by Joel Selvin
Ebullient, chatty, and eternally boyish, Shapiro was a born schmoozer. Raised in New York City’s Upper East Side, he comes from a family of Jewish philanthropists. He never cared much about music as a youth, but was pursuing his undergraduate studies in film and media at Northwestern University when he stumbled across the Grateful Dead. Combining his first LSD experience and his first Grateful Dead concert was a zeitgeist moment for Shapiro, who felt instantly comfortable in the parking lot scene that snowy March 1993 at the Rosemont Horizon outside Chicago. He saw the drum circles and the hippie school buses and realized these people were seeking something they couldn’t find at home. As soon as he could, he joined them.
On the road in the parking lots that summer, without any previous experience, Shapiro shot a documentary film about the Deadheads for school credit, and the film landed him a job as associate producer on Tie-Died: Rock ’n Roll’s Most Deadicated Fans, which debuted at Sundance in 1995 only a few months before Garcia died.
What Shapiro had stumbled across in those final months of the Grateful Dead was nothing less than a sprawling subculture that was quietly spreading further and deeper into a growing movement. Garcia’s death threw an unexpected spotlight on Shapiro’s little Tie-Died movie. He was working as an intern at New Line Cinema in New York and showing his films alongside a Grateful Dead cover band when he heard the Wetlands owner wanted to sell. The owner wanted out. Shapiro agreed to operate the place through the end of the existing lease and the club was his. He quickly assessed the situation and realized the growth potential. As the entrepreneurial leader of this new generation of Deadheads, Shapiro was uniquely positioned to lead this rapidly evolving audience to Deadland.
In the wake of Garcia’s death, as the shadow of the Grateful Dead at first flickered off the scene, the jam-band audience began to factionalize. The New England Dead-inspired jam band Phish was the most immediate and obvious beneficiary. The band jumped from arenas to stadiums almost immediately. Some fans leaned toward the jazz-jam bands like Medeski Martin and Wood, and others went for the electro-bluegrass groups like Leftover Salmon. At Wetlands, the wellspring of the H.O.R.D.E. bands and fountainhead of the nineties jam-band scene, Shapiro worked at extending and expanding on the club’s original vision. In the course of his five years running Wetlands, Shapiro booked virtually every act associated with the jam underground. He studied the scene and grew intimately acquainted with the details. He understood the crowd because he was part of the crowd. He was another psychedelicized Deadhead looking for something he couldn’t find at home, only he was the Boy Scout troop leader. With his trademark pluck, ambition, and drive, Shapiro quickly established himself as the key mover and shaker behind the scenes in jam-band world.
Every one of the jam bands traced their heritage directly from the Grateful Dead. In a sense, it is like the music played around the Western world these days called Gypsy Jazz. That is nothing but music derived from the French jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. There is no Gypsy Jazz—it is all Django. He has become an idiom and so did the Dead. Given that in any night the Dead’s music could touch upon Chuck Berry, Ornette Coleman, Bill Monroe, and Django himself, they staked their boundaries far enough apart to support and encourage experiments in practically any realm of American music. The progeny of the Dead range as far and wide, from the Dave Matthews Band to String Cheese Incident and beyond. Even bands that don’t sound remotely like the Dead—like Widespread Panic or Umphrey’s McGee—have borrowed crucial conceptual components from the band. So, while the Dead have been largely absent from this expanding community for almost twenty years, the band’s presence in this world, rather than go away, only enlarged. Tapes of old Dead shows constitute the standard indoctrination ritual for all who enter here. The band’s songs serve as common literature. Even in their absence, the Grateful Dead ruled the jam-band scene with an invisible authority.
As the scene spread out, Shapiro could track the various tributaries, but he never lost sight of the fact that all streams flowed from the long-lost Dead. While the record industry, mainstream concert business, and broadcast media roundly ignored the movement, in many ways this outlier appeal made the scene all the more attractive to the newcomers. The breadth and depth of this audience consequently were obscured from view, but Shapiro could see it clearly.
