by David Browne
“We’ll start out and see where it goes,” Lesh said. “If we have to cut, we cut.”
“Are we gonna be pitch-forked off the stage if we play too long?” Kreutzmann asked.
No one answered, but Hart, looking at the list, interjected, “This is do-able.” Weir remained quiet, soaking it in.
The accommodations at the Gramercy Theatre weren’t as lush as the Dead had long been accustomed to. They were gathering in a blandly decorated room stocked with a refrigerator, a couch, and a fruit-and-cheese display. Gone, for nearly fifteen years at that point, was the larger-than-life, reluctant frontman whose presence still lingered over everything they’d done and would ever do.
In about a month the group, now simply calling itself the Dead, would start its first tour together in five years. They’d been through much in their lives, good and bad, and the accumulated lifestyle mileage and rock ’n’ roll wear and tear was evident on men now in their sixties; skin cancer scars and hearing aids were in evidence. Kreutzmann’s hair, white as a new snowfall, was partly hidden by a backward baseball cap; Weir’s chin of whiskers was also graying. Other than guitarist Warren Haynes—a recurring member of Lesh’s solo band who’d have the unenviable task of filling in for Garcia on the tour, vocally and instrumentally—Weir was still the youngest at sixty-one. Despite the weather outside, he still wore his trademark sandals and short pants.
To help promote the upcoming tour they’d agreed to a promotional stunt: playing three one-set shows at three different venues in one night, with free tickets given away to fans on the Internet. The day had begun with Weir, Lesh, and Haynes appearing on the morning talk show The View (cohost Whoopi Goldberg was a longtime Dead fan), for which a line of Deadheads stretched down the street at the show’s Upper West Side studio. “It’s hard to get used to it without Jerry,” said Don Moore, who scored tickets to all three gigs, “but I know the music must go on.” Hours later the three men started the evening at an acoustic trio show at the five-hundred-seat, churchlike Angel Orensanz Center on the Lower East Side, playing “Cumberland Blues,” “Casey Jones,” “Dire Wolf,” and “Ripple.” On a version of “Bird Song” that extended to almost a half-hour, the three men were caught in a loop-like trance that threatened to derail at any moment but never did.
Now they had arrived at the second venue, the larger Gramercy Theatre, and had to figure out the set list. “Well, so far so good,” said Weir earlier in the evening, settling into a couch as he and Lesh awaited the arrival of Hart and Kreutzmann. “We actually established a dynamic for the acoustic portion. That’s another whole palette. It was fun. And we can go there now, and that’s huge. You know, we haven’t done it for thirty-five years or something like that.”
“We did it at Radio City,” says Lesh, referring to the long-ago 1980 show.
“Right, we did it at Radio City,” Weir repeats, nodding. “The approach we’re taking now is much different, and it’s much easier to hear. And as Phil pointed out, we’ve also learned to listen to each other. So this time around it’s really very different.”
Moments later Kreutzmann and Hart walked in, and hugs and warm greetings were exchanged. “How was The View?” asked Kreutzmann, who sheepishly admitted he’d been napping after a long flight from his home in Hawaii when the show was aired.
“It was good,” said Lesh, adding, with a frown, “[Bill] O’Reilly was there, though.”
“Yeah, it was kind of interesting that he was on the show!” Kreutzmann cracked. “My joke to myself was, I wonder how the green room was.”
“He was civil,” Lesh said. “So were we.”
“Phil put on Keith Olbermann and cranked it,” Weir joined in, and Kreutzmann laughed.
“Well, Ann Coulter is a Deadhead,” added Lesh’s wife and manager, Jill, standing nearby.
“Yeah,” Weir said. “She came to one of my shows. A year or so ago. A Ratdog show.”
The road to this moment had been a tough one for each of them—fourteen often difficult years of shock, depression, health issues, business disputes, and reunions. Five months before, they’d reconvened for a benefit, and it had gone well enough that they were now about to take to the road together again. Old issues remained, yet they were doing their best to make nice publicly. “I’ve got a great-sounding drum set up there,” Kreutzmann enthused, kicking back in a chair. Lesh indicated he was thinking of going onstage early to tune up even though Deadheads were already streaming into the venue.
“Well, there are a few people out there who’d love to see you!” cracked Kreutzmann, who still flashed signs of his untamed, loosey-goosey energy.
“Oh, it’s okay,” Lesh added. “I don’t mind.”
First, the newly reformed Dead would need to get through twenty-two concerts, starting with winnowing down their first set of tonight to sixty minutes. In words that summed up what lay ahead for them, Hart said, with a manic gleam in his eye, “It’s all going to change pretty radically. Stay tuned.”
