As 1971 gave way to 1972, we began to plot our first major tour of Europe; it was a tour that would become one of our most notorious adventures. But first we had some big changes to make on the home front. Including a whole new lineup—with Mickey on leave and Pigpen chronically sick and unable to really pound the keys, an opportunity arose for new blood. And it came serendipitously. Chalk it up to that ole Grateful Dead synchronicity thing.
Around this time, we moved our office to a spot in downtown San Rafael, on the corner of Fifth and Lincoln. We started calling it by the uber-creative and “How the hell did you ever come up with that?” nickname of … Fifth and Lincoln. I already mentioned it by name in the last chapter because this is where Mickey’s leave of absence became official. Anyway, that office really worked well for us, and we kept it for the rest of our career. Some people might find it interesting that another one of the world’s biggest bands, Metallica, have their operations just down the road from there. So while San Rafael might not be seen as a rock ’n’ roll destination, don’t tell me that town ain’t got no heart.
Our office at Fifth and Lincoln was actually an old Victorian house, with bay windows, and all the classic Victorian architecture stuff. It had a large kitchen and we turned all the bedrooms and everything into offices. On just about any particular day, you could come in and find Jerry there, as early as nine in the morning, sitting at the kitchen table, doing whatever—maybe reading, maybe playing guitar, maybe giving an interview, maybe talking to somebody. He was there all the time. It became a hub for all of us. We’d come in and get our mail there—we each had our own mailboxes, as if it was a student union on a college campus or something. It was a meeting place and a place to catch people on the coming or going.
A few years after we got Fifth and Lincoln up and running, we also took over a warehouse just a couple miles away at 20 Front Street that we turned into our permanent rehearsal space. We sometimes called it Club Front because it became the boy’s club. It was a place for music, partying, recording, working on cars, whatever. It often felt like we spent more time just hanging out, than rehearsing. Especially in later years; it kept moving in that direction, unfortunately. Toward the end, it became a lot of waiting around; waiting for everyone to show up, waiting for drugs to be delivered, and then waiting for the last person to come out of the bathroom. If it wasn’t too late by the time all that criteria was met, sometimes we’d pick up our instruments.
Fifth and Lincoln was our actual business headquarters—all kinds of people came in and out of there, from the visual artists that were working on cover art to music industry types for this, that and the other. Everybody would sort of gather around the kitchen table and hold great discussions. It was the place to do that.
Five, six years into our career it seemed as though, despite all the uncertainty and shape-shifting, we had become established. We would each, individually, still move around some—both literally and figuratively—in the years that followed, but San Rafael was now our permanent home base. In 1971, we weren’t quite the business entity that we eventually became … but we were on our way.
And yet, Jerry and Mountain Girl didn’t have the funds to buy a house that they really wanted out in Stinson Beach, a secluded Marin enclave on the rugged Pacific Coast where he could find inspiration and she’d be able to tend to a few pot plants without anyone noticing. So Jerry decided to manifest the down payment by recording a solo album. That record kicks off with “Deal” for a reason. He was wheeling and dealing, all right.
Because it was a solo venture, Jerry decided that he wanted to play almost all of the instruments himself, except for drums—he enlisted me for that role. He also brought Ram Rod in for those sessions, doing roadie work essentially, running errands and moving around the equipment and stuff. We’re both listed as “production assistants” in the credits. He paid Ram Rod the same amount that he paid me and that still bothers me to this day. But that was Jerry’s sense of fairness, which speaks volumes for his character, I think.
Musically, for that album, Jerry led the charge but he also conferred with me on certain arrangements. And, of course, he collaborated with Robert Hunter, who provided lyrics. I was awarded songwriting credits on nearly half the album, which was generous of Jerry. Basically, he would come out with this loose idea for a song—oftentimes, he’d be on piano and I’d be in an isolated drum booth—and I’d just start playing whatever felt right for the song on drums. We’d continue jamming in a certain direction until it crystalized into something a little more solid. Then, as if on cue, Hunter would come running out of the control room going, “Okay, I’ve got it!” and show Jerry some lyrics. When Jerry tried to place them, sometimes it would require a bit of adjusting and we’d tinker with the parts until they all fell into place. It was cool for me to be involved with that side of the process since, when Jerry brought stuff to the Dead, it was usually after that kind of incubation period.
