It’s no secret that you’re born alone in this world and, one way or another, you die alone. In between, we have each other. Well, okay, we also have music and laughter and adventure and drunken nights and lazy days and hardships and sunshine and tickets to the ball game and a good book or two and maybe some pets and, if you live with someone named Owsley, maybe half a dead cow in your fridge. But family is important. Family and music are the top two things that have gotten me through this life, although sometimes I’ve had difficulty balancing the two, or honoring the two … but I couldn’t have come this far without either of them.
I’ve made my mistakes along the way; we all have. “Making mistakes” belongs in that list above, of things we have or do between life and death. Humans make mistakes. But we also, if we’re lucky, make up for them.
I already told you, way back yonder in this tale, about my grandfather, the famous football coach. One of the teams he coached was the Chicago Bears and I have such a fond memory of a particular game that they played against the San Francisco 49ers when I was a kid. This was back when the 49ers’ home field was at Kezar Stadium in Golden Gate Park, right where it borders Haight-Ashbury. The Grateful Dead played there twice, during the early 1970s, and it was impossible for me not to feel some connection to my grandfather at those shows.
But going back to that football game which, by the way, he lost: He introduced me to all the players that night, but he wouldn’t let me go down to the bench with them. He didn’t want me to see the nitty-gritty of what went on there. He was trying to protect me, that’s all. I watched the game in the stands, with my parents, and afterward we drove back home to Palo Alto in frozen silence because the Bears had been beat.
Years passed, as they have a way of doing, and my grandparents retired in Santa Monica, California. In the late 1960s, the Grateful Dead sometimes played shows at the Shrine, about half an hour from their house. During soundcheck at one of these shows, one of our crew guys told me that there were “two old people” outside who said that they knew me. Immediately I knew—my grandparents found out about the gig and, in the innocent way that grandparents do, they wanted to see what their grandson was up to. I didn’t invite them to the gig, though, and that was intentional. I didn’t want them to see the nitty-gritty of what went on there. I was trying to protect them, that’s all.
I’ve always stood by my lifestyle and everything that being in a rock ’n’ roll band entails and I lived my life in a way that I saw fit. So then, why would I be embarrassed to show that world to my grandparents? I suppose it’s because I didn’t think they would understand … or approve. I was afraid of disappointing them.
But I wasn’t going to turn them away at the door. So I grabbed a couple metal chairs for them to watch from the wings and they sat down and took it all in. It was a long soundcheck but they stayed for the whole thing and afterward I went back with them to their place and we sat around and ate Kentucky Fried Chicken for dinner and caught up. I loved them very much and I saw, in that moment, that they loved me too and that I had nothing to be embarrassed about. They loved me not only for the child they knew when I was growing up, but also for the man I had become in the years since. They were proud.
I learned a very serious lesson that day: Never hide who you are from your family. They will love you no matter what. If they don’t, they’re not good family. And if you find that out, well, love them back, anyway. It’s important. Same goes for your friends; in fact, never hide yourself from anybody.
As Jerry used to sing so beautifully, “Without love in the dream, it’ll never come true.”
Brenda, my first wife, took my daughter with her when we divorced. Stacy. When Stacy grew up, she got married and—as is the custom—assumed her husband’s last name. I think she may have remarried since then, but since I don’t know who the husband is, I don’t know Stacy’s last name anymore. I doubt she goes by Kreutzmann. It’s one of the great tragedies of my life, not knowing my own daughter’s last name. I don’t know where she lives. I don’t know what she does. I know I have two grandchildren, but I don’t know their names, either.
After Brenda and I split up, Brenda moved back down to Palo Alto and then, at some point, married a wealthy gentleman from San Jose. The details are fuzzy because I was too wrapped up in the dog days of the Grateful Dead to really pay that close of attention. I wasn’t capable of being a good father back then, I’m afraid. I wasn’t the best husband and I certainly wasn’t a very good ex-husband. I barely kept in touch with Brenda and I didn’t see Stacy as often as I should have. I didn’t abandon her … but I wasn’t always there for her, either.
