Interview with Jerry by Alice Kahn for the San Jose Mercury News "West" magazine, conducted in the fall of 1984. Visit GDSets.com for historical concert info, ticket stubs, posters, and more!
I met Jerry in 1974 when i was a beginning guitar player and a beginning deadhead and i went to a little club to hear the Kieth and Donna Band and during the opening act i was sitting in back and some dude sat down next to me and it was jerry. Anyways we go to talking about music and i asked him when the album Europe 72 was going to be to come out in songbook and he told me "you should never have to learn a song from songbook, you should be able to learn it from listening to it. Listening is the most important part of learning to play music" that was the best guitar lesson i ever had.
I met Jerry at Howard Johnson in Rhode Island after a show. He was sitting at a table, and we walked over to him, all young and impressionable, and he said hey man I'm just a person too. Class act!!
Love Jerry, his voice, his humor, his honesty, his intellect, His playing, his curiosity, his smile. Gone way way too soon. Keeping him alive thru music, video and interviews. Made himself so available to us all. An open book.
Good Lord what a warm, sensible and adorable person. I never knew anyone remotely like this. If you know someone like him you're very lucky. Here's hoping you soak 'em up, treasure them.
I missed Jerry my neighbor, we grew up in the same EXCELSIOR district in San Francisco. We saw him became famous in HAIGHT ASHBURY back in the 60s. WE missed you Jerry and your grandpa house still there on Alemany and Ellington St.
OK, I think I’ve listened to every single Jerry Garcia interview that is publicly available, and this one is my favorite. I love how humble Jerry was, and how honest he was in interviews. This guy continues to fascinate me. Thanks so much for posting this interview.
Anderson Cooper Judging from that comment, you’re a little slow on the uptake. If you can’t listen to that interview and see that he’s articulate it’s because it’s going over your head.
Anderson Cooper. Garcia was a voracious reader, that’s been well documented. He was also put into a program for gifted children in school. Lots of people who knew him have commented about how articulate he was in various biographies about him. Forgive me if I dismiss the opinion of the guy on the internet who apparently knows very little about the man.
Yes, and a vid of a daytime '74 show, which were supposed to be totally non-existent. Absolutely floored me when it showed up. Rare as rare gets. Someone has a collection of stuff they're after all these years.
When Jerry passed music sort of died. We lost many but Jerry was someone a little more special, least in my humble eyes. I put him up there with Jim Morrison and Hendrix, just amazing people and so special to music.
Fabulous interview. Great flow. I’m biased but I find Garcia to be the most honest, articulate musician I’ve ever come across. His description of the clarinet’s woody sound is so spot on. His incredible ear is what made him so special.
You know people talk about Jerry Garcia's ear but you know and I'm not sure which one they're talking about but I would say both of those things were really spot on
This is a GREAT interview. Hearing Jerry talk about his childhood and early days coming up in the folk/beatnik scene is so interesting and helps me understand who he was as a person!
She hit common questions too, but she asked them in different ways & knew which ones to stay on & when to move on. She was extremely receptive & by far from all the interviews I’ve seen able to open up a deeply reflective Jerry best. Great interviewer who produced a brilliant look into someone’s like who usually wouldn’t let out so much in an interview
Many interviewers ask a question, get the answer and go to the next question. This interviewer worked off of Jerry’s responses and gave me a little more personal stuff then I’ve heard in the past.
This is so great , I share so much early growing up stuff with Jerry . Born in San Francisco and diasporic to the peninsula. A guitarist early on and so much More......
Yes. Sometimes it takes a long time to separate a man from his myth.I give Jerry credit for never feeding into or feeding off of that myth. He fed off of his music and the people around him. He was a magnet for Greatness( look at the list of musicians who searched him out). He WAS a student of mythology and a thousand other things, but he wasn’t interested in creating the cult of personality that was a big part of why he couldn’t stick around longer. He had no interest in that, tried to escape it, but because he was a natural leader and visionary in Music(and easily recognizable) he bore the brunt of the Grateful Dead’s over-popularity starting in 1989. He will always be one of my heroes, in the same sense that Joseph Campbell is. Jerry was a self- educated man with a voracious appetite for Music and a myriad of other things, and it’s great that there is so much documented about his Life. He was very generous with sharing his true self in interviews, i doubt he really knew how to be fake. 🤷🏻… Obviously everybody needs to keep parts of themselves private; I think he managed to gracefully navigate a very difficult path, and we are blessed with his almost unmatched productivity and musical output.( Miles Davis..?) No wonder he wore himself out in 53 yrs and looked 75 at the end. He was PROLIFIC. He set a high standard for that word and that was all for the cause and love of Music.. and of People. Not everybody “gets” GD/JGB music, but those of us that do have a hard time understanding how you couldn’t get it! ( and maybe a bit sorry for them too.) Jerry was almost always eloquent, funny and had a natural charm in his interviews that only non-judgemental human beings with real humility ever achieve.He didn’t have to “ try” to be himself. He was born good at it and dug deep, always trying to improve his understanding of Music, and it’s many technical aspects. Then there was/ IS the X-factor( J- factor?)… the mysterious and undefinable quality… …one time at the Warfield i ended up in front of him at the edge of the stage. He sang “ Mission in the Rain” looking right at me, and if you think that wasn’t one of the peak experiences of my Life.. well,think again. JGB was a hell of a mix of Gospel, Soul, R&B, Folk , Jazz and RocknRoll. Some people called it “church”. Def. made/ makes me feel better than any sermon i ever heard spoken. That music is uplifting in the best ways…to my ears and heart, at least. Hearing Jerry always cheers me up and gives me fresh perspective. And yeah, we all wish we had friends like him. Somebody once said that you maybe don’t want to meet your heroes , cuz they either “turn out to be assholes or just like yourself “( hopefully not both😂). I’m sure Jerry could be a jerk, like anybody, but i’d bet that amongst those whose lives were really touched by his, there’s a very low percentage that were disappointed by him. Anyway, we all gotta be our own heroes and hopefully somebody else’s also. The best way to do that, i believe, is to emulate all that which you respect, and to try to bring more of those qualities and less negativity into the World. I’m forever grateful for GD/JGB and of course Jerry Garcia. BTW: Check out his 1967 interviews, even at age 20 when most people barely know themselves at all… he was ferociously self-confident and articulate about his ideas while always having a demeanor of humility, self-parody and a lack of arrogance. How can you not like somebody like that!? He was wonderfully subversive without falling into the trap of blatant “rebelliousness”, which is always a bit childish. Jerry was a child only in the best of ways: curious, enthusiastic, open, radiant and full of energy. He was a flawed person, like the rest of us …And a brilliant and soulful musician. I rarely write comments and this is prob. too long for this format, but the man has remained a constant inspiration to me and so many others ( way too many to count at this point) for so long already… “ If you get confused, listen to the music play”(or a Jerry interview😉)✌🏻❤️🙂AC
i could write pages on the guy. ive talked to people that knew him, where there from 65-71, and they all say he was the nicest, smartest and most talented of the band by a long shot. jerry would be turning in his grave seeing how bob and others have politicized the band/brand.
i think he would approve, he wouldn't want the others to just stop playing, and they're playing the music they love, it just happens to be a lot of the music Jerry wrote and loved@@saucyjk6453
Mission in the rain is my favorite song. He gets so excited when he sings there’s some satisfaction in the San fransiscxo rain…..I really wish he would have played it live I have a new found love for listening to all Live shows and interviews he’s on a whole Another dimension, I Turley believe he went to heaven and met god way before he ever moved on to the heavens and left his body behind here on earth
May just be the greatest of all Jerry interviews, and that’s saying something. Gets real meaty on several subjects. Despite health appearances, Garcia seems very bright and bubbly here. Very open about some personal things too. Thanks for uploading
Wow ! great interview... saw Jerry solo, and the Dead a lot in 1984... good to hear him speak, we were all concerned for him, right around that time.... JT
@@Charlieboy2680 Yes, he was doing a lot of you know what during 1981 82 83 84 and on ! Gee , I wonder what's in that briefcase ! Every great man, often has their Achilles heel . ✌
Jerry was a smart cat, very well versed on things that a lot of people know little about. I always thought that Jerry's speaking voice never matched what he looked like, though. Glad I got to hear him speak and sing though. Gladder than you'll ever know, Jer! ☮️
Jerry was ridiculously articulate throughout most of his life. He sounded like a Harvard Professor. His vocabulary and verbal structure decayed in his final years but, at his peak, his verbal skills were world-class.
This is a guy that was referred to as his musical big brother by Bob Dylan. - Just sayin.. Dylan was awarded the congressuinal medal of freedom and artistry by President Barrarck Obama.
I don't think it decayed. The man was tired. Been there done that. I think he just wanted to be left alone for a change. The huge pressures of responsibility that came with what the band had grown into took its toll on him. He could never take a break as the bulk of the bands revenue came from touring. As I'm sure you know.
@@hermitrob5481 I agree, but the strain of his responsibilities shouldn't have adversely affected his cognitive and linguistic abilities, which were definitely in decline in his latter years. Smoking, obesity and, above all, a legendarily sedentary lifestyle, as well as a huge number of other critical health-related factors he chose to completely ignore, aged Garcia prematurely to a huge extent. And, yes, exhaustion. Look at the man in his final years. At the age of 53, he could have passed for 75. Even people with bone-crushing responsibilities - check out how US Presidents age horribly fast, it's still nothingness like this - don't show this level of physical and mental senescence. True, even to the end, you could still see the power and intelligence he presented, but it was severely diminished from his prime. He was,physiologically and neurologically, a very sick man in his late 70s. Towards the end, he stammered , searched for words, saId "like" or "you know" dozens of times in a single interview, and had little of the extraordinary articulation, complex spontaneous sentence structure and remarkable breadth of memory recall he exhibited in the earlier years. At his peak, I was always blown away by the maturity and power of his verbal skills, but by 1993 that had largely vanished permanently.
A lot of us cry with you. Decades of life and meaning. I cry almost every time I YT shows of my time in the scene w JG (80-95). Some tears sadness. Some love. Some gratitude. All true. ❤. Thank you for sharing your heart.
People are criticizing the picture but that is what he looked like in 1984. If you look at some of the concert footage we called him "backpack Jerry" then because he looked like he was wearing a backpack. Check out 10/12/84 video for example..
Thank you for this. I'd never heard it before and enjoyed it. There was pieces filled in for me that I'm glad I now know. Unlike Baxkatthehous, I get no negative vibes from this. This isn't your typical music interviewer which makes a positive difference imo. Yet, we all have our opinions.
The OP could have picked a better picture. We know what the truth was. The fact is that case was probably full of drugs and he would be in a diabetic coma 2 years later. That picture hurts my heart.
@@jackstraw4129 what other pictures from 84 look any better? He’s completely disheveled during this era and there’s no way to hide it. It’s history man, this picture fits this interview perfectly
If you watch a lot of Jerry interviews, as well as some other notable people, you'll notice that they subliminally allow the interview to talk disproportionately. It's a deliberate technique smart people use to deflect.
@@hanskung3278 That's not very common, unfortunately. There's a issue of Guitar Player from '78, I believe, where he goes into technicals aspects quite deeply. It's fascinating, and he's on the cover. I'm sure the article is free now on the Net - just Google. There's a Frets magazine article too , from the same period. Hold on, here's the first interview: jgmf.blogspot.com/2013/12/reading-notes-jon-sieverts-1978-guitar.html?m=1
She asks a number of great questions, not all the standard dumb journalist cliche questions, Garcia clearly gets excited ,and enthusiastic about some of them.
He's so focused and articulate here -- all the more amazing when you think about the condition he was in by this time; it was only a month or two later that the band did their famous intervention on him, just a week or two before the Golden Gate Park bust.
The briefcase hes holding in the picture is the one that got confiscated by the police when he got popped in Golden Gate park. It had alot of valuable items in it including a decent amount of Hunter lyrics he had recently given to Jerry. I also hear that years later Hunter tried in vain to get it back. Im pretty sure this is a fact as well but if anyone can add to this story by all means please do.✌
As it happens, Robert Hunter explained a few years later that the briefcase was actually full of unused Hunter lyrics! "[Garcia] has avoided a great deal of stuff which both he and I think is good. What he does is put it all in a briefcase and then he carries it around with him, in case I ever get run over by a dump truck or something. Maybe it's his insurance policy. But he's got some real good stuff tucked away from years ago. When he got busted a couple years back, that briefcase got impounded for evidence, and I realized that all this work was in it! So I got his lawyer onto it - 'For chrissakes, this isn't evidence, it's years of work!' - and he managed to get it back for us. I was worried for a minute." (2/23/88 interview for Golden Road)
@@fchampd4512It is not. Fender made a custom tweed briefcase that purposely looked like a sawed-off guitar case. All the black smudges are from his fingers, covered in charcoal from smoking heroin off of tin foil.
it's not a brief case, it's a guitar case, if you look again now you will see that the head on angle of the camera makes the elongated guitar case look like a short brief case, but it's a grubby tweed guitar case that's holding is old white strat
This is such a great interview. That picture though. I mean, it’s him in ‘84 or thereabouts, but that briefcase. We know what’s in there. Is he coming about of the police station after the bust?
A Holiday Inn lol.Shit, gotta love Jerry . Never forget where you come from! Coulda walked outta any 5 star hotel, but a little old H.Inn...That's Jerry lol
Seems like some folks didn't notice that Garcia is really interested and excited by some of her questions. They share a common background, and were part of the same social scene , early 60s. It's really common for interviewers to all ask the same questions. There's another vid where Garcia says ,when asked one of those perfunctory questions, 'reallY? you sure you want to go into that ? uggg '
@@sambac2053 Jerry was about to talk about something that would've been interesting to me, lady interrupted him to ask about something that was not interesting to me. I was displeased. These are the facts. You added meaning to my words, then criticized the meaning that you had added. No worries. People make these kind of errors all the time.
@@mikec6733 I understand not liking the interruption. I was not directly addressing only your comment , nor did I add anything. I didn't critique anybody but interviewers. I think my observations are cogent, Garcia gets really enthusiastic about some of her questions, and because she's not just reading the standard list of cliches, he gives more details on several areas he brushed over more superficially in several other interviews.. The best interviewer is Jake Feinberg, he asks really intelligent questions, and listens to the answers. Musicians lobe to talk to him . Garcia was gone before Jake got going, but he has interviewed dozens and dozens of people in the Dead scene, the Pranksters scene,and the SF music scene in general. I highly recommend his stuff.
@@sambac2053 If you make a REPLY to someone else's comment, it will naturally be received as a reply to their comment. "It seems like some people..." feels snarky to me.
At 14:38 Alice asks Jerry " do you think of yourself now as an artist?"... then "cut" and nothing more about Garcia as a visual draftsman/artist. Too bad they cut it, I would have gotten a lot out of his "cut out" answer. The link between Garcia's visual artistry and his musical abilities would have been crucial. Too bad, being that art and music are so symbiotic in our existence.
Painterly concepts were always present in the music to my ears: juxtaposition, chiaroscuro, etc. I mean Dark Star > El Paso, c'mon, this guy'd play with disparate elements to great effect.
@@danfuller478 Yup! So true. He was a painter's guitarist for sure. I've always thought that. It all makes sense that he was a visual artist, and a good one at that.
I figured it out... It's just nice to Jerry sitting in my living room room rapping for a bit about all things human experience. A cool cat and a grand opportunity ✌️
Clues... those look like propane tanks on the right. Most states below va have heat pumps as the southern climate doesn't call for natural gas, lp or oil heat. There is also something written on the window that I can't make out.
What rippn set of shows Augusta 84' was wish I was there but the vid on RU-vid and the audience recordings are "crackling with energy"... Check out the black all over his drug/brief case. Chasing dragon's
