We were in the middle of a load-out at one of Bill Graham’s Bay Area clubs, a place called the old Waldorf, the first time I saw her. She was tall and lean, with reddish-blond hair and friendly eyes, and I couldn’t stop looking at her. Eventually our eyes locked and she smiled, and I took that opportunity to strike up a conversation, even as I continued to reel in a couple miles of cable. Her name was Lorraine Doremus and she was originally from New York. Like a lot of people who had moved to California, Lorraine was in the process of finding herself. She’d graduated from high school, served time in the U.S. Army, and then worked for a while as a topless dancer, none of which made her very happy. So she’d drifted out to the West Coast and was now staying with some friends in San Mateo while planning the next phase of her life.
There was an exchange of phone numbers, a couple interactions that could generously be called “dates,” and then for some reason she fell in love with me, and I fell in love with her, despite the fact that I was about the worst candidate imaginable for domestication. Although I hadn’t succumbed to the lure of heroin and cocaine the way so many others in our circle had, I was nevertheless leading a dangerous and wild life. I was on the road all the time, working for both the Garcia Band and the Grateful Dead, and when I wasn’t on the road I lived on the back of a motorcycle. I was so wild that around this time I got really drunk one night, crashed my bike, and wound up breaking my shoulder in four places. (The injury was severe enough that I had to bring my dear friend and motorcycle mechanic, Billy Grillo, on the road to help out with the Grateful Dead. Billy and Corky—George Varra—became part of my hand-picked Garcia crew.) To put it mildly, I was not the “settling down” type.
But that was okay with Lorraine. Within a couple weeks of our first meeting she had moved in with me, apparently content to share her life with a man who wanted no part of a traditional family, and who had no idea what the word “commitment” meant, proclamations of love notwithstanding. This happened to a lot of guys on the crew and in the band. We all had women who hung out with us; those who eventually moved into our homes were often referred to as “housekeepers.” It wasn’t a term of derision, really, but it certainly wasn’t born of respect. Rather, it was a way to categorize the relationship in clinical terms. I didn’t want a wife or a mother or, God forbid, a soul-mate. I wanted someone to have sex with . . . someone who would clean the house and cook my meals and be happy that I was paying the bills, so happy that they wouldn’t care what I did while I was on the road. They would ask nothing of me and expect even less. But a funny thing sometimes happened with these types of arrangements: you’d be hanging out together, essentially playing house, and things would change. It was inevitable. You’d be sleeping together, having fun, sharing major parts of your life, and suddenly you’d develop feelings you hadn’t anticipated. Feelings that had some legitimate depth.
That’s what happened with me and Lorraine. Sort of. I can say with complete honesty that I loved her, but I didn’t respect her enough to abandon my selfish ways. I continued to have one life at home and another life on the road. I wasn’t going to deny myself anything. In one sense, though, I’d made some progress: I didn’t lie. I told Lorraine what I was like and how I lived my life and that I had no intention of changing. I’m sure she didn’t like that, but she put up with it pretty well. So well, in fact, that for a while she was willing to share our home and our bed with other women.
One of them was Suzette, another gorgeous exotic dancer I met in Denver, right around the same time I met Lorraine. Dancers were usually a lot of fun, and I’d gotten to know many of them throughout the country. They liked to come to the shows, they liked to party, and they had low expectations. By this time I’d spent enough time walking on the wild side to know exactly what it was like to be with two women at one time, and how to make that fantasy happen, if only for a few hours, maybe a few days. For some reason, though, I got it into my head that I could have two women for an extended period of time, that both Lorraine and Suzette would be happy living with me, sharing me. You know, like Three’s Company, only better, because we’d actually be having sex.
It was a crazy idea, really. I’d seen other guys—like Dan Healy—try it out, and it was difficult and required an enormous amount of patience (a quality I lacked). Most of us preferred the “girl in every port” approach. They were much easier to please and manipulate, for you saw them only a few times each year. But two old ladies under a single roof? That was rare.
Somehow I thought I could be the exception to the rule, the one man who could smoothly incorporate multiple women into his home life without anyone getting jealous or angry or petty. So I started bringing Suzette out to California, where she’d stay with me and Lorraine for a few days at a time. Before long the three of us were living together, and we developed an amazingly open and generous three-way relationship. Then I met Joanne, a beautiful girl from San Diego, and after she moved north it became a four-way relationship, and I was—how can I put this?—well, I was in heaven.
