gdead.berkeley.edu/gdead.berkeley.edu.tar/gdead.berkeley.edu/pub/gdead/interviews/garcia91

Text File | 1996-07-05 | 23KB | 682 lines

> Found on Peter Hedeman's web page:
>
> ============================================================================
> =====
>
>
>
>
>    The following is the text of an interview of September 13, 1991 with
>
> Jerry Garcia by Scott Muni of WNEW for Arista Records.  I wrote the questions
>
> and Arista turned the interview into a disc that was sent to radio stations
>
> to promote the JGB live album.
>
>
>
>                       Jerry Garcia/Scott Muni 9-13-91
>
>
>
> MUNI:  Let's talk about the band, the Jerry Garcia Band. There are some
>
> very familiar friends from the past, even back to the '60s, and some newies.
>
> So why don't we start with Kahn?
>
>
> GARCIA:  Everybody knows John by now, probably, at least everybody that
>
> knows me knows him. He and I have been playing together since - we started
>
> working together for Howard Wales at a little club in San Francisco called
>
> the Matrix on Monday nights, right around '68, '69, somewhere around there.
>
> When the Grateful Dead isn't working, I like to keep playing.
>
>   So they used to have this Monday night jam session, but Howard gradually
>
> sort of took it over. Howard's this amazing organ player - difficult person,
>
> but wonderful musician. And for some reason he liked our playing, John and
>
> mine.
>
>   We didn't know each other, John and I. In fact we played with Howard for
>
> almost a year before we even  actually started talking to each other. Really.
>
> We would just show up, plug in, and play. About half the set I'd be
>
> whispering to John, I'd be saying, "Hey, man, what key are we in?" Howard
>
> didn't have tunings or anything, he just played. Sometimes he would do these
>
> things that were so outside that you just couldn't - unless you knew where it
>
> was going - had no idea where to start. Sometimes they'd turn out to be
>
> just these things like four-bar blues turnarounds, relatively simple musical
>
> things, but they were so extended the way he'd play them - "God, what is
>
> this?"
>
>   Anyway, I learned a lot - both of us learned a lot about staying awake
>
> and listening to what's going on, playing with Howard. It was a real
>
> experience. We played with him for a couple of years, and then Howard went
>
> off and kinda - periodically he gets this thing of where he just can't deal
>
> with the music world any more, and he just disappears. So we were there,
>
> stuck there, and we were supposed to play Monday night, and we didn't have a
>
> player. John said, "Well, I just did some sessions with this guy Merl
>
> Saunders."
>
>   So ol' Merl steps onto the scene, and he was wonderful. He was just great
>
> great fun to play with. I learned lots about the stuff that I'd missed in
>
> music, lots of legit stuff like bebop, the way that works, and the way
>
> standards are put together, and that sort of thing. I learned a lot of
>
> musical stuff playing with Merl, and we had a good time playing together.
>
>   That went on for a good long time. We played off and on throughout  the
>
> '70s, mostly. During all this time the band had lots of different players -
>
> Bill Kreutzmann played drums with us for a while. Armando Peraza used to play
>
> with us for a while, and different players sort of in and out, kind  of a
>
> floating deal, and it was still basically one of those things I did when the
>
> Grateful Dead wasn't working. I think the first time we ever went anywhere
>
> was we came here to New York and played for a Hell's Angels wedding on the
>
> Staten Island ferry out there. I think that was the first time we played
>
> here. Then we also did a show, I think,  for John Scher, at the Capitol
>
> Theatre, the old Capitol Theatre. That was the first time that that band ever
>
> left the West Coast. It was always one of those things that was kind of a
>
> part-time deal for me.
>
>   Anyway, it slowly started to evolve. We put out some records with Merl
>
> and did some stuff, but it was still mainly kind of low key. After a while,
>
> Merl had other stuff to do. John and I kept playing. We tried a whole long
>
> series of different keyboard players, everybody from Nicky Hopkins to James
>
> Booker.
>
>   We had some great players at various times. We had Ronnie Tutt, played
>
> drums with us for a long time. We had Keith Godchaux from the Grateful Dead,
>
> and Donna were both in the band for a while. Maria Muldaur was also, so Donna
>
> and Maria were our first back-up singers, first singers sort of like the
>
> present configuration of the band - four pieces with two girls.
