Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, November 19, 1993 TAG: 9311190080
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BY GARY GRAFF KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"I didn't have some kind of heart attack or anything," he said, obviously peeved at reports to the contrary. "I wasn't really ill. I didn't collapse in that I suddenly fell down and they had to carry me off. There wasn't even any kind of pain."
About a year ago, doctors told the guitarist, leader and guru figure of the Grateful Dead and an enduring symbol of '60s counterculture that after years of pursuing cosmic consciousness, he had pushed his body about as far as it could go. Garcia, 50, had survived a diabetic coma in 1986, but now the father of four was told to stop the drugs and drinking, change the diet and start exercising.
For good.
"It was a case of getting an early warning," said Garcia, who will bring his namesake band to the Hampton Coliseum tonight.
"If I kept going the way I was going without some active effort to change my lifestyle, I would be running into heart problems during the next couple of years. I was exhausted. And I needed rest. And I was in such deteriorating shape physically that I wasn't bouncing back."
It wasn't a surprise to those around him that Garcia had pushed things to the edge; he didn't earn the moniker Captain Trips during the '60s for nothing. Fans noticed his increasing girth; bandmates noticed his unfocused playing and his diminishing acumen.
"I was worried about him," said Bruce Hornsby, Williamsburg's most famous rocker and a sometimes member of the Dead. "A couple of times you could say I was bummed with him. I thought he was not all there on the gigs sometimes."
These days, Garcia is all there. His playing has regained the fluid virtuosity that's made him in- demand at other artists' recording sessions. He's moving around on stage for the first time in at least a decade. The Grateful Dead machine - which pulls in more than $60 million a year via sales of records, concert tickets and merchandise - is "Truckin' " once again.
Garcia dropped more than 60 of the 300 pounds he carried a year ago, though he's maintained his sage appearance thanks to his gray hair and beard. He's replaced meat and dairy products with a diet of fruits, vegetables and grains. He smokes fewer cigarettes and he exercises - weight training three times a week, lots of long walks and scuba diving.
"When I was a kid, I was an asthmatic, so I wasn't physical ever in my life, really," Garcia said. "Scuba was the first real physical thing I've done in my life that I ever enjoyed doing."
Garcia claims the changes in his lifestyle "weren't that hard to make. All it takes is the right incentive . . . and any time you have some kind of life-threatening experience, that's incentive.
"The big payoff is feeling better physically, having so much energy. You feel like you're in your physical body and feeling good about it."
That's exactly what the Dead- heads, the band's nomadic and multigenerational group of fans, want to hear. News of Garcia's health trauma sent chills throughout that community, which reveres Garcia as an almost godlike icon.
Garcia - who like his bandmates, seldom addresses the audience from the stage - rejects such adulation.
"I don't buy into any of that stuff," he said. "What good could it possibly do me? I try not to be conscious of it. It's not what I'm about. What I'm about is playing music and playing it well, not about what a wonderful person I am."
To that end, Garcia hopes to be creating quite a bit of music in the near future. During his convalescence, he traveled to Hawaii with bandmates Bob Weir and Phil Lesh and lyricist Robert Hunter.
He coerced everybody into scuba diving, but they also began writing new songs - with new enthusiasm and in greater volume than in previous years.
Some of those - "The Days Between," "Lazy River Road" and a reworking of the Hunter solo track "Liberty" - are popping up at the Dead's shows.
"In the Grateful Dead, if you record a tune right after you write it, the recorded version is seldom definitive," Garcia explained. "For us, playing a tune onstage is where it gains its life."
The Dead plan to start recording a new album, the first since 1989, early next year, Garcia said.
"There's a real desire to keep improving," he said. "We're very lucky that the chemistry of the band is that everyone wants to improve and get more conscious about the music. That's just luck; I don't know how you make that happen, but right now we're in a really good place - like a good epic, a good moment, a good phase, whatever you want to call it."
"Everybody seems to be gearing up for the '90s," he added with a laugh. "It's an assault on the '90s, so to speak."
Jerry Garcia in concert at the Hampton Coliseum, tonight at 7:30. 22.50. (804) 671-8100.
by CNB