When she got to be a certain age, maybe sixteen or seventeen, she reached out to me and we started spending quality time together, again. I wanted to be the long-lost dad. I wanted her to be in my life. After all, she’s my daughter.
She went away to college and got into some kind of trouble in Boston. She called me asking for help. She was in a sort of situation with a drug dealer over there, and I happened to know the guy because, I mean, I was in the Grateful Dead. During that time period, if you were a dealer in a major American city and I didn’t know who you were, then you weren’t that big a dealer and you weren’t that big a deal. Or else you were doing something wrong.
Well, I knew this guy and he was doing something wrong, anyway. He knew that Stacy needed money, so he tried to hire her. I wasn’t going to let Stacy make that kind of mistake, so I flew over there, rented an apartment for her, and got her back on her own two feet. I stayed with her long enough to make sure everything was okay, before I had to get back to the band.
Eventually, Stacy moved back to Northern California—Petaluma—and started working for the Grateful Dead family. A lot of our kids did. Stacy worked on our calendars and stuff like that. I didn’t get to spend a whole lot of time with her, sadly, but she worked out of our offices, so at least I got to see her regularly. We were connected.
Then one day she told me—on the phone—that she couldn’t come and see me anymore. She was going through a hard time and her therapist said she needed to cut me out of her life because I was the reason she was having difficulties. I know that I was hard to reach, as a father, during her adolescence, and I know that really has an effect on children. But I still think that severing ties was bad advice from the therapist. It wasn’t a solution.
I didn’t think I was the problem, but I didn’t want to become the problem. I wanted her to get better. To live a happy and complete life. So I respected her wish and I haven’t talked to her since. It saddens me as much as you think it’d sadden me, and I still hope that it’s just a phase, just a process.
It was a much more stable time in my life when my son Justin was born. I mean, it was 1969, and my career was still just getting off the ground in some regards. Being a traveling musician in a full-time rock ’n’ roll band is always going to have its challenges on home life, no matter how successful the band is. But Justin’s mom, Susila, was still with me throughout his childhood, so we felt more like a family. We were a family.
I had to be out on the road a lot, so Justin spent entire spans living with his grandparents, and I’m sure that wasn’t easy on him. I wish that hadn’t had to happen, but it did and I can’t change that now. His grandparents spoiled him at home, but he had a hard time in school for some reason. Even when he was living with Sue and me and he seemed happy, his teachers gave us a different story. He stayed with me after I divorced Susila and married Shelley, and then he went to a couple of different prep schools. He had difficulty at those, too.
One year, I gave him an eight-millimeter camera for Christmas, just because I thought he might enjoy playing around with it. Sure enough, suddenly we started spending a lot of time out in the garage together, making stop-action videos. We’d set up pieces and move them the tiniest bit and shoot two or three frames at a time that way. It was a lot of fun for me, but Justin really had a knack for it. He dove into film as an art form and that’s what he does for a living, today. They didn’t teach him that stuff in school; he was just a natural.
He and Jerry used to talk about film a lot, since they both fantasized about being big-time directors. They were film buffs and could discourse endlessly on various movies. I think Jerry really influenced Justin as a filmmaker, and that’s neat for me to think about, because it means that Jerry’s influence on people knew no boundaries. It wasn’t just limited to guitarists and musicians and Grateful Dead fans. Jerry and Justin would talk about filmmaking while we went through airports or had too much time to kill backstage before the show.
Justin was one of the “Grateful Kids” on tour with us. It wasn’t a usual upbringing by any means, but I didn’t see anything wrong with it. He was sixteen and on the road like a rock star, with his own hotel room each night, sometimes throwing wild parties till dawn with the other kids and stuff.
He’s all grown up now, with a lovely wife and two beautiful kids of his own—my grandkids. Justin’s been working for my old bandmate, Bob Weir, at TRI Studios in San Rafael, so the fluid notion of Grateful Dead family really does continue to this day. TRI is Bobby’s “playpen for musicians.” It’s a state-of-the-art studio for both audio and video—with a visionary emphasis on webcasting—and Justin directs a lot of the videos that they record there. I’m really proud of him.
