... Garcia reacted to Keith's playing immediately. It changed his life, as it did for a multitude of banjo players worldwide, and from that point on I didn't hear Jerry work as hard on any other banjo technique. He appreciated and extended Keith's subtle rhythmic accents, themselves an extension of Scruggs's syncopation filtered through Stover, and with great diligence he set to work mastering the fretboard 'Keith-style.'"
https://web.archive.org/web/20160315225004/http://www.thebestofwebsite.com/Bands/Jerry_Garcia/Misc/Rothman/3_Jerrys_Banjo_Years.htm
The show can be downloaded here:
https://gdarchive.net/Public/Bluegrass/Artists%20A%20-%20K/Bill%20Monroe/monroe1963-05-11.sbd.flac16/
A correction/addition -
ReplyDeleteGarcia met Grisman in parking lot of Sunset Park in West Grove, PA; an outdoor music venue, not quite a festival. (Union Grove, NC is home to a famous fiddlers' convention.)
According to Rothman, it was another Monroe show just after the Bean Blossom stop on 5/24/64, and he introduced Garcia to Grisman at Sunset Park, which would've been Sunday, 5/31/64, also featuring Troy Ferguson & Boys, plus Alex Campbell & Olabelle & the New River Boys.
I remember a Herb Caen piece in the SF Chronicle that said that Jerry and Bobby attended an REM show in November 1987. Maybe I’m wrong but I remember having to choose between REM and U2…
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