Then the strangest and most unexpected thing began to happen: Instead of becoming more sensitive to their needs, and more caring and nurturing to these three wonderful women, I became an asshole. Instead of the women experiencing jealousy or envy or regret, or any other feelings that would cause our complicated relationship to crumble, I was the one who became weird about the whole thing. I’d favor one woman over the other. I’d treat them differently for no reason at all. Or maybe there was a reason. Maybe, subconsciously, I wanted it to fall apart. Maybe that’s why I started leaning on Lorraine, treating her more like a domestic partner and less like a plaything, while not extending the same courtesy to the others. Whatever the reason, we soon drifted apart. Joanne was the first to go, although there was no bitter breakup, no face-slapping, no venom of any kind. In fact, I will always consider her a good friend and a remarkable woman. And then Suzette started to drift off, again, with no hard feelings, but rather with the idea that it was simply time to move on. That left Lorraine, who walked out of the bedroom one day with a smile on her face and told me she was pregnant, and that I was the father, and the air rushed out of me in a single breath and the world turned upside down.
I’d been told news of this sort only once before, several years earlier. But the circumstances and outcome were much different. I came home one rainy afternoon and found my girlfriend sitting in the living room, looking sad and depressed. I asked what was bothering her and she told me she’d just returned from the doctor’s office, where she’d had an abortion. My initial reaction, I’m embarrassed to say, was not sympathy, but anger. I hadn’t even known that she was pregnant.
“You’re kidding!” I said. “Why didn’t you consult me? Don’t I have any say in this?”
She shook her head, wiped away a tear. “Are you kidding? I’m going to have a child with you? The way you live? It’s out of the question.”
She was absolutely right, of course. Still, at the time, it hurt to know that I might have been a father, and to have been denied any input into the decision-making process. So when Lorraine woke up that morning in December of 1982 and said, “I’ve been late, I just took a test, and I’m pregnant,” all I could do was smile. I was filled with awe. A baby! And she wanted to have it—with me! And I wanted to have it. God only knows why, but I did.
For a brief, mind-boggling time, I honestly felt that I was up to the task of being a husband and a father. I wasn’t, though. Pretty soon I was back out on the road, living the way I had always lived. Along the way Lorraine hinted a few times at the possibility of our getting married, but I wouldn’t even consider it. I covered all her medical expenses, made sure the bills were paid at home, and that she could afford to buy whatever she needed in the way of clothing and food. When I was home we slept together and held hands and acted like a young couple in love, a couple about to become a family.
Jennifer was born on September 3, 1983. I’d like to say that I was there at Lorraine’s side, coaching her through labor, wiping her brow as she did all the work. But that would be another lie. I was on a stage in Park City, Utah, working a Grateful Dead concert. At the very moment Jennifer was born, I was crawling across the stage floor to fix something on Bob Weir’s gear. When I got it fixed and returned backstage, Danny Rifkin told me Lorraine was on the phone, and that I had a baby girl. It saddened me not to be there, and I did feel some guilt and shame about that, although not so much that it prevented me from partying wildly at the hotel later that night, celebrating the birth of my baby daughter by having mad sex with a bunch of strippers a thousand miles from home. That’s the kind of man I was, that’s the kind of life I led.
Ready or not, responsibility was thrown at me in clumps. First a child, then a new job. In 1984, for reasons that I couldn’t really articulate clearly at the time, I followed Jackson and others down the dark path of management. It happened more out of necessity than anything else. It wasn’t like I was hungry for power or control. The fact is, Rock Scully, who was managing the Garcia Band and was publicist for the Grateful Dead, had become so dysfunctional that everyone was beginning to suffer. Everywhere we went, people were talking about him: “Where’s Rock? What’s wrong with him? Is he going to be okay?” Covering up for him and compensating for his problems became an overwhelming chore.