I’m giving you what I can on the Kreutzmann clan but the real expert on my family tree is my sister, Marcia. She knows it all from the deepest roots to the weirdest branches. She’s thirteen years younger than me, and that discrepancy was prohibitive at first. We didn’t really have a chance to bond the way most siblings do. At least, not till years later.
When I was growing up, my parents would have periodic marital difficulties. They went through a challenging period where it seemed like things weren’t going to work out, but then they reconciled—and suddenly my mom was pregnant with Marcia. I was thirteen and a new sibling meant just one thing to me: I was no longer an only child, no longer the star attraction. Suddenly there was a baby in the house and babies demand a lot of attention and that meant attention lost for me. I didn’t stick around long enough for it to balance back out—a few years after Marcia was born, when I was around sixteen, I moved into my own apartment. So I didn’t really get to know my sister when we were growing up.
At some point, maybe in the early 1980s, Marcia came to a Grateful Dead show at the Forum in L.A. She and her friend had been partying, which, of course, was a pretty common thing to do at a Grateful Dead show. It’s the reason a lot of Deadheads didn’t want to bring family members with them to shows. They didn’t want to expose them to the nitty-gritty. They were trying to protect them.
Anyway, Marcia and her friend came backstage and it was pretty obvious that they were pretty well tuned up. They were lit. They insisted on singing “Happy Birthday” to me and I was a little embarrassed by it, at that time. Of course, it was even more embarrassing because it wasn’t actually my birthday.
I got to know Marcia a bit better later on in life and she’s a wonderful, artistic woman and I love having her as my sister. We send each other e-mails and laugh about different things and keep in touch. Marcia runs a dog grooming business in Santa Rosa, California and I love that about her. She can make nice with the nastiest, gnarliest dogs—but she refuses to groom them. She knows the problem isn’t with the dog, so much as with the owner. Smart.
In the early 2000s, Marcia and I hung out about once a month. In one of my life’s greatest missteps, I left Hawaii and moved back to Marin. Oops. It was a seven-year misstep. Double oops. There was a silver lining, though, and that’s that I got to really know my sister during that time. I had two golden retrievers that I would take to her to be groomed, but it was really just an excuse to see her. We’d have a great time over nothing and the appointment would take hours because we wanted it to—we would talk and talk, and I just loved it.
But I didn’t love much else that was going on in my personal life during that period. In 2000, I bought a house in Ross, California—just a couple miles west of downtown San Rafael—primarily because my wife at the time was tired of living in Hawaii. I kept my place on Kauai, but from 2000 to 2007, I spent most of my time in California.
It worked out—even if the marriage didn’t—because those were the years when the Other Ones, and then the Dead, were touring. We sometimes practiced five days a week, leading into a tour, and I couldn’t have done that had I still been living in Hawaii. Okay, so maybe I’m just trying to rationalize it. Airbnb didn’t exist back then, but I’ve stayed in hotel rooms once or twice before. I’m sure a few more nights wouldn’t have hurt.
Moving back to California was just a symptom of a much larger problem—I never should’ve gotten married in the first place. It was a loveless marriage on my part and, as you know, “without love in the dream, it’ll never come true.”
After that situation, I tried to lay low and mend my heart, which was still bleeding from losing Jerry and my father and my band and the life I had known back on the mainland. I was living in Anahola, fishing with Big Joe, and just kind of fumbling around. I don’t remember how I met Linda, but she lived a few miles up the shore in Kilauea. It’s a small island; people meet each other.
She wasn’t a bad person or anything like that, but our relationship didn’t inspire me, either. For whatever reason, she just kept showing up at my house and making herself present. I don’t remember ever really inviting her, but I was pretty low at that point in my life. And I was really lonely. Maybe Linda thought she was doing me a favor because she kept coming around, and to be honest, I didn’t mind the company. It was better than being alone. But before I knew it we just, somehow … started dating. On my end, it was more out of convenience and passivity than anything else. Well, that and the fact that I was just so lonely. I didn’t have the strength to resist.
