Nicholas G. Meriwether
Acknowledgments
This book has been prepared, researched, and written in both close vicinity to and at a certain distance from its object. Closeness was granted me by the University of California, Berkeley, and the Grateful Dead Archive at the University Library of the University of California, Santa Cruz: Closeness both to the sources and to the air that the Grateful Dead breathed. But critical writing seems to also depend on a dialectic of closeness and distance: My employer, the Department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University, as well as the National Library of Sweden, Stockholm, have made my reading and writing from a distance possible.
The life and times of a rock band can be documented in different ways, and the Grateful Dead must be one of the most (if not the most) documented bands ever. Still, there is much detailed knowledge and atmosphere that can only be relayed orally. I am honored by the hard work as well as the friendship of Nicholas G. Meriwether, Grateful Dead Archivist at UC Santa Cruz, and a living source on the history of the band, written and oral. Nicholas is a historian, an utterly careful writer in his own right, as well as the most generous scholar. The work he has done for the Archive is what makes this and future studies on the band possible.
Other scholars, fans and skeptics alike, also have contributed—probably more than they realize. Peter Richardson (lecturer at San Francisco State University), who himself has written a splendid book on the band, generously read and commented on my manuscript. So did a few Swedish friends: Johan Fornäs (professor of Media Studies, Södertörn University College) offered a meticulous reading of my manuscript, as did my colleague at Stockholm University, Bosse Holmqvist (professor of the History of Ideas), and Erling Bjurström (professor emeritus, Linköping University). Johan Petri (Gothenburg University) shared his knowledge of the literature on improvisation. Stefan Helgesson and Frida Beckman, both of the English Department at Stockholm University, invited me to try out a few ideas in the form of lectures.
Two readers of the manuscript, unknown to me, generously shared their obvious insights and knowledge about the band in their respective peer reviews.
My San Francisco friend, “music industry veteran,” entrepreneur, free spirit, Jewish activist, and editor, David Katznelson, took me to different shows in San Francisco so that I could hear something other than just Dead music—and to have some “gris-gris” along the road.
While on the left coast, I have enjoyed the discussions and the erudition of the Frankfurt School Working Group, University of California, Berkeley, with Erin Greer and Megan O’Connor as its unifying center.
My editors at the University of California Press, first Mary Francis and after her Eric Schmidt, have believed in and supported the writing of this book.
Early ideas for this book have been discussed at different conferences. The open-minded and generous intellectual climate of the Grateful Dead Scholars Caucus and its annual congregations at the Southwest American/Popular Culture Association meetings in Albuquerque, New Mexico, have been of a fundamental importance: those gatherings showed to me that perhaps I could have something to say about a band, whose music I listen to and always will listen to. I hope this book fulfills that promise and indeed says something about the Grateful Dead that has not been said before.
My wife, Linda Haverty Rugg (professor of Scandinavian Studies, UC Berkeley), patiently corrected my English and drove me to Santa Cruz and San Rafael, Mountain View and Santa Clara, for archival or field studies. But Linda not only took the wheel when I was seeing double, her critical mind was always open to discussions on how to do things with words, and how to find out ways to make writing generate a shared understanding. Her probing