Rock wrote a book a while back in which he accused me of sandbagging him at a meeting, but that wasn’t my view of it. We’d all been talking about Rock and his inability to function for some time. As a rule, though, confrontation was not a strong suit of the members of the Grateful Dead. Problems were allowed to fester for almost unlimited amounts of time, until someone either quit or died and the problem went away. This time, though, I stood up at a meeting and confronted Rock. I told him, in no uncertain terms, “Rock, this can’t go on any longer.” Everyone else agreed, and Rock was dismissed. I felt bad about his departure and my role in it, but I also felt it was necessary if the two bands were to avoid chaos and self-destruction.
It was a natural move for me to step into the dual role of road manager and band manager for the Garcia Band, not only because I’d been working so closely with Jerry for nearly fifteen years, but also because I’d kept a close eye on the managers who had gone before me. I’d followed their accomplishments and their mistakes, and I was reasonably sure that I could avoid many of the pitfalls that had ruined their careers. It helped that I had a wonderful and capable assistant in Sue Stephens, who had been taking care of the Garcia Band’s paperwork for years. It also helped that Jerry was a generous and trusting employer, especially when it came to money. By industry standards, everyone associated with the Garcia Band was compensated extremely well. We’d finish a tour and Jerry would say, “How much money did we make?” I’d tell him and he’d just smile and nod. “Good. Now make sure you pay everyone well. You’ve all earned it.” Jerry never dictated salaries, never sat around and counted the money. He left that to me, partly because he knew we’d be fair, but also because he just hated dealing with those kinds of things. Business, as most people know, was not one of Jerry’s strong suits. He was first, foremost, and always, an artist. I felt a tremendous responsibility to prove myself worthy of his trust, to the point where I gave everyone in the band as much money as I possibly could, certainly more than I ever paid myself. The crew was paid handsomely, too—I still worked as a member of the crew of the Grateful Dead and I understood and sympathized with them, so I made sure they felt their efforts were appreciated. And Jerry wanted it that way. Whatever problems he may have had, whatever demons tormented him, Jerry always loved and respected anyone who was dedicated to him and his music.
Included in that group, of course, was Bill Graham, a true giant in the industry. I had learned a great deal about the music business from Bill, so when I took over as manager of the Garcia Band, one of my goals was to enrich our relationship with him. At the time, Bill was handling promotion for our West Coast shows, while John Scher, another dear friend, handled promotion on the East Coast. I spent a lot of time hanging out with Bill after shows in the Bay Area, talking and drinking and smoking, and sometimes we’d discuss the possibility of him becoming more involved, of promoting some of our shows back East, just as he’d done in the early days. But this was a tricky concept, since we also had a strong relationship with John Scher.
“If we’re going to work together on the East Coast,” I said to Bill, “it can’t be in one of John’s theaters. It’s going to have to be something really unique.”
Bill agreed, and together we came up with the idea of bringing the Garcia Band to Broadway. Not just for a night or two, but for an extended run. And that’s how the Jerry Garcia Band became the first rock ’n’ roll act to play Broadway. We played twelve shows in fourteen days at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in late 1987. It was an exhausting but successful engagement that opened the door for us to work with Bill anywhere in the country.
By working with both John Scher and Bill Graham, two of the best in the business, I got a crash course in management and promotion. I watched the way they worked, and I compared their styles. I absorbed as much as I could. Admittedly, by doing this I not only helped myself, but jeopardized my personal and professional relationship with John. But he proved to be an even better friend than I had suspected. I know John was hurt by our decision to work with Bill on the East Coast, but he did not hold a grudge, and he continued to promote some of our shows.
While coping with my new professional responsibilities, I tried to be a decent father, though I really didn’t know what that entailed. I hadn’t planned on starting a family, but I had one nonetheless, and I was surprised by the feelings it engendered. We bought a little house together in Sonoma County, and several months later, in the spring of 1984, Lorraine became pregnant again. I was shocked at how quickly it had happened, until I talked with Kesey one night and he just laughed and put the proper cosmic spin on the situation.
“Man, didn’t you ever have puppies when you were a boy?”
“Nah, I was a city kid.”
“Well, all females get pregnant real quick when they’re nesting. Remember that next time, huh?”
It was Lorraine’s idea to get married. She’d brought it up a few times in the past, but never in a hostile or threatening way. I had always said no, never thought it was all that important. Now, though, everything was changing. I had one child and a second on the way. Lorraine asked me again one day to marry her. She didn’t beg, didn’t yell or cry, just expressed her desire earnestly and simply, as was her custom.