After a few years, she started pressuring me to get married and, one day, I just said … yes.
This is how hard it was for me: The day of the wedding, I prayed that I’d have the strength to call it off. To say, “No.” But all the relatives were there, and there was cake, and I just felt like I had to honor my commitment. For better or for worse, I had already said yes. So now I had to say “I do.” Although it wasn’t fair to either of us.
I try to let everyone just live their own life and make their own decisions and I try not to interfere or to offer unwanted advice or to preach. Even in this book, when I tell most of these stories, I really hope they don’t come across as me trying to spread any agenda or send a particular message, other than the basic, “Marijuana is fine, GMOs are not, and God bless the Grateful Dead.” But I did make one really big mistake with my life that I really hope other people can learn from: marriage without love will not work. Linda was a lovely woman with lots of redeeming qualities and I liked her, but I wasn’t in love with her. So, after seven years, I finally pulled the rip cord. The marriage wasn’t right for me. I told her that I was going to file for divorce and I finally had the courage to stick with it.
I think those seven years had a purpose, though, and that was to get me ready for the most important thing to ever happen to me. Which was falling in love with the love of my life—Aimee. I wouldn’t have been right for her when we first met in 1996. I wouldn’t have been ready. I had lived a lot and loved a lot and toured the world for thirty years as a member of the Grateful Dead, but it takes more than that to be a good husband. Especially to a wildflower like Aimee. In 1996, I hadn’t lived life enough yet. I still had some learning to do, so that I could be ready for her.
Through marriage—I learned this from my sister—some of my ancestors owned the oldest sugar plantation in Hawaii. I’m not a big proponent of sugar, but I am a big proponent of Hawaii. I was destined to end up on this island. And even though Aimee had followed me around the country on Dead tours, I had to come here, to her island in the Pacific, to meet her.
Before I ran away to California with Linda, Aimee and I went on a blind date. That’s how we met. We both were single back then and I hosted a little dinner party at my house in Anahola, and Aimee was my date. I heard that she had creole blood in her and, since my mom was from New Orleans, I thought that I would play that card to connect us. I didn’t know yet that she was a Deadhead.
The way that Aimee tells this story, that was the night that I tried to kill her. I figured I’d impress her by cooking something that reminded her of home, something that spoke to her roots in Louisiana. I wasn’t much of a cook, I’m afraid, and I think I just figured that if I rubbed everything in habañero peppers, it would end up tasting like Cajun cuisine because of the spice. But it wasn’t the same kind of spice.
Aimee took one bite and her mouth exploded in flames. If there was a fire extinguisher within reach, she would’ve grabbed it. Instead she begged for a beer. Something to cool down the heat. But this was shortly after I had left Sierra Tucson. I was still sober. I didn’t have anything stronger than water. She thought that was outrageous, coming from a member of the Grateful Dead, and the date was a total disaster.
But I’m a drummer, so I know a thing or two about timing. It was time to wait it out. Years passed. She got married and started an organic farm; I got married and moved away.
When I came back to the island, my ex-wife’s sister was living in my house and I couldn’t simply evict her. It was a process. So I couch-surfed at my neighbor’s house and, one day, he invited Aimee over. Suddenly, I was sitting across from her again and I couldn’t believe it. The timing was finally right.
Before this, Aimee’s husband had passed away from cancer and she needed to mourn before she could start to heal. I had just gotten divorced and I needed time to recover from, well, just about everything that I had gone through in the decade leading up to that moment. But that moment finally came. We started dating. I blew it the first time, but the second time around, I was ready.
Aimee has lived a pretty incredible life and one day maybe she’ll write a book about her life story. I’d certainly buy it. She owned and operated several businesses on Kauai, including a children’s eco-tour company, and she was an organic farmer, but every Saturday night, she turned into a DJ at the local radio station KKCR. She hosted the Grateful Dead Show. I called in once and requested “Black Muddy River.” It’s still curious that I chose that one in particular, because it’s a sad song and I was in a euphoric mood.