He and his partners started the Lockn’ Festival in Arrington, Virginia in September 2013, and Shapiro hired Furthur to headline all three nights. After having passed out on the disastrous spring tour, Weir had disappeared for several weeks. He went completely incommunicado; nobody seemed to know where he was. His friends presumed he had been steered—where else?—into rehab, but he was back by June sitting in with friends at shows around Marin.
He took a crack at resuming his Internet-based talk and music show, Weir Here, from TRI, a loose, decidedly informal little party mixing talk and music that showed off the host’s natural charms to excellent effect: warm, witty, and intelligent, not to mention musical to the bone. Steve Parish played the sidekick who stole every show from his seat on the couch. Weir and the TRI staff had turned out more than a dozen episodes with a wide variety of guests before the April crash. He also made a rare appearance at Terrapin Crossroads, although, for some reason, Lesh did not join him that night. Weir also managed to squeeze in a handful of solo gigs on the road before the Furthur tour in July. So much for taking time off.
At Lockn’, musicians from the other bands watched from the wings as Furthur romped through three nighttime headline shows. Maverick country musician Zac Brown joined the band the first night. The second night, Furthur began by playing the Workingman’s Dead album song by song only to be joined on the final track, “Casey Jones,” by Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio, who stayed for the rest of their set. It was his first time sitting in with Furthur, a jam-band summit meeting.
Furthur was coming to an end anyway. By the time the band headed out to play Shapiro’s Lockn’ Festival and another handful of East Coast dates, Lesh had secretly secured his future. He and Shapiro had come to terms on a long-term exclusive agreement for Lesh to play thirty concerts in the next year at the Capitol Theatre. The multimillion-dollar deal called for Lesh to make a few additional performances at Shapiro concerts (Brooklyn Bowl in Las Vegas, Lockn’ Festival), but the only other performances Lesh would do would be at Terrapin Crossroads.
Shapiro spent weeks negotiating this huge agreement with Jill Lesh and her husband. To Shapiro, this galvanized his position with the Capitol Theatre and ensured the venue’s status, but this was a masterstroke of liberation for Lesh. In a single sweeping motion, he rid himself of any further need to be in the music business. He could play music, make millions, and not tour. He would play with his rotating cast at the same spots and the audience would come to him. Shapiro had acquired Lesh’s entire career outside Terrapin. He owned the merchandising rights. He owned the recording rights. He had bought Lesh and paid handsomely.
And for Lesh, it would seem his dream was coming true. He was free of erratic Bobby Weir. He was free of booking agent Jonathan Levine, who drove around in a Porsche with a customized license plate reading THANXPHIL. Levine, who had been Lesh’s booking agent since the beginning of Phil and Friends, was cut out of these negotiations so there was no agent to commission the deal. Lesh gave Levine the word backstage at Lockn’—an unceremonious end to what had been a long and fruitful association.
Without agents or managers or other partners to pay, the Leshes would net 100 percent. But more than a lavish payday, it was Lesh’s ultimate triumph. He was now completely autonomous, free to fashion the legacy in his own image, in total command of his own destiny, unencumbered by responsibility to anyone outside his own family. He no longer had to share any of the revenue with anyone. He held off a public announcement. First, he had to finish off Furthur. The next week, he announced that Furthur was going on “hiatus” on the band’s Facebook page:
After more than four years of heavy, year-round touring, Phil Lesh and Bob
Weir have decided to put their band Furthur on hiatus in 2014. After the four night Furthur run in Mexico in January, the band will take the rest of 2014 off so that Phil and Bob can focus on their countless solo projects.… The last time the word “hiatus” was used in regards to the Grateful Dead world was in 1974, and we all know how much good that break inspired. They returned a year and a half later, stronger than ever, and for another 20 years. Furthur’s not breaking up; they’re simply taking a much-needed break. One way or another, we’ll see you around.