The album, Garcia, was cut at Wally Heider Studios in July 1971 and released by Warner Brothers the following January. There are a lot of songs on there that became Grateful Dead mainstays, in addition to “Deal”—we’re talking about straight-up classics like “Sugaree,” “Loser,” and “The Wheel.” Also, “Bird Song” is on there, which, to this day, is one of my all-time favorite Dead songs and one of my absolute favorite songs to play live (along with “Dark Star” and “The Other One”).
When I want musicians I’m playing with to learn any of those songs, I give them the Garcia versions. They’re just so good. I had a really great time making that album. Dealing exclusively with Jerry was the most effortless thing in the world. I didn’t have to do anything other than be myself. And play.
Cocaine was our special guest throughout those recording sessions, but you’d never be able to tell because everything was very laid back. I have no idea how we were able to do that, because cocaine isn’t exactly known for its relaxing properties. Maybe it was just the dynamic between us that made it all so … easy.
I’m pretty sure Jerry wasn’t into heroin during the making of Garcia; as far I know, he hadn’t even discovered it yet. But when he did, during subsequent Grateful Dead albums, it could become difficult just to get him to show up, unfortunately. That got to be really old, really fast, for all of us. We wanted to play music with him so badly that we’d put up with it, which—in hindsight—was crazy. Nobody else in the band would’ve been able to get away with it; at least, not to the extent that he did. But Jerry Garcia was the exception.
It also opens up a moral question that we can talk about now, but we can never truly answer, since he’s not with us. There was a certain feeling, toward the end, that Jerry was using the Grateful Dead to finance his drug habit. That’s a sad thought. I don’t think he ever intended it to be that way or for it to get to that point or to hurt anyone. He was as pure of a musician as they come. But heroin addiction will change a person in ways that are tragic and discouraging.
If the rest of us had just been able to get outside of ourselves for a second, maybe we would’ve been able to say, “Hey, enough’s enough. We can’t support this anymore.” But not one of us could do that. We had our own addictions, too. For one thing, none of us wanted to stop touring as the Grateful Dead. By that point, we were addicted to the money as much as the music. I think we knew that he would just find other people to play with, and the problem wouldn’t have been solved except that, then, there would be no more Grateful Dead. Which is what ended up happening, anyway.
The best we could do—and we did try this, valiantly—was to try to get him into a rehab program. Those things just never worked because Jerry was as stubborn as he was brilliant and he could talk circles around the doctors. They couldn’t get through to him. He didn’t appreciate anyone who would try to change his ways—just as he would never impose his own views on anybody else, ever. He believed that everyone should be free to do whatever they wanted, no matter what. There was nothing that could be taken away from him, nothing that meant enough to him, nothing that could be used for leverage … to keep him away from heroin. That path wasn’t the way it was going to work. And, in the end, that proved true—nothing worked.
But during the Garcia sessions, everything was still on the up-and-up. I think that record really made a lot of people in the scene or industry take Jerry more seriously as an artist, by himself. It was proof of his genius. It drew attention to his music, without all the extraneous stuff that came along with the Grateful Dead.
A month after that album was released—so, in February 1972—Bobby walked down the solo path, as well. The Grateful Dead had some downtime at that point, leading Bobby to book a block of recording sessions at Wally Heider’s. Ironically, Jerry and Phil were also there during those weeks, in the studio next door, working on sessions for David Crosby. I played on some sessions for Crosby, too, at some point. Up in Studio C. That work can be heard on Crosby’s solo debut, If Only I Could Remember My Name.
As I did with Crosby and Garcia, I played drums for Bobby on his first solo album. But it was a totally different experience. From what I recall, Bobby had most of the songs together already by the time I got there, and he had clear ideas as to what he wanted to do. It was an enjoyable project to work on. He ended up using the rest of the Grateful Dead as his backing band. It was a chance for him to be boss. We just came in and played his songs. They were pretty straightforward and they felt good to play, actually. Some of those songs made it into the Grateful Dead repertoire and we ended up keeping them. By “some,” I mean … all of them except one.
“Cassidy” was on there and it became a favorite of mine in the Grateful Dead world. It could be a really fun song to play. I always like the songs that weren’t engraved in stone, that you could open up and be a little more freewheeling with, in between sections. You didn’t have to follow anything that you’d played in that particular spot before—you could do it differently every time and come at it with new ideas and if they worked, they worked. Those kinds of songs are my kinds of songs and some of the Weir songs from that album became like that. “Playing in the Band” is another obvious one.