“Nobody ever requests ‘Black Muddy River,’” she said. “Did you used to go to shows?”
“Yeah.”
“How many have you been to?”
“About all of them.”
When I told her that, she laughed and said, “Oh, I know who this is!” I was waiting outside the gate at the end of the radio station’s driveway for her.
Aimee’s farm is thirteen acres and, as fortune would have it, it’s less than two miles from my house. It’s just one road down and over. Aimee was worried about her land because the plot right next to hers—about eight acres, overlooking the ocean—was up for sale. If it fell into the wrong hands, the wrong neighbor could’ve seriously fucked up her little corner of paradise.
One day, I called her up with some unexpected news: “Somebody bought the property next to yours,” I said. I could hear the concern in her voice, so I tried to reassure her that it would all work out: “You have a new neighbor … me.”
We’ve spent the past few years building our dream house there and we’re getting ready to move in. So that’s how that fairy tale goes.
I proposed to Aimee in 2011, in New Orleans. I had kinda, sorta asked her to marry me several times before then, but she was stubborn and pushed me away: “If you’re gonna talk like that, you damn well better have a ring in your hand, dude. This isn’t idle chitchat.” So I got a ring. Then I waited for the right place / right time.
I had a couple of gigs down in New Orleans for Jazz Fest, and we stayed in a beautiful suite in an old French hotel, complete with a fake fireplace and marble everything. I sat her down on the couch and—like a man—got down on my knee. She said yes … but then made me wait a year to go through with it. As impatient as I was, I also knew that I’d be with her for the rest of my life. I had gone through four other wives. The fifth’s a charm.
I wanted her hand in marriage so badly, that we had three weddings. The first one was right before I went out on tour with 7 Walkers and it was just a paperwork wedding. I wanted to make it official before I left for the open road. The second time we got married, it was a crazy party with all of our friends and an extravagant island celebration. The third one was the real one—it was a spiritual wedding. We had a Hawaiian enchantress come in and bless the land and the ceremony was stunning and we held it on the winter solstice—December 21—the shortest day of the year. After that day—after the day that she took my hand in marriage—I knew that all my days would start to get longer and longer because the sun seems to shine more and more every day that I’m with her. Still, to this very day.
So yeah, I played drums in the Grateful Dead. And, yeah, I recorded platinum albums and toured the world. I’ve sold out stadiums and played with Bob Dylan and had a hit video on MTV. I went to rehab twice and I went to hell and back a lot more than that. When I look back on it, so many years collapse onto themselves and the thousands of shows that I’ve played all melt into one. But I remember the very moment when I saw Aimee again, after moving back to this island. I remember the very moment she walked in the door at my neighbor’s house, when I was still crashing on his couch.
Every experience that I ever had in my entire life suddenly made sense—it was all one long suspension bridge, leading me to her. My whole life had been a passageway, and all my experiences were an unconventional mode of transportation, getting me closer and closer to my destination—her. Aimee Kreutzmann.
Deadheads can thank Aimee for getting me out there to play music again. It was because of her that I discovered that there’s more music inside of me yet. And it was because of her that I feel motivated to get it out to the world, to sing my song, to sound my beat and to beat my drum.
So, through all the highs and through all the lows, in the end, this book is really just a simple love story. It’s the story of how Bill met Aimee. It’s the story of how life leads us to some pretty crazy places, but even if you feel like you’re at the edge of a cliff and you’re stumbling around blindfolded, as long as you let your heart guide you, it will never lead you astray. I did that for thirty years with the Grateful Dead. We got far out there, in every way and in every direction. Far more than just being a long, strange trip, it was an incredible journey, and I’ve remained grateful every step of the way. Let me assure you that this adventure is far from over, my friends.
And that’s how I get to live happily ever after.
To be continued.…