Garcia : An American Life

Anyone who ever attended a Grateful Dead show knows all too well how many "fans" virtually ignored the music in their pursuit of fun. What's worse, scores of closed-minded music critics dismissed the music out of hand simply because of the antics of these so-called fans. Author Blair Jackson sets out on a commendable mission to bring Jerry Garcia the musician into clear focus. Tapping his experience as both a devout Deadhead and a veteran journalist, Jackson's mission is a roaring success. He painstakingly details every musical turn that the Dead took and discusses every side project Garcia embarked on--from the endless stream of bluegrass, old-time, and jug bands of the early 1960s through collaborations both famous and obscure. (Even dedicated fans may not know of Garcia's futile attempt at joining Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys.) Garcia emerges as a talented, versatile, and obsessive musician with a voracious appetite for all forms of music--as long as it came from the heart. In the process of documenting his musical career, Jackson also presents a picture of Garcia's fascinating offstage life, including the events and inspiration that translated into songs and solos. The author conducted scores of interviews with Garcia himself and with anyone else who could provide insight into Garcia's personality. While never glossing over the unseemly aspects of Garcia's life, Jackson doesn't dwell on them either. In fact, he openly offers connections between Garcia's drug use and his music when they prove appropriate. Neophytes may be turned off by the constant detailed references to specific songs and shows--even particular sound effects--but for the avid follower, Jackson's comprehensive book is a wonderful celebration of an underrated and misunderstood musician. --Marc Greilsamer From Publishers Weekly As the front man for the Grateful Dead, the band that epitomized the '60s hippie counterculture, Jerry Garcia's place in music history is assured. Yet, Jackson asserts in this detailed biography, Garcia's genius as a guitarist and songwriter has often been overlooked. Garcia began as a folk and bluegrass banjo player in such bands as the Sleepy Hollow Hog Stompers and the Thunder Mountain Tub Thumpers before embracing electric blues and rock and roll with the Warlocks, an early incarnation of the Dead. In the mid-'60s, the Dead became the house band for Ken Kesey's now legendary drug and music free-for-alls. During concerts the band could, in Garcia's words, "visit highly experimental places under the influence of highly experimental chemicals before a highly experimental audience." In the Dead's 30-year run barnstorming the nation as one of the country's most popular touring acts, Garcia always sought to expand his musical horizons, engaging in side projects from playing pedal steel guitar in New Riders of the Purple Sage to launching a low-profile solo career with the Jerry Garcia Band. Dogged by cocaine and then heroin addiction (brought on at least in part, according to Jackson, by the pressures of celebrity and of dealing with the unwieldy bureaucracy of the Grateful Dead's profitable business ventures), Garcia died of a heart attack in 1995 at the age of 53. Jackson, former editor of the Dead zine The Golden Road, narrates this exhaustive biography with the unabashed ardor of a hard-core Deadhead, but even those readers who have kept a distance from the band's recordings and epic concerts will appreciate the generation-defining artistic and personal history of this musical giant. (Aug.) Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal Though books about the Grateful Dead have sprouted like weeds since Jerry Garcia's death in 1995, this is the first serious biography of the guitarist since Sandy Troy's Captain Trips (LJ 11/1/94). It is also the most authoritative work to date on either Garcia or the Dead as Jackson draws from dozens of interviews with Garcia associates, most of them conducted for this book. Though Jackson, editor of Goin' Down the Road: A Grateful Dead Traveling Companion and the now defunct Grateful Dead fanzine The Golden Road, makes no bones about being a Deadhead, his journalistic skills allow him to tell the story of Garcia and the Dead evenhandedly. He succeeds in giving Garcia due credit for his often overlooked musical prowess without glossing over his subject's tragic decline into the heroin addiction and other problems that led to his death at age 53. The lack of a discography is regrettable, though Jackson promises one, along with a more detailed bibliography and excerpts from the text, on a forthcoming web site (www.blairjackson.com). Essential for all popular music collections.ALloyd Jansen, Stockton-San Joaquin Cty. P.L., CA Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Booklist When a rock star passes, biographies first gush forth and then taper off in quantity and quality. The Jerry Garcia torrent continues and defies the norm by spewing out a winner. Casual observers may be surprised by revelations of Garcia's long heroin habit, which recent biographers have either dwelt on or lost in the shuffle. Jackson is matter-of-fact: it was just part of the tapestry of a sublimely artistic life. Sympathetic to Garcia and the Grateful Dead, Jackson's book is a perceptive, balanced life, in which gritty details about factions and infighting in the Dead's inner circle and the concerns of friends about Garcia in the later years coexist with the blissed-out Haight-Ashbury days and the joyous tours in the heyday of the Deadheads. By the '90s, the Dead, bizarrely enough, were goofy elder statesmen. Garcia and party met with Al Gore and, with two lesser Dead, sang the national anthem at Candlestick Park. If this were fiction, you wouldn't swallow it. This is the best Garcia book yet. Mike Tribby From Kirkus Reviews Veteran music writer Blair has fashioned a moving and insightful biography of Grateful Dead leader Jerry Garcia by focusing on the most important and enduring part of his legacy: his music. For three decades the Dead remained one of the most interesting and daring music ensembles around. Garcia himself over that time sustained a level of artistry and innovation as a musician and composer rare in 20th-century music history. Skillfully weaving these themes within the personal events of Garcia's life, including his 14 years as a junkie, and the social history that Garcia both witnessed and helped bring to lifefrom the halcyon days of Haight-Ashbury to the phenomenon of the Deadheads of the 1980sJackson produces perhaps as clear an understanding of the man as we are likely to get. Originally a bluegrass banjo player, Garcia brought to the Dead the conversational nature of bluegrass, the need within that music for the instruments to talk to one another. Going electric and joining with sympathetic players allowed for Garcia an infinite expansion of that original conversational insight. Playing at LSD-inspired gatherings in San Francisco, and taking plenty of LSD themselves further extended the Dead's proclivity for improvisation (and Garcia's proclivity for drug taking) and allowed them to learn how to do it well. Particularly interesting here is the story of Garcia's relationship with lyricist Robert Hunter (he of the often cryptic lyrics on foreboding and death), of how that relationship developed over a generation, how Hunter could say what Garcia felt. Theirs was a much underappreciated musical collaboration. There are also side trips to Garcias many musical explorations outside of the Dead, from country to jazz to R&B. Garcia emerges in the end as a flawed genius, whose personal demons, especially drugs, inspired his music, eventually weakened it, and finally silenced it. Yet the book is an unapologetic celebration of Garcias life rather than a lament on his death. Fine reading on a most curious American life. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. ...a fascinating and comprehensive biography of a rock band, not a man. -- The New York Times Book Review , Charles Salzberg Blair Jackson is a longtime journalist whose area of expertise includes Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead . His quarterly magazine, The Golden Road , was for ten years the authoritative resource on the Grateful Dead . He is the author of Going Down the Road: A Grateful Dead Traveling Companion . Read more