>
>   That went on for a while, and then somewhere there in the '70s the
>
> Grateful Dead did a show with Elvin Bishop. I was standing behind this guy on
>
> the stage. He was the second keyboard player in Elvin's band. This big guy,
>
> he was just playing a Fender Rhodes. But he was playing so tasty, I'm just
>
> standing behind him. It's a pretty thick band, so figuring out just how to
>
> get in there was, I thought, the work of a good musician. He was just playing
>
> the tastiest little stuff. I thought, "This guy is just too much!"
>
>   I asked him what his name was. He said, "Melvin Seals." Melvin Seals. So
>
> years later I got Melvin. I don't remember exactly when he started playing
>
> with us, but right around the late '70s, early '80s, Melvin started playing
>
> with us, and he was just a monster. He's turned out to be the guy that we
>
> were looking for all along.
>
>   There's something about - when you've got a four-piece band, for me the
>
> big thing is being able to support the guitar solos, and maintain the same
>
> amount of intensity as when the guitar is playing rhythm. You can get a lot
>
> of power going, playing power chords like on the guitar, and when you drop
>
> out and go to single-string stuff sometimes the bottom falls out. But
>
> Melvin's got this thing of he knows how to keep the intensity right up
>
> there.
>
>   Plus it's also very beautiful in terms of the color and stuff. What
>
> Melvin does when he's not playing with me is he produces about 70% of the
>
> gospel music in the Bay Area, the Oakland choirs and stuff. He's also
>
> choirmaster for about five churches there.
>
>   So when we started looking for singers, he went out and hand-picked
>
> Gloria and Jackie. That's where they come from, they're choir gals. Melvin
>
> picked them for their voices, their range and the sound, their tone. We've
>
> got a pretty good blend now, we've been singing together for a while now.
>
>   And David Kemper is - I guess he's the most recent guy in the band,
>
> although he's been playing with us for about eight years now. He's an LA
>
> studio rock, he's one of those guys that works - that's how he earns his
>
> living, really, is by studio work.
>
>   Anyway, this band also has great chemistry, which is one of the things
>
> you really need in a band, where everybody gets along, everybody likes the
>
> music, and traveling is easy. Everybody's like low-maintenance. Nobody gets
>
> weird on the road, everybody's comfortable about traveling, and it stays at a
>
> real high level.
>
>
> MUNI:  Before we leave Mr. Kahn -
>
>
> GACRCIA:  e's also an artist!
>
>
> MUNI:  Did he do your album cover?
>
>
> GARCIA:  Yes, he sure did. That's his work, yeah. You ought to see his
>
> others. He's an incredible artist.
>
>   John has got incredible ideas. That's the thing about him. His other
>
> work, I think it's gallery quality. Maybe eventually people will start to
>
> pick up on it. He's got a houseful of it and all of it is amazing. The thing
>
> about his stuff is that most of it is things like colored pencil, but it's
>
> applied so thickly it looks like it's lacquered on. It's just unbelievable.
>
> The surfaces are unbelievable.
>
>
> MUNI:  What I'd really like to do is talk about some of the songs
>
> individually.
>
>
> GARCIA:  Sure.
>
>
> MUNI:  Obviously you're a Dylan fan, as we all are. It doesn't make any
>
> difference where Bob goes by himself individually - sometimes he'll drift off
>
> and return a couple of months later with some great stuff. But his stuff that
>
> he's done - he always likes to say, "Well, I don't know really what I meant
>
> or anything," but we seem to know more about it than he does. It's good to do
>
> his stuff, isn't it?
>
>
> GARCIA:  Well, I don't know whether he knows what he meant, but I know what
>
> I think he meant a lot of times. It doesn't even matter what he thinks he
>
> meant, probably. But his songs, they stand up. You can sing them a lot of
>
> times and they have a lot of facets to them. And there's the thing about them
>
> that when you sing them, you don't feel like an idiot. A lot of them have big
>
> bites. They're extraordinary pieces of poetry, and they have that thing of
>
> sometimes they're like a ray gun that hits you right in a part of your life.
>
> Sometimes you can't even say exactly what it is, but for me, they're
>
> emotional. They're real. They work for some reason. Something about them
>
> works for me. So I love to do them.