On that grim day years before—August 9, 1995—everyone who heard the news thought it was just another rumor. At his home in New Jersey longtime Dead promoter and confidant John Scher was awoken by a reporter calling for a comment on Garcia’s death. Scher barked that he didn’t know what he was talking about—Garcia was in Hawaii, just as he’d told many in the Dead organization after the last show in Chicago the previous month. But the reporter was certain, and Scher called Cameron Sears in the Bay Area, who was equally taken aback. Garcia’s former assistant Vince Di Biase phoned publicist McNally, who in turn called the county coroner’s office. The rumor was true: at fifty-three, Garcia had been found dead in a rehab facility not far from his home.
When the Dead returned from Chicago after the “Tour from Hell” in the summer of 1995 a scheduled fall series of shows was still on the agenda, although they could have been canceled at any minute. Management hoped the same crowd-control issues wouldn’t continue at places like the Boston Garden or Madison Square Garden, indoor venues in cities that didn’t attract the same hangers-on outside. Before that run of shows took place, though, Garcia had decided the time had come to clean himself up. Koons has said that she became aware of Garcia’s addiction early in 1995 and that the two agreed he should go into treatment when the summer tour was over. With the help of Koons and his personal manager Steve Parish, Garcia checked into the Betty Ford Clinic outside Los Angeles; as he told his driver, Leon Day, “They tell me Betty Ford’s good for me.” Garcia indicated to Parish he was ready for a change and that he was weary of both his addiction and hiding it from Koons.
Shortly before Garcia left for the clinic Bruce Hornsby had called to check in on him. They’d kept in touch even after Hornsby’s departure from the band in early 1992, and despite his earlier concerns, Hornsby had sat in with the Dead at several shows afterward. “He said, ‘I’m gonna do this and this is what needs to happen and I’ll be okay and I’ll be there for a month or five weeks,’” Hornsby recalls. “He sounded fine.”
Two weeks later Hornsby called back, and to his surprise Garcia himself answered the phone. “Yeah, I left,” he told Hornsby. “I got all I needed in two weeks.” (The plan called for a monthlong stay.) Around this time Garcia ran into Peter Rowan, his former Old and in the Way bandmate, at a record store in Mill Valley; Garcia struck Rowan as upbeat and almost ebullient. But Garcia had slipped back into heroin use and decided to check into Serenity Knolls, a five-year-old rehab facility in Marin County, not far from his home.
Garcia kept his plans fairly private. (When he stopped by the home of close friends John and Linda Kahn before entering Serenity Knolls, he left them with the impression he was going to leave much from his past behind, including, presumably, the Dead.) Just before Garcia arrived at Serenity Knolls, Sears spotted him in his BMW driving out of a local Wendy’s; Garcia smiled and waved at Sears and his wife, Cassidy Law. (Fast-food wrappers were later found in his car.) When Garcia’s daughter Trixie heard where her father was, she called the facility
but says she wasn’t allowed to speak with him.
After admitting himself, Garcia called driver Leon Day to wish him a happy wedding anniversary and asked whether he wanted to go with him to Hawaii when he got out. That night Koons visited him, and the two reportedly had dinner at an Italian restaurant in Mill Valley before Koons drove him back to Serenity Knolls. At just after 4:30 the next morning a nurse making the rounds checked in on Garcia’s room; earlier he’d been snoring, but now he was silent. When he was found not to be breathing, a paramedic was called, but it was too late.
According to rumor, word first slipped out when an ambulance driver called his wife and asked her to guess who he’d just picked up there, and the spouse supposedly called a local DJ. Whatever way it leaked, everyone soon heard. Lesh was driving his son Grahame to camp when he received the call; Weir was at a hotel in New Hampshire, where his side band Ratdog would be playing at the Casino Ballroom in Hampton Beach, and his longtime friend and bandmate Matthew Kelly saw Weir react emotionally. CNN crews showed up, and Deadheads held a candlelight vigil all the way down the road to the beach from the club.
Back in San Rafael, Hart, Lesh, and Welnick gathered at the Dead office at Fifth and Lincoln, the site of so many rollicking times but now a somber place. TV crews were beginning to appear outside, as were Deadheads. The band members seemed shell-shocked. “It was like they had been whacked by a two-by-four,” says McNally, who was also in the house. “They were just looking at each other and wondering what the future was.” For once there would be no mocking comments about death and caskets. When none of the band offered to go outside to make a statement, McNally did it by himself. The musicians and Koons were driven to a mortuary to view Garcia’s body.