“Looks Like Rain” evolved into a Grateful Dead staple, and there were a couple instances at some outdoor shows where it started pouring down rain right after we played it. So then, a few of our fans said, “The Grateful Dead can control the weather.” That became the rumor for a while. I’m not going to say if that was true or not, but you know … science.
In some ways, Bobby’s solo album—which he called Ace and which was released in May 1972—did the same thing for him that Garcia did for Jerry. It made me take Bobby more seriously as a songwriter, and it somehow upped his standing in the band.
Since Mickey was newly estranged from the Grateful Dead, but still in our extended family, he also recorded a solo album in 1972. He called it Rolling Thunder in honor of our Shoshone friend and shaman. Perhaps of note, perhaps not: I didn’t have anything to do with that one. Jerry did. Bobby did. Phil did. But I didn’t. Maybe it was Mickey’s turn to be the only drummer.
As for the Grateful Dead proper, a year before all these solo albums were released—back in the Spring of 1971—we started recording live shows with the intent of releasing another live album. That source material became an album that may properly be called Grateful Dead, and is more popularly known by the nickname Skull and Roses. But the original name was going to be Skull Fuck. This was a time long before rap artists like Eminem numbed concerned citizens to the idea of offensive language in music. Warner Brothers freaked out on us. They said stores would boycott, it and we wouldn’t be able to get it on shelves. So we didn’t end up calling it Skull Fuck. But we did try.
Whatever you want to call it, it ended up being a double-live album that is still a favorite among many fans and it was our first release to be certified gold. It dropped in the fall of 1971. We were in a new state of transition at that time, as we had slimmed down to a five-piece again. But with Pigpen’s ailing health (and, perhaps, abilities) preventing him from really taking charge on organ, we had sonic holes that, we felt, longed for keyboard parts. So Jerry brought in a guy named Merl Saunders, whom he worked with on some solo projects, to do a handful of overdubs for the album.
But that still didn’t solve the problem of the missing Grateful Dead keyboardist. Merl worked out great for the overdubs and, to be honest, I don’t know why we didn’t invite him to join the band. I have no idea. Maybe I don’t remember; maybe I never knew. We didn’t usually talk about those kinds of things. But, again, that still did not solve the problem of the missing Grateful Dead keyboardist.
When Pigpen took center stage during his selected rave-ups, he was a great blues frontman. But the rest of the time, he was more of a background player. Then, in September 1971, he was hospitalized with a bleeding ulcer and some other stuff. None of it good. I didn’t know it was that serious, and even though I didn’t ask them, I don’t think the other guys did, either. We thought it was just a thing that would heal. Three months later, in December 1971, he was able to return to playing shows with us. But there was no denying that he was in a weakened condition and he was never able to fully recover to his old self after that, darn it.
So, we knew we wanted a full-time keyboardist and I knew that Tom Constanten wasn’t it. But we didn’t have anybody else on our radar, just yet. Some of the guys in the band—namely, Jerry and Phil—became friendly with a whiz kid who was, at the time, enrolled at MIT, named Ned Lagin. Before anyone had met Ned, he had written the band a letter after catching one of our Boston shows in 1969. Jerry and Phil liked what he had to say. I wasn’t all that interested in it and didn’t really pay attention until Ned came into Wally Heider’s to record a piano part for us, for the song “Candyman,” which appears on American Beauty.
Despite the starkness of that particular record, Lagin’s true specialty was his far-out ideas about the integration of electronics and music creation and of using computers—in real time—as an instrument. He was onto something, of course, because that’s where music has gone today. He predicted the electronica movement and EDM and I think his vision had a science-fiction element that captured Phil’s and Jerry’s imagination. But, like T.C., Ned just wasn’t the right fit for the Grateful Dead. He played with us a bunch of times between 1970 and 1974 and he did a collaboration with Phil (and, sometimes, Jerry), called Seastones, that they would sometimes play live, in between Dead sets. They may have even toured it together. But Ned was never an actual member of the band. He was his own thing.
Meanwhile, the band auditioned a keyboardist named Howard Wales, who laid down some parts for us in 1970 that we ended up using on American Beauty. As was the case with Merl Saunders, Wales came to us through Jerry, who played with him in side projects and whom Jerry would continue to work with for many years. I don’t know how or where Jerry found him, but Wales had done some session work with James Brown and the Four Tops before we brought him in for American Beauty.