“All right,” I said. “Why not?”
In some abstract way I liked the idea of getting married, settling down, raising a family. My desire to take care of these two little babies was completely sincere, although in reality I wasn’t even remotely prepared for the task. Nevertheless, our union was formally and legally recognized during a small civil ceremony in Marin County. There was no honeymoon, no “wedding.” Just me and Lorraine and a friend of ours named Janet Knudsen, a secretary for the band who had agreed to act as a witness. We exchanged vows, rings, kisses . . . and then we went home.
The months rolled by. As usual I spent a lot of my time on the road. Professionally, I’d never been busier. I liked the challenge of managing the Garcia Band, and I still enjoyed working as part of the Dead crew. Regardless of which band I was with, I never let go of the equipment, because that’s where my heart was. Through the equipment I was connected to the music, which was bigger and more important than any job.
As for my home life, well, everything had changed . . . and nothing had changed. Lorraine and I got along just fine, and Jennifer was a beautiful little girl, toddling all over the house, crashing into things and smiling from the moment she woke until the time she fell asleep in her mother’s arms. Or, sometimes, in my arms. I’d cradle her and sing to her, and like any new father I was awed by the very fact of her existence. When I was around, that is. Most of the time I was neither a husband nor a father; I was just a man who happened to have a wife and a child and another child on the way. On the road I behaved pretty much as I’d always behaved. A part of me wanted to change, but it was a small part. I wasn’t ready.
Lorraine didn’t push me, either. She was reasonably content to stay home and raise our family without much help from me. I bought her a Buick station wagon and sent her to driving school so that she could be self-sufficient when I was away, but she was a slow learner. Even after she got her license and learned how to traverse the tricky back roads of Marin County—the winding, mountainous county two-lanes that are far less traveled but no less dangerous than the interstates—she was never more than a competent driver. But she was careful. She always told me that.
On December 27, 1984, the night before the Grateful Dead was scheduled to begin their three-day run-up to their annual New Year’s Eve show at Civic Center in San Francisco, the strangest and most mystifying thing happened. (I don’t particularly care if anyone believes it or not.) While Jennifer slept peacefully in the next room, Lorraine and I were lying in bed together, watching an old movie on television. Lorraine had never seen It’s a Wonderful Life, and of course she thought it was a beautiful story with a wonderful, life-affirming message. Sure it’s sappy, but when you’re eight and a half months pregnant and it’s the Christmas season, cynicism doesn’t come easily. When the movie ended, I turned out the light and held Lorraine close. I put a hand on her belly and felt the baby stir. She was in the final weeks of her pregnancy then, and while she was tired and uncomfortable, she was in generally good spirits. She was thrilled at the prospect of having another child, and so was I. In fact, I was trying to be a better person, a better father and husband. I didn’t want to deny my family. I wanted to be there for them.
The next morning, around seven o’clock, Lorraine woke up screaming. She’d been having a nightmare.
“Something is pulling me off this earth!” she gasped. I rolled over and put my arms around, tried to comfort her. She pushed me back, looked me straight in the eyes, and said it again. “Steve . . . something is pulling me.”
“It’s okay,” I said, kissing her forehead. “Everything will be all right.”
Late that morning I drove into town to start setting up for the show. We’d been to a holiday party at a friend’s house in Woodacre the previous evening, and Lorraine had mistakenly left her purse behind. She said she was going to drive there to retrieve the purse in the afternoon, and then call me to discuss the possibility of joining me at the show.
I checked in a few hours later, just as Lorraine was getting ready to leave. She was running late and hadn’t yet picked up her purse. I told her I’d see her when I got home. I told her to drive carefully.
When I walked through the front door shortly after midnight, I was immediately struck by the stillness of our house. It was never that quiet, not even when Lorraine and Jennifer were sleeping. I checked the bedrooms. Both empty. I paced the floor for a few minutes, wondering where they might be. I tried not jump to conclusions, tried not to panic. Then I sat down in a chair and waited. This will probably sound strange, but I didn’t call the police, or anyone else for that matter. Something did not feel right. I thought about the dream, and about Lorraine and Jennifer out there on the road somewhere. It didn’t make sense that she would just disappear like this, that she wouldn’t call.
