Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, August 10, 1995 TAG: 9508100064
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GENE SEYMOUR NEWSDAY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Peter Pan was never supposed to get gray hair. Nor was he ever supposed to have recurring health problems or ugly, unseemly disruptions among his tribe. And he never, ever was supposed to die.
But reality is a more formidable enemy than a zillion Captain Hooks. And when the news came Wednesday morning that Jerry Garcia, the 53-year-old lead guitarist, singer, songwriter and guru for the Grateful Dead, was found dead at a drug-rehabilitation center in Marin County, Calif., it felt like the final, shattering dispersion of a beautiful dream - one that enraptured at least two generations of ``Deadheads.''
The dream of the open road, of ``truckin''' one's way through life's eternal weirdness in equally eternal bliss, was what Garcia and his rambling rock band offered its ferociously loyal followers. That this dream was successfully sustained through several presidential administrations and three decades of abrupt, back-and-forth social, political and cultural upheaval makes for one of rock 'n' roll's most remarkable sagas.
``It's an adventure you can still have in America,'' Garcia once said of the Grateful Dead phenomenon. ``You can't hop a freight, but you can chase the Grateful Dead around.''
And did they ever. Like Peter Pan's Lost Boys, glistening-eyed vagabonds of all ages followed the Dead to arenas and concert halls throughout the world. These followers, most of them in tie-dyed-and-paisley hippie garb, seemed to exist in a time-continuum where it was always 1967, controlled substances were the doors to perception, and the most effective response to a police bayonet was a flower.
It was from this culture that the Grateful Dead emerged back in the mid-1960s. Garcia, San Francisco-born and reared, began that tumultuous decade teaching guitar and selling stuff by day, and playing roots music at night in Bay Area nightclubs. Between 1961 and 1965, there were various jug bands under Garcia's leadership that included, among others, keyboardist Ron ``Pigpen'' McKernan, drummer Bill Kreutzmann and guitarist Bob Weir.
Along with Garcia, these three, soon joined by bassist Phil Lesh, became the core of a rock band, formed in 1965 as the Warlocks. Later that same year, the name changed to the Grateful Dead and thus began - to cop one of the group's most famous lines - ``a long, strange trip.''
By the time a second drummer, Mickey Hart, joined the group in 1967, it had become what's described in the Rolling Stone Album Guide as ``house band for the famous acid tests that transformed San Francisco into one large freak-out.'' Indeed, the Dead's linkage with writer Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters was to become the foundation for its enduring legend.
For all his spaced-out rambling, Garcia, a high-school dropout, was also shrewdly erudite and articulate about many aspects of history and culture - especially music. Often, when hearing Garcia's solos, one got the sense of hearing a frustrated jazz musician more than a high-energy rocker.
The Dead made many albums, but had very few top-10 hits. Their stature as a pop phenomenon was measured on the road. The concerts became a magnet for those multitudes hoping at each stop to find the band working at its peak level of riffing, rocking interaction. Often it worked. Just as often, it didn't. But The anticipation of onstage greatness was enough to expand the network of Deadheads into one of the largest - and to outsiders, more perplexing - caravans in rock music.
Keywords:
INFOLINE
by CNB