A couple of weeks after that, Lesh teased the audience of the syndicated Deadhead radio show Tales from the Golden Road in an interview with host Gary Lambert. “I’m getting tired after forty-eight years on the road,” Lesh said. “After this tour I’m basically ‘off the bus,’ I won’t be doing any tours per se. Phil Lesh and Friends has a really great setup going for next year for performances outside of Terrapin and we’ll make an announcement about it this tour… We’ve got the whole year of 2014 locked in for a really cool way. We’ll expand the horizons of the whole scene. Phil Lesh and Friends will actually expand its membership into new areas.”
In November, Lesh and Shapiro announced the agreement a week before the inaugural show under the deal at the Brooklyn Bowl. “I’m not retiring, and I’m not slowing down,” Lesh told the New York Times. “I’m pretty sure I want to make music till I can’t breathe anymore. I just want to do it within the most focused possible way. The future looks really exciting.”
How could Lesh excuse the unfaithful behavior he had showed his brothers-in-arms? He had been at points cold, uncaring, even cruel, but he didn’t seem to hesitate. One by one, he had discarded the drummers Kreutzmann and Hart and, now, Weir. His actions disguised a moral superiority that could have never existed in the group under Garcia’s egalitarian leadership. He had long before abandoned the one-for-all/all-for-one philosophy that had sustained the band through long years.
In many ways, Lesh was now free of them all—Garcia included—ending knotted, convoluted entanglements that had pervaded his life for more than forty years. He didn’t owe anybody anything. His time had come.
Lesh, it seems, had become the dark knight of the kingdom. He would do what needed to be done. He had a resolute, clear vision and he would do his duty to see that vision through. He was done ceding territory to the other knaves in the court. He appeared to see himself as the one true, capable keeper of the flame. His only loyalty was family. Once again, he would forge ahead on his own.
The end of Furthur came as no surprise to the members. When the band first formed, they had been told it might last a couple of years. The last year, the strain had been showing, although the other musicians were largely unaware of the trauma behind the scenes. After Weir passed out at the Capitol in April, the fans were no longer surprised, either. It had been an amazing band and an action-packed four years. The songbook contained more than two hundred and fifty songs. The band’s incessant touring pulled thousands of new people into the audience in every market. Furthur had restored the Grateful Dead catalog to active rotation in summer amphitheater concerts and allowed the Deadhead subculture to grow younger audiences and to multiply across the nation.
But for Weir, Furthur had been costly. He had aggravated his shoulder injury to the point that it was becoming disabling. That, along with his high stress levels, contributed to substance abuse. He had given up his flagship RatDog. Without Furthur, his income would plummet. His high-tech studio was draining funds. He kept TRI fully staffed, operating full-time. They abandoned the Weir Here Webcast. Weir kept guitarist Mark Karan on the payroll through his yearlong battle with cancer. He had reformed RatDog for one of the Webcasts and did a couple of other dates with his old band, but after Furthur came back from Lockn’ in September, Weir did not play music in public again until the end of the year.
19
Mexico
“PARADISE WAITS,” the final gig on the Furthur calendar, turned out to be anything but. In January 2014, a travel outfit called Cloud 9 Adventures organized a four-night excursion for twenty-five-hundred fans to the new Hard Rock Hotel in Maya Riviera on the Yucatán peninsula. The pricey tickets sold out months before. Relations between the band’s principals notwithstanding, rain or shine, the show must go on.
It certainly sounded promising—open bars, swimming pools, spas and salons, buffets of tropical food, nighttime concerts at an oceanside stage. Reality, however, was anything but paradise. Deadheads were distressed to arrive and find the hotel only half-finished. Construction and painting were going on all over the site. Plumbing was broken. In some rooms, toilets had not yet been installed and many bathtubs were filled with mud. No landscaping had been planted. Room reservations were all screwed up and guests were forced to wait in line for hours to speak with someone about the problem. The keylock machine was broken and unlocked rooms were burglarized. People were crying in the lobby.