His Grateful Dead audition, however, didn’t quite work out. He was a madman on the organ but he was just too wild for us. It was too much “Howard” and not enough “Grateful Dead.” I still remember the audition, though, because he was such an insanely brilliant player.
Then, around the same time that Pigpen entered the hospital, Jerry gave me a call telling me to get my ass down to the rehearsal space. He said there was a guy down there with him that I simply had to hear. Nobody else from the band was around, but almost immediately after I arrived, I knew that Jerry was right—this guy could really play piano. He was one of the best, if not the best, keyboardist that I’ve had the honor of playing with. The Grateful Dead have played with some really good ones over the years, like Bruce Hornsby and Brent Mydland, but this guy was just outrageous. He was really competent too, in that he could pick up whatever Jerry and I started playing that day, and just run with it. He didn’t need to know the material first. He could learn songs before he was even done hearing them for the first time. And he could play just about anything.
His name was Keith Godchaux and he instantly became a member of the Grateful Dead. Legend has it that the whole reason Jerry even gave him a chance was because Keith’s wife, Donna Jean Godchaux, approached Jerry at one of his solo gigs at a small club in San Francisco called the Keystone. She went right up to him and declared that her husband was going to be the Dead’s new keyboardist. Fate would have it that we needed a new keyboardist, so Donna had Jerry’s attention. At her persistent insistence, he decided to give Keith a shot.
Keith liked to play on grand pianos and, once he got comfortable with us, he brought a Steinway on tour and it sounded great. Our technology had finally gotten to a point where we could bring a grand piano out with us, and mic it in a way that would do it justice. We had to isolate it from the other sounds on stage. That was a big deal at the time, and our sound guy, Dan Healy, basically invented the technique for that. Keith’s Steinway ended up having a really nice, clean sound. And, man, he was just absolutely brilliant on that piano. We were all really thrilled to have him in the Grateful Dead. His first show with us was on October 19, 1971, in Minneapolis, at the start of a grueling tour that didn’t really end until New Year’s Eve. He slid right into it like a champ.
Keith grew up in Concord, California—a town in the East Bay, about thirty miles east of San Francisco. As a personality, he was kind of quiet and understated. Much like a lot of people, though, you got some drinks in him and he could become boisterous and act all tough. Unfortunately, he and Donna used to get into some very ugly husband-and-wife arguments. On one occasion, they had a demolition derby in the parking lot of Club Front. They took turns smashing into each other’s identical BMWs, screaming all the while. Of course, that was a little disconcerting to us. We didn’t think nice cars should be treated like that.
It was a small parking lot, so they couldn’t get a lot of top speed. That limitation might’ve been the only thing that prevented them from killing each other, but they still managed to destroy the cars. I saw the aftermath of it firsthand. Their uncertainty as a couple could be hard on us as a band. I think the bottom line in this conversation is that the music business is damn hard on couples and families. It truly is. Ask any of my ex-wives.
Donna came from Alabama and had worked in the music industry probably before Keith. She had been a professional singer at the influential FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals and sang backup on the original studio recordings of Elvis Presley’s “Suspicious Minds” and Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves a Woman.” She also did work for Cher, Boz Scaggs, and others. On New Year’s Eve 1971 at the Winterland—just three months after her husband joined the band—Donna came onstage to sing on Bobby’s “One More Saturday Night.” It was her first time onstage with the Grateful Dead. After that, she was a member, too.
Donna was kind of shy and insecure about singing with the Dead but we all encouraged her to give it her best shot and we supported her in everything, all the way. She did some country tunes … but it was Donna, you know? It was cool—sort of.
Donna is a good person and I don’t want to hurt her by saying this, but I never felt she fit in with the sound that we were going for. She wasn’t integral. The boys had all worked with Crosby, learning how to fill the spectrum with parts and harmonies. There just wasn’t enough space for Donna’s voice. Sometimes it felt like Donna and Bobby had to compete for vocal attention and that was an issue for me, because it took away from the music.
She sang in tune, but it wasn’t that. It was the timbre. Some voices just don’t sound great together. Like art—some colors clash. Even though they’re all good colors.
Offstage, of course, we all enjoyed having her around. She brought a feminine energy to the band and sometimes even a feminine kind of love. That is to say, we all loved her and some of us got to express that love with her. It was the 1970s, and a special time in American history. And on that note, we split for Europe.