>
>
> MUNI:  As the Dead goes, you've always done some Dylan stuff. Now here on
>
> your album, "I Shall Be Released."
>
>
> GARCIA:  Great song. Great song. I've always wanted to do it, but it's one
>
> of those things that's a little bit - The Band's version of it was so nifty,
>
> it's like "How am I going to top that?" Well, I didn't even bother. I just
>
> took it off in a slightly different direction. But to me it's just such a
>
> perfectly performable song. It's a song that's not difficult, but it's very
>
> effective. It's just lovely.
>
>
> MUNI:  "Tangled Up in Blue."  We've all been there!
>
>
> GARCIA:  Yeah, absolutely. And that's like one of his neatest, like a love
>
> odyssey kind of deal. It's somebody's romantic voyage. At least that's the
>
> way I read it; I don't know whether that's what it means or not. It also has
>
> stuff in there about disillusionment and part of the adventure of your own
>
> life. You might not have the specific events, but everybody has events like
>
> 'em. Just the idea of going away, the idea of separating from people, doing
>
> odd things, taking odd jobs, kicking around, that kind of stuff. All that
>
> stuff is stuff that's real to everybody.
>
>   Plus it's  a great song. In terms of it has a terrific melody, it has
>
> terrific chord changes, and it just tears along. Our version of it, I must
>
> say - I didn't really cop this from Bob Dylan's version. I heard another
>
> version, I don't even know whose it is. There was a kind of a rock 'n' roll
>
> version of it, like the one we do, that was on the radio about ten years ago
>
> or something. I heard it in my car once. I don't know who it was, I have no
>
> idea. I never tracked it down. They had a way of doing it that's a little bit
>
> like - this is what I remember, maybe incorrectly - I sort of remember it
>
> going like this.
>
>
> MUNI:  Many people do Dylan songs, and the Jerry Garcia Band in this new
>
> album's certainly not going to leave them out either. It requires, if we go
>
> back to the beginning, Jerry, of his early stuff, Dylan didn't have a hit.
>
> Peter, Paul and Mary had a hit over here, the Byrds had a hit over there -
>
>
> GARCIA:  Right, yeah. Bob didn't have that many hits.
>
>
> MUNI:  They all did Dylan songs, and it still goes on, thank God, anyway.
>
> Little tough. maybe, to do Simple Twist of Fate. You like that one, huh?
>
>
> GARCIA:  Oh, that's a great song. It's just  one of those things that's -
>
> it's a just beautiful little picture, in its own way, and it's also a perfect
>
> song. I made it more like a ballad than Bob does it.  I'm not exactly sure
>
> why; maybe it's because for me there's a bittersweet quality about it.
>
>
> MUNI:  So does the title.
>
>
> GARCIA:  Yeah. "Simple Twist of Fate." This song is right up my alley.  I'm
>
> totally comfortable with it.
>
>
> MUNI:  The Jerry Garcia Band's new album has an old song on here.  I'm
>
> going to admit truthfully that I remember hearing this.  It was on a 78, and
>
> I guess it's about people getting up and going out to work and trying to make
>
> a go of everything, called "That Lucky Old Sun," because he's got nothing to
>
> do but roll around heaven all day.
>
>
> GARCIA:  Yeah, I don't know where that song came from.  I remember when I
>
> was a kid, too, way the heck back there in the early '50s or something, back
>
> in the days when they were doing that - there was a kind of a smattering of
>
> those weird songs like that, or like those Frankie Laine songs.
>
>
> MUNI:  Yeah, Frankie Laine did it. Millions of copies sold.
>
>
> GARCIA:  Yeah. I don't remember anything, really, about that original
>
> version of it.  Our version is derived from the Ray Charles version of it.
>
> It's perfectly beautiful, like everything that Ray does - when he covers a
>
> song, he makes it his own.  I'm no Ray Charles.  I'm not Ray, but for me this
>
> song is fun because I get to sing in my baritone voice.  Which is just about
>
> nonexistent.  I get to sing real low down here.
>
>
> MUNI:  You've got a Lennon/McCartney song on this album too.