Never underestimate the Deadheads’ ability to ignore circumstances. They came to party and when the sun went down, that’s what they did. No funereal air attended the final Furthur shows; the fans knew that Furthur had run its course and that the musicians would be back in one configuration or another. For their part, the band tried to muster the spirit. This last time out, Furthur spread out the riches, mixing material across four nights for a truly panoramic look at the band’s songbook, sprinkled with Latin accents like “Mexicali Blues” or a spontaneous “La Bamba” sandwiched in the middle of “Good Lovin’” on the first night. There was an icy chill between Weir and Lesh, who couldn’t look at each other. Weir largely went through the motions while Lesh tried vainly to pump life into the performance. “Nice to see all of you South of the Border,” said Lesh.
On the last afternoon of the run, Bobby Weir gave a surprise acoustic show from the open-air pavilion in the middle of the hotel’s lagoon to an enthralled throng spread out over the grounds. At the beginning of the final show that last night, the group huddled onstage before, as was their custom, ocean breezes cooling the tropical night air. Lesh looked all the band members in the eye. “What we’ve done here is really special,” he said, a benediction that would frame the band’s final performance.
At the end of the night, after the band left, the exit music piped through the speakers as the crowd departed was Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.” Insiders suspected the hand of Weir in the selection; he was father of two young Swift fans and had recently taken his daughters to a Taylor Swift concert.
With another tour group arriving the next day for a “My Morning Jacket” three-day event, Weir, in no hurry to go home, hung around, extended his vacation another few days, and sat in with both MMJ and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.
But even as this Furthur chapter was closing, with all four of the living Dead as far apart as they had ever been, Weir still knew this Grateful Dead thing had larger, mystical implications for all of them. He may have been tired and disgusted with Lesh, but he could see beyond those temporary feelings to a larger, shared future. The tangled personal relations, power games, and money trips—all very un–Grateful Dead—meant nothing compared to what these four men had achieved in their lives together. They had done something lasting, not that they meant to, but having done so, they had created a body of work and a legacy that they had to live up to. Tired, wasted, and left on his own in Mexico, Weir still knew that.
On his day off in Maya Riviera, lounging around poolside, Weir sat for an interview with Rolling Stone and inevitably the question of the band’s upcoming fiftieth anniversary the next year came up. Weir didn’t flinch. In his easy drawl, he could have been speaking directly to his other bandmates, not some interviewer, and, in fact, he probably was.
“We have to do something commemorative,” he said. “I think we owe it to the fans, we owe it to the songs, we owe it to ourselves. If there are issues we have to get past, I think that we owe it to ourselves to man up and get past them. If there are hatchets to be burie
d, then let’s get to work. Let’s start digging. I’ll just say, to my delicate sensibilities, that it would be wrong to let that go by un-commemorated.”
Lesh went home from Mexico with even more reasons not to leave home and his new playpen in San Rafael. His first grandson, Levon Lesh, had been born in January to his son Brian and a woman he met after breaking up with his girlfriend. The Leshes decided to rear the baby. Lesh’s deal with Shapiro would keep him away from home plenty, but he played all through February and March at Terrapin Crossroads several times a week before he did his first Capitol Theatre run with Phil and Friends in April.
Terrapin Crossroads had turned into a happening scene with live music in the bar almost every night of the week. With a weighty daily nut of $5,000 just to open the doors, the club was expensive, but crowds flocked to hear different sets of local musicians tackle the Dead repertoire with the likelihood of a guest appearance on any given night by Lesh himself. Other visiting firemen, from Gregg Allman to B. B. King, stopped by the club. Lesh came to the club almost daily in the morning, took a healthy lunch from the nearby Whole Foods, and practiced before the club opened for business. His Maserati could be seen in his reserved parking place whenever he was there.
Weir, on the other hand, came home from Mexico in time to take RatDog out of its Lesh-imposed hiatus with Steve Kimock on guitar and both Robin Sylvester on electric bass and Rob Wasserman on acoustic bass. He gave the rusty band a one-night test drive at the Sweetwater and headed back out for six weeks to tour theaters in the East, Midwest, and South. He was home and gone again within days.