For those who worked with Garcia, regret and second-guessing seeped out. “From my perspective the aura around Jerry was such that clearly we needed to stop touring a couple of times and say to Jerry, ‘We’re not going to tour until you go to rehab or a doctor and get yourself straight,’” says promoter Scher. “But nobody, me included, had the balls to really confront Jerry.” No easy answers existed, and the days and weeks after his death were sometimes fraught. Organized by Koons and held at a church in Belvedere two days after Garcia’s death—the place was called, coincidentally, St. Stephen’s—Garcia’s funeral was attended by many of Garcia’s partners, closest friends, and colleagues, from his fellow Dead players to Hunter, Barlow, Hornsby, Ken Kesey, and even Dylan, who flew up from Los Angeles. Outside—or simply not invited—was another cast of players, including Mountain Girl and Rock Scully. John Kahn managed to sneak in and stand in the back with his wife, Linda. Hunter recited a moving poem. Walking by the open casket to pay their final respects, some stopped to talk to Garcia, others to kiss him on the forehead. Dressed in a flannel shirt, Dylan stood for a few moments and appeared to be talking to Garcia. (As one musician walked out he was overheard saying, “That guy in there, he’s the only one who knows what it’s like to be me.”) When Hornsby and Weir walked up, Weir took a look at Garcia and, recalls Hornsby, said, “Nobody home.”
When the autopsy results were released soon after, Garcia’s death was ruled a heart attack. That he’d used heroin a few days before was less a factor than the two of three largely blocked arteries to his heart. (Two had 85 percent blockage; the third was 30 percent.) As Weir later said, “Jerry had it in mind to clean up. Christ, he died in a rehab place. Right after his first major health issue [in 1986], for a couple of years he was in great shape, and then he slowly slipped back into the dope. But he missed [his good health] and wanted that back and that’s what he was going for when he checked out. His body couldn’t handle it. He was being kind of aggressive about cleaning up and his body just couldn’t handle it.” The fact that Garcia checked himself into a nonmedical facility also indicated that he may not have fully grasped the overall state of his health; the facility was so remote that it would have taken an ambulance a good chunk of time to reach him and rush him to a hospital.
The outpouring for Garcia—TV news broadcasts, tabloid coverage, a public memorial in Golden Gate Park just three days after the private service—was overwhelming and fitting for his iconic stature. Online bulletin boards were overwhelmed with messages of grief from Deadheads: “I just woke up . . . I wish I hadn’t,” “I don’t know what to do with myself,” “I can’t survive . . . I’m devastated.” The WELL (the Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link), which hosted online forums for Deadheads back to the mid-eighties, was so deluged it had to shut down for a while.
Reflecting an often messy and chaotic personal and business life, the landscape after Garcia’s death was contentious and litigious. His estate, run by Koons, was hit by millions of dollars of claims from his ex-employees and partners. Although a judge ruled that Carolyn Adams (Mountain Girl) was still entitled to the financial agreement she’d reached with Garcia a few years before, Koons appealed, leading to a televised lawsuit. (In the end Adams agreed to a settlement.) A few weeks after their father’s passing, Trixie and Annabelle Garcia went to visit Koons and asked whether they could grab a few of their father’s belongings. Koons agreed, and Trixie left with a pair of sweatpants with an “NYPD” logo, a jacket, a traveling bag, and a manicure box. In April 1996, about nine months after Garcia’s death, his ashes were dispersed—some in India, some in the waters outside San Francisco. For the surviving members of the Dead the difficult part would be next: what to do with themselves, their future, and their body of work without the man around whom it was all centered.
“One of the things we discovered is that the last time we took a swing at this, I think we overstocked the pot,” Weir said backstage at the Gramercy Theatre. “The band we put together this time around is smaller and way more agile. This is a shakedown cruise here. There’s less traffic on stage than we had last time around. It’s different.”
“It’s pretty calm right now,” Lesh added. “But we always have the same expectations, which is magic. When we walk out onstage, anything can happen.”
“And we invite it to,” Weir emphasized. When asked about the last time they had come together, five years before, Weir didn’t know quite what to say: “I don’t remember that tour,” he finally shrugged.
In the months after Garcia’s death various tour ideas were floated, from having Carlos Santana or Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo fill in for Garcia or propping up Garcia’s guitar onstage, lit by a spotlight, while the rest of the Dead would play. In the end all were rejected. Finally, in December, four months after Garcia’s death, the surviving members met again, this time in the same conference room where Garcia used to peer over his glasses at certain ideas. Kreutzmann, by then living in Hawaii, called in to say he was finished with touring; Lesh seconded that emotion. The name “Grateful Dead” would be formally retired, and each man would go his separate way.
