7

GETTING HOOKED

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Steve Brown

Filmmaker/Grateful Dead Records production coordinator (1972–1978)

I filtered a lot of the glommy “I need a fix” crowd stuff out so I could enjoy the music. I was there to enjoy the energy that went with the band and the audience—way more than who the audience was. It was the bigger picture for me than the individual idiosyncrasies and weirdnesses and strangenesses and differences with the audience members. It was really the power of the energy of all these people together. They could’ve all been dressed in gorilla costumes and it still would’ve worked for me. It was just like Disneyland—the happiest place on Earth when it was all happening. A lot of people were coming up through rock and roll, and were all there to enjoy something that had finally gelled into our own thing. We had it going on. It was the most positive energy on Earth in that moment. And if you have that kind of experience, yeah, you get addicted to it!

Deadhead with his favorite head, Alpine, 1987. Courtesy of Steve Eichner.

Rick Begneaud

Cajun chef for the Dead, artist

There was a show the Dead did in Louisiana in 1980 that was magical for me. I came out of there, and I could tell you every song, every note—everything that happened. First, I didn’t get thrown out like I had the night before! Second, I didn’t have to deal with taking care of a huge group of people or holding everybody’s hand at one time. It was just my friend Chuck and I. I could just be with the show, focus on the show, and this was my third show, so I was hearing all these songs for the first time live, which was amazing to me. I always knew them on the records and tapes, but to actually be there, thirty feet in front of the stage, listening to this music, was amazing! I didn’t do any drugs that night. I just had a couple beers. I was high as could be just being there with the music.

After a little tour in the early 1980s, my friends and I were on our way back home to Louisiana. I pulled the Jeep to the side of the road, stopped, and said, “You know what, guys? We haven’t heard ‘Scarlet Begonias’ yet. I don’t know if they’re gonna play it, but let’s go to Atlanta.” We didn’t have tickets or anything, and my friend Rick said, “Ah, I don’t know.” I said, “We’re here. Let’s just go. I’ll drive.” We drove all night, got to Atlanta, and we got these incredible fourteenth-row center seats! I’d never seen the Dead that close. It was great. It was a whole different thing because you begin to see their personalities, and you get to see interactions between them and stuff like that. And I was still hearing a lot of these songs for the first time live. It was really special.

In those days, I watched Garcia a lot. Then I started focusing on Phil sometimes, and I’d think, “Wow. I never knew he was doing all that kind of stuff!” On Bobby, it was like, “God! That’s what that sound is! Oh yeah!” and then I’d watch the drummers and I was like, “Whoa! There’s other members in this band!” It was really a transformation when finally I’d sit back and listen to the whole band together. It was a really special time.

After another show in 1980 in New Orleans, my friends and I went to a friend’s house, and I remember standing in the kitchen by myself for about two hours! I was rerunning the entire show in my head. I remember everything about that show. I couldn’t go to sleep. It’s hard to describe really because it’s one of those things about really wanting to be in that place as much as you could think about being any place on the planet. I thought I was hooked on the Dead before that, but that show really made sense to me.

There was nobody down in Louisiana for me to go listen to the Grateful Dead with. There was nowhere to play tapes and hang out. I was going to college and selling real estate. Because I was still living at my parents’ house, I’d tell them I was going somewhere for the weekend; then I’d hop on a plane and go somewhere to see the Dead. Sometimes I’d tell my mom, but my dad would have freaked out if he knew! They used to say, “Don’t you have anything better to do with your life than following some rock group around?”

My mom finally understood. She once told one of her friends, “Well, you know, he travels around going to see the Grateful Dead, but the funny thing is, he gets to see them all over the country! He travels and sees all these places that we never get to see!” That was true. That was part of the fun thing about touring—you got to go around and see other parts of the country. You would never dream of going to Oklahoma City. Why would you need to go there? Well … to see the Dead!

I’ve never done an entire tour. The first little tour I ever went on was when they did three cities in Florida and then ended up at the Fox Theater in Atlanta. I went down with a couple of my buddies, Mike Kenny and Rick Welch, and cooked Thanksgiving dinner for my uncle, Robert Rauschenberg. Then, we went up to Lakeland, Florida, then to Gainesville, Florida, then to Gator Alley or whatever that place was called, which was a spectacular show. Then we went to the Fox in Atlanta, then home to Louisiana. That was a great tour. I really got into the Dead then.