I didn’t sleep at all, just sat there in the living room, staring out the window, waiting for them to come home. Finally, around eight o’clock, there was a knock at the door, and I opened it to find a dour-looking gentleman with hat in hand standing on my front steps.
“Mr. Parish?”
“Yes.”
“I’m very sorry,” he said. “I have some bad news.”
My knees buckled. I had trouble breathing. “They’re dead, aren’t they?”
He lowered his head. “Please . . . may I come in?”
“Not the baby, too. God . . . not the baby.”
He held me up and walked me into the house. Then we sat down together in the living room as he delivered the kind of news that no one should have to deliver. He was the county coroner, so I’m sure he’d done this sort of thing before, but that made it no less painful. He told me there had been a car accident the previous night, that Lorraine was apparently driving back home from Woodacre when she failed to negotiate a sharp turn and crashed into a tree. She had died at the scene, along with our unborn child. Jennifer had survived the initial crash but was critically injured. Paramedics had taken her to a nearby hospital and worked furiously to save her life, but it was too late. She died shortly after arriving.
The next thing I knew I was out in the street, crying, running. A neighbor came out and stopped me. She grabbed me by the arms and pulled me close. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I thought you knew. The police were here last night and I told them you were working in the city. Why didn’t they come and tell you?”
I had no answer. I had no answer for anything. All I knew was that my world had collapsed, that my entire family had been wiped off the planet with a single breath. Just like that. They were all gone.
I went back into the house and called Lorraine’s parents. We had met once before, when Lorraine and I took Jennifer back East for a visit, but I didn’t know them well. I’d spent most of my time on that trip working with the band, which was playing in New York. It was always work for me. Work, work, work. Work came first. Play came second. Family third. Always. I don’t really remember exactly what I told them. I remember kind of spitting out the grim facts and then handing the phone off to the coroner to let him finish the job as Lorraine’s mom and dad cried on the other end. Then I got a phone call from Peter Barsotti, one of Bill Graham’s lieutenants, who had a question about the show, and I told him what had happened. He made a few phone calls and quickly the word spread. People started coming over. By early afternoon my house was full. Everyone from the crew had stopped by to offer their condolences, to do whatever they could, which, of course, was nothing. Everyone from the band came, too—everyone except Jerry, who was too disturbed and shaken by the incident to come by in person. He could be that way: socially awkward to the point of embarrassment.
I forget who first made the suggestion, but it was quickly determined that the Grateful Dead should cancel its shows for the next few days. But I said, no, that would serve no purpose. Again, I know it sounds crazy, but I felt the only way I could survive that experience was to get back to work, to be with the band and the crew, making music, doing the things I loved. It was distraction therapy, I know, but I had no alternative. I’d lost two children and a wife. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I knew only that I couldn’t just sit there and cry. Nothing made sense. Nothing except the music.
So we did the show that night, and the night after that, and the night after that. And it was remarkable experience, the way the guys in the band and the guys on the crew all rallied around me and hugged me and propped me up and told me how much they loved me. I should also say that Billy Crowe, along with Mickey Hart, insisted on going to the coroner’s office to identify the body so that I wouldn’t have to do it. They didn’t think I could handle that sort of trauma, and maybe they were right. I don’t know. Several people from the band stayed with me for the next several weeks, taking turns feeding me, talking with me, making sure I was all right. Phil Lesh and his wife, Jill, were immensely giving and thoughtful. They were just starting their lives together, and their love was so strong and pure and clear that it had a palpable effect on me. It made me smile, made me think of the possibilities that life can bring. Bobby Weir stayed with me for days on end, listening to music, talking, just hanging out, the way friends do.
And then there was Jerry . . .
That first night, when I got to the show, Jerry approached me backstage and gave me a hug. He seemed so sad, so moved by my loss. And then, in a twisted but genuinely loving gesture, he did something that astounded me.
“Hey, man,” he said, his eyes brimming with tears. “You want some heroin? It’ll kill the pain.”
I thanked him but declined the offer. “If I did anything right now—one snort, one drink—I’d never stop.”
He nodded and told me again how sorry he was. In that instant I felt more pity for Jerry than I did for myself, because he really was trying to help. He just didn’t know any other way.