During that same meeting the band’s business manager, Tim Jorstad, brought up the business of the Dead. “They were kind of tired of being together,” Jorstad says. “But I was looking at them and saying, ‘You have a company here, with merchandise and a record company—that’s a real, live business that will carry on whether you guys release new music or not.’ They were fine with letting the business go along.” In a sense they had no choice. As soon as Garcia had died, the band’s merchandise office was flooded with requests for T-shirts and other memorabilia, so much so that a bank of new computers had to be purchased the following day to keep pace with the orders. (For Sue Swanson, who had returned to the Dead fold to help with computers, the additional work was a mixed blessing: “It was so busy that I couldn’t drown in what was going on. I could only grieve in bits and pieces.”) With no concerts on the horizon, the merchandise wing, once considered the stepchild of the operation, suddenly became the company’s main revenue stream. Still, the income wasn’t enough to support the dozens who worked for the Dead, and a round of layoffs and salary reductions swept through their office. Over fifteen people in Grateful Dead Productions, about a third of the
staff, were out, including members of the road crew and Bob Bralove; others were put on retainers.
Starting the following year, 1996, the surviving members began what would become a ritualistic dance of re-forming for a tour, trying to reconnect with an audience and each other, and attempting to rekindle the magic without the man around whom it had been built. First came the Furthur Festival, which featured Weir’s Ratdog—a side band and result of his collaborations with bassist Rob Wasserman that had, ironically, started its first full tour right before Garcia’s death—and Hart’s band Mystery Box. (It was also the name of a fine, rhythm-nation solo album, with lyrics by Hunter and guest appearances by Weir and Hornsby, released in 1996.) According to Hornsby, who was invited to participate, Garcia’s death didn’t come up much backstage. “It wasn’t talked about much,” he says. “It was plow ahead, full steam ahead, and let’s make the best of this situation.” Both that tour and one the following summer had their moments, but ticket sales were shaky, and Lesh’s absence—he was still in retirement mode—made the shows feel less than celebratory.
The dance continued in 1998, when another permutation, cleverly dubbed the Other Ones, toured, this time with Lesh but not Kreutzmann, who decided to stay home in Hawaii. Invited back into the fold, Hornsby, who had remained on good terms with all the Dead, felt an immediate change with Lesh back in the picture. “The Dead never wanted to rehearse,” Hornsby says. “Maybe a few days at Front Street in late summer. But for all practical purposes, we never rehearsed. With Phil back on the scene, we rehearsed a lot for the Other Ones tour. Phil was more determined on a rehearsal level to make it right. He was willing to put in the time. He was asserting himself more.”
In December 1998 Lesh, who was living with Hepatitis C, had liver transplant surgery that took him out of commission for several months. In 2000 Weir, Hart, and Kreutzmann partook in another Furthur Festival, and by then Lesh had returned to performing, but this time with his own outfit. First launched in 1999, Phil Lesh & Friends presented an ever-evolving lineup—with notable players like Haynes, Phish’s Trey Anastasio, drummer John Molo, guitarists Derek Trucks and Jimmy Herring, keyboardist Rob Barraco, and many others—offering up faithful, well-played, extended-jam versions of the Dead repertoire. In that regard Lesh became the keeper of the flame, as Herring learned when he was invited to rehearse with and then join Lesh’s band in 2000. “Phil thought of it like a flock of birds or a school of fish—he’d use those analogies,” Herring says. “In Phil’s world a solo was a group conversation, not a single person going off and doing their thing while the others played a backing track behind him. Sometimes you might be in front and sometimes in the back or middle or side. He never wanted you to find yourself in your own space, and that was hard. Most of us come from a place where you play the song and back up the vocals.” Herring soon realized the fans wanted that too: on this first tour with the band that spring, the audience would largely stay in their seats and not head out for a beer. Not surprisingly, Lesh & Friends became the shows that attracted increasing numbers of Deadheads, and in 2002 the group recorded a credible studio album, There and Back Again. The ascendance of Lesh and Friends, compared to Ratdog, initially confused some promoters: Why were so many people buying tickets to their shows? The business types didn’t realize—but the fans did—that Lesh’s bass was as integral to the Dead’s legend as Garcia’s voice. Even after all those decades Lesh’s jumpy rumble remained distinctive and embodied the sound of the band as much as any other player in the group.