>
>
> GARCIA:  I was working at the Record Plant [in Sausalito].  This is back
>
> sometime in the mid-'70s, when I was producing the New Riders and working
>
> loosely with Crosby and those guys.  I came in one afternoon and one of the
>
> engineers says, "Hey, man, listen to this."  And he cues up this tape, and
>
> it's Larry Graham doing a fantastic version of Dear Prudence.  Absolutely
>
> ass-kicking version.  And I listened to it, and I thought, "God, it's just
>
> the most wonderful..."  And the record never came out.  But it was so good.
>
> The groove is what killed me on it, it had this just monstrous groove.  And
>
> you know Larry's bass playing?  With that great line in Dear Prudence, that
>
> great bass line, McCartney line, but Larry's power.  And God, it was just
>
> sensational.  It was a total knockout, and it was so hip.
>
>   I stole it, frankly. Although, again, it's my faulty memory.  So I have
>
> no idea.  I don't really remember anything, I only heard this once, now.
>
> Larry Graham's version of it.  But the groove in it knocked me out so much
>
> that sort of what I remembered of it, me and John actually pieced it
>
> together, kind of. Because he also heard it.  But it's our version of
>
> somebody else's version of Lennon and McCartney, but the song is a great
>
> song.  They wrote so many great songs.  That's one of the ones - we've been
>
> doing it for a long time.  We've done it in lots of different styles.  We've
>
> actually recorded it a few times, and it never came out.  But this version of
>
> it is more or less definitive. It's the way it sounds when we do it onstage.
>
>
> MUNI:  Whether it's Dead or you alone or anything, you just feel kind of
>
> the excitement when you start mentioning friends and their music and all.
>
> Things that we share every day.  We've mentioned Dylan and Lennon/McCartney.
>
> But here's Robbie Robertson's song that is still one of those just - it just
>
> sticks out.  And you say, "I miss The Band."
>
>
> GARCIA:  Another great songwriter. Great songwriter.
>
>
> MUNI:  And man, here you come on here, and on this album you've got The
>
> Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.
>
>
> GARCIA:  Well, I've recorded this one before too. And it's still a great
>
> song. It's just a great song. That's all, what can you say about it? The
>
> lyrics are so intelligent and the melody is so lovely, the combination of
>
> things. It's just surefire. That's why I've been doing it all these years,
>
> and it's gone through a lot of metamorphosis. Their version of is kind of a
>
> medium tempo, a walking groove. It's more a flat and declamatory kind ofI And
>
> I chose to try to take it into a kind of a more emotional thing in there,
>
> because it's got some really expressive - it's got some very powerful words.
>
> I chose to take it in  that direction, to go with the power of the lyrics.
>
>
> MUNI:  One thing about the new Jerry Garcia Band album is that, as you well
>
> know at this point, there are a lot of familiar songs, but done only as
>
> Jerry, and now this band, doing their own things and having fun with the
>
> songs. But you did do a long cut. What everybody might say, "Uh-oh, here's
>
> the space job," or "Here's the hooky-dooky," or whatever Jerry's going to do
>
> with this particular thing. Tell us about Don't Let Go.
>
>
> GARCIA:  Well, Don't Let Go is an old Roy Hamilton tune.
>
>
> MUNI:  Ah, just one of my favorite records of all time.  And I just think,
>
> you know, if you're going to go back and say an early rock 'n' roll hit, that
>
> thing cooked.  It's too bad we lost Roy, but as a matter of fact, a year and
>
> a half ago, I found the record over in AM in the record library, and I played
>
> it on the air here, and I got calls saying "That was - who was that?  What
>
> was it? Somebody knows who -"  Well, what a terrific record.
>
>
> GARCIA:  Yeah, it's neat. It's just plain neat. So once again, without
>
> benefit of having - I think we finally got either the sheet music or maybe a
>
> copy of the original record, but we don't use the shuffle groove that he had
>
> in it. That (sings), that kind of thing.  But see, this is where I do all the
>
> songs that turn me on.  If I love a song, my band is an opportunity to do it.
>
>  For me it's not the thing of "Well, this is all my music."  It's the music
>
> that I love.  So this is another one of those songs I love. That's mostly
>
> what we do in the Garcia Band, is music that I like.  I want to do some tunes
>
> that I love to do.
>
>   I always thought Don't Let Go could go any number of ways. It could take
>
> any number of different styles or treatments. It's another one that's got a
>
> great set of lyrics, and great phrasing. That's what I copped from the
>
> original, is the phrasing, pretty much. But the groove is Garcia Band. That's
>
> what that is.