There were a lot of times touring where you’re like, “I totally shouldn’t be doing this!” I was living with my parents, and, even though I didn’t grow up Catholic, I grew up with a fair amount of guilt about what I should and shouldn’t be doing. I always thought when I was going on the road I should probably—here’s the thing: A lot of guys like me—you see the world through your father’s eyes, like he would judge you. I did that a lot. And so every time I did something like, “I’m going on tour” my dad looks at me like, “What an idiot. You should be working, you should be at the post office, or you should be doing something, some work.” And I always felt fairly weird about that.

I’ve finally given that up partly because I’ve talked to my dad so much about my Grateful Dead experience, and then he’s hanging out with Weir and it’s all good and they fry fish together—it’s all good. So he understands that I wasn’t just hanging out with some stupid hippies in California. We were doing stuff, exploring, these guys mean something, they’re meaningful, and they’re making money and they’re business-minded. And so my dad appreciates it now in a way he never would have before.

Steve Eichner

Photographer

For three years, I got really into it. I’d go on tour, and I made a lot of friends. I survived by selling tickets or loose doses. I was a real ninja—I prided myself on being able to get into shows for free. In the early 1980s, before In the Dark came out and they got real popular again, it was really easy to get into shows for free and scam. I’d go from show to show, selling T-shirts or stickers. I knew people who had stickers, so I’d get a guy to front me a hundred stickers for a dollar apiece, and I’d sell them for a dollar fifty each, and then I’d have fifty bucks, and that would be my ticket and my doses and my bag of weed for the night. I was really into it. I’d go from city to city that way—catch a ride with someone.

When you’re on tour, you keep seeing the same people over and over, you keep interacting with them, and you’re in foreign cities together. So you have this bond going, and you help each other out. The longest run I went on, we drove out to San Francisco from New York, me, my friend Adam, and two girls for the shows at the Berkeley Greek Theater, and then we followed the tour all the way back East. I would hitchhike to shows and figure out some way to get in—or not, and just hang out with the people. It didn’t even matter that much if I couldn’t see the Dead. It was more the whole experience of that community.

Susana Millman

Long-time Deadhead and GD photographer; aka Mrs. McNally

I think I went to probably between 200 and 300 shows. I don’t really know. I never went on tour; I just saw them in places I wanted to see them—always including New York because, god knows, the Dead always really got it up for New York. They gave New York a lot more than the kids back home.

But the New York community was a lot more aggressive. I mean I saw a knife fight in front of Radio City Music Hall. I was blown out of my mind. That was first unpleasantness I ever saw. That was about my fifteenth show, and I thought, “Oh my god, these people are fighting about tickets!” That was in 1980 or 1981, when they did the Radio City run. That was the only time I ever saw any unpleasantness or people not being okay with other people’s good fortune at a Dead show.

Will Sims

Waverly, Alabama

There’s a feeling you get when you see the Grateful Dead, and that’s what hooked me. It was beautiful, and I got it. I didn’t need psychedelics to see it. The drugs might have made it even more beautiful when I got into it—but honestly, not that much more. In fact, it probably made things more complicated because then I was fucking losing shit and losing people! Sometimes it was better—sometimes it wasn’t.

Everything was all painted shiny bright the first time I walked into a Dead show—fucking beautiful. It was really special, and I think you’re doing a great thing continuing writing about it. I always thought I should go back to school, study sociology, anthropology, psychology, all together, wrapped into one big study of the Grateful Dead that should’ve been looked into more because it was such a beautiful fucking thing. You couldn’t find another little sanctum of people to study than that one to figure some positive things out. It was fucking awesome.

Kathleen on her last day of work with her (then) boss. Courtesy of Kathleen Cremonesi.

Kathleen Cremonesi

Author of Love in the Elephant Tent

In 1986, a year after first seeing the Dead, I quit my job, sold or threw away almost everything I had, bought a Volkswagon bus and took off on tour—alone. My parents were very straight-laced, so they were not very happy about it. But they also knew by that time that I wasn’t going to listen to them if they told me no. So my father taught me how to set the timing and adjust the spark plugs and the valves on the bus. And my mom helped me make curtains out of some old batik fabric. My father helped me build a bed and stuff inside.

Then I took off on tour for the next year and a half. I’ve seen well over a hundred Dead shows.

Chuck Staley

Restaurant owner, Georgia

After my first three Dead shows in a row, I was hooked. I saw shows in the summer of 1986, and then I just kept going.

I graduated from high school that summer and then continued to see shows. I went to college up in Maryland. That lasted for the first semester, and then I was politely asked to take a long-term leave from the school. So I continued to see shows and more shows. I went back into college in 1989, and my buddies called and said, “Hey, the Warlocks are playing.” I said, “What? What do you mean, the Warlocks are playing?” They’d just announced two shows at Hampton Coliseum. I said, “You gotta be kidding me!”

So we went—I still get goosebumps to this day thinking about it. The energy and the vibe in those two nights were amazing. It was the Grateful Dead, but they announced the show under the Warlocks because they were no longer allowed at Hampton Coliseum as the Grateful Dead. So they said, “Oh, we’ll just come in the form of the Warlocks.” They announced the shows about a week before they played. They broke out “Dark Star” and then, to top it all off, they broke out “We Bid You Goodnight.” And they did “Attics of My Life,” which I believe they did at a show out in California before that. It had been twenty years. The stuff with the Warlocks, to this day, it just felt different. They just came in and nailed it.

We’d always talk about which song they were going to play next. I had one show at Soldier Field where I picked every song but one. I could hear songs—they’d tune into a song and I could hear within a fraction of the tune and I’d realize what it was. People would ask me, and I’d say they’re going to do this or that. And my friends were like, “WTF”? The Dead was all I’d listen to—and still do to this day. I play it here at my restaurant [Peach and the Porkchop, Roswell, Georgia]. Great food and some good tunes!

September 16, 1990 or ’91, was one of the best shows ever. I’m getting goosebumps thinking about it. They played one of my favorite songs, “Comes a Time.”

You’re always chasing that elusiveness at shows—like the Hamptons, where they pulled out “Dark Star” and “We Bid You Goodnight” and “Attics of My Life.” I was there when they did the first “Loose Lucy” since 1973. When they came out with something like that, the electricity in the place was wild.

They did a “Dark Star” the summer of 1992 in Louisville, and four nights later, they finished it in Pittsburgh. Unless you’re on tour, you wouldn’t know that. You look at your friends and say, “Do you hear it? Do you hear it? They’re gonna do the second verse of ‘Dark Star’ right now.” And your friends are like, “What are you talking about? Why are they doing the second verse?” And it’s because they did the first verse four nights ago. It was just a constant chase of catching that magic show.

Jerry was the one performer who could just completely butcher the lyrics and nobody cared because he would just step back. He knew he was missing it. I remember one show where he did the encore. They were doing “Uncle John’s Band,” and Jerry was totally butchering the lyrics. Bobby steps up to the mic singing, “How does the song go?” and looking right at Jerry. He smacks his head, like “Wake the fuck up!” That same night they did “Brokedown Palace” for an encore, and Jerry—three separate times—started the song, came up to the mic, and started with the last verse first—three straight times. Everybody was like, “Fuck.” But, I mean, he’s kind of been that way his whole career. I was listening to a tape the other day from 1975, and he was doing “Sugaree” and at one point it was like, “Hrr hrhrhrh” for about three lyrics. But then he would just step back and blister a solo. He’s the one performer everybody forgave.

Miriam

Health-care analyst

There were a lot of shows in 1992 in the Bay Area where it was like, “Where is the band? Did they even show up?” I would never go to the depths of saying they sucked because they never totally sucked—they just didn’t come to the show. Their bodies were there, but their playing wasn’t there sometimes. We would watch Jerry and think, “Give that man a shot of adrenaline or something. Wake the fuck up.” My friend Lisa and I were like, “Wait a minute. Something’s not right here.” And that’s where the whole idea to go on tour came about. It wasn’t an extensive tour like other people’s tours, but that was what we came up with. “This is not going to be around for much longer. We need to see as many shows as we possibly can.” So that’s what we did.

We weren’t on the road like everybody else. We didn’t do roads. I was a working Deadhead. I had this job that I liked to do that I’m good at, thank goodness. And then I had this extracurricular activity that I enjoyed the heck out of, and I wasn’t going to let them disrupt each other. The longest run we did was in the year Jerry died, 1995. We went to Charlotte, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Portland, and the Shoreline in Mountain View.

We weren’t going from hotel to hotel or campsite to campsite. No, no. Fly to the show, stay at a Motel-6, fly home. We went on a mini-vacation. Most of the time, it was in an airplane. I do recall one time where we drove to Vegas, but I didn’t even drive. I was a passenger. I had bronchitis, and that sucked. It was hot and dry. Not high, just hot. I got high on people being high. I was sick. I was not partaking in drugs. When we got to the show, we were parked so far away and had to walk so far to get in that we missed seeing Sting open. I was overheated just from walking in. I don’t remember much of that show. I remember “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” I just know it was fun. I was happy to be there. I was surprised I made it!

I still listen to the Dead all the time. I don’t own a car right now, but when I rent a car and it has satellite radio, I’m always on channel 23!