Dark Star by Robert Greenfield

Author:Robert Greenfield
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

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Hal Kant: You have to distinguish the band from the individuals. They all treated their finances differently. Jerry treated his as though he really didn’t care about what he was making. As long as he had his per diem and he could create, he was happy.

Richard Loren: So now we were in debt. We had a bank loan we had to pay, we were in debt from the movie, we were in debt from Egypt. I had to work the next four or five years as a manager trying to get them solvent. I never had the luxury of being with a wealthy Grateful Dead. Before ’72, they’d had nothing. They had just been a working man’s band. Now they knew what the taste of a new car was. They knew what the taste of owning a home was. A new guitar. Now they had a taste for money. Plus there was the introduction of heroin.

Tom Davis: I’d first met Jerry in 1971 when I wandered backstage at Winterland at a benefit for the Sufi dancers. I had this beautiful girl on my arm and we’d been taking barbiturates and LSD and the crowd just parted for us and we walked right through doorways and upstairs. I got right behind Jerry’s amp and it looked like a joint that he was smoking. I took a huge hit off of it and smoked the whole thing till I discovered it was a Pall Mall cigarette. I had no business being there at all but nobody kicked me off until the show was over. I just smoked his cigarette and he let me sort of drool on the amplifier which at that time had tie dye on it.

In 1978, I was doing Saturday Night Live in New York and I asked Lorne Michaels to book the Grateful Dead. He did not want the Grateful Dead on the show because they were not hip enough. I literally got on my knees and begged, “Please, do me one favor and let the Grateful Dead play. Please, please.” And he said, “All right, all right.” They ended up playing “Casey Jones.” I remember the director put an ‘X’ on the floor and said, “Jerry, this is Dave the director. Where are you going to be when you’re playing like that?” Jerry said, “I don’t know.” “You’ve got to tell me where you’re going to be or you’re not going to be in the picture.” Jerry said, “I don’t care.” At that point, Jerry was ready to walk. He was pissed but they did the show. NBC came very close to getting their entire staff doped that day. Their coffee machine came very close to getting dosed.

Manasha Matheson Garcia: I met Jerry in ’78 in Chicago on Mickey Mouse’s fiftieth birthday. I was going to Shimer College in Illinois. My friends at college mentioned to me that they had bought Jerry a pumpkin the year earlier when he played in the Chicago area and inside the

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