>
>
> MUNI:  Your acoustic collaboration with David Grisman, just released -
>
> let's talk about that a little bit.
>
>
> GARCIA:  Well, David's an old buddy of mine.  We used to have a band
>
> together called Old and in the Way that was a good bluegrass band, and we've
>
> been friends for really a long time.  He lives right in Mill Valley, which is
>
> a stone's throw from where I live.  We've been running into each other about
>
> once or twice a year for the last 17 years, since Old and in the Way
>
> disbanded, saying, "Hey, let's do something together sometime!"  And so
>
> finally this last year I started going to his house - he's got a little
>
> studio.  He's also got his own record company.  He puts out mostly his own
>
> records, plus other minority records, that is to say, records that are not
>
> part of the mainstream of anything.  They're not jazz, they're not country,
>
> they're not bluegrass. They're acoustic music, that's his thrust, and they're
>
> mostly mandolin players, which is also his instrument.  So he's a guy who's
>
> championing several - he's  a minority's minority, in effect.
>
>   He's also a great guy and a wonderful musician, and playing with him is
>
> like - he's one of those guys that's constantly throwing logs on the fire,
>
> you know what I mean? He and I are just opposite enough each other - I've got
>
> the loose approach and he's got the tight approach, and he loves to rehearse
>
> lots and get everything just so, and I like to say, "C'mon, let's just play."
>
>  So we bounce off each other really well, and he's got a wonderful family,
>
> and his whole scene is great. He's just a terrific guy.
>
>  So now we have a new collaboration going. I'm hoping we're going to get
>
> ut - I'd like to play with David in Carnegie Hall, you know? Really nice
>
> venues that are intimate and are right for acoustic music.  Because the music
>
> has a lot of detail.  Also, David is turning me into an acoustic guitar
>
> player, which is something I've never been terribly good at - my chops are so
>
> much for the electric guitar, which is much lighter - the touch is much
>
> different.  So now he's got me building up these muscles here where you play
>
> 'em snap.  I'm finally getting so I'm getting a pretty good tone on the
>
> acoustic guitar, and it's exciting for me.  It's something very different
>
> from everything else I do.
>
>
> MUNI:  So this is a collaboration that might be around for a while.  It's a
>
> challenge. A new challenge. Some fun.
>
>
> GARCIA:  Well, I'm hoping so.  We're not in any rush.  New challenge,
>
> exactly. And since it's David's own record company, there's no participation
>
> on the part of the music business at large.  It works out really well for
>
> him; it helps provide him funding for lots of the other projects that he
>
> does, which are things that no record company would ever do.
>
>   It's got a Hoagy Carmichael song on it, David's record does.
>
>
> MUNI:  Not Stardust?
>
>
> GARCIA:  No, I'd love to do Stardust. The interesting thing about Stardust
>
> - my equipment guy, Steve Parish, Big Steve, maybe you've met him at times?
>
> His uncle is Mitchell Parish, the guy who wrote the lyrics to Stardust.
>
>
> MUNI:  Oh my lord! His uncle's in good shape.  He's one of the big song
>
> winners of all time in royalties.
>
>
> GARCIA:  Yeah! I'm telling you!  Satin Doll and all these songs.  He's like
>
> in his 90s.
>
>   We did Rockin' Chair. (sings) "Old rockin' chair's got me..."  It was
>
> great. Also this is like a little of the feel of kind of a Django Reinhardt
>
> quality. Always been one of my heroes.  This record has a little of that
>
> flavor, and other stuff too.  It's an interesting record, and it was really
>
> fun.  Also, no overdubs, it's all straight.  Everything, vocals and
>
> everything all together. So it's like performance stuff.
>
>
> MUNI:  You don't stop working.  The Dead may stop touring, and then Jerry
>
> goes to work.
>
>
> GARCIA:  Well, see, here's the thing, Scott.  See, if I stop playing for
>
> longer than a month at a time, my chops are so bad I can't stand to listen to
>
> myself. So for the three months it takes me to recover from that, it's not
>
> worth it. So for me, I just keep filling in.  I keep working.  If I keep
>
> working, I keep playing at a reasonable level.
>
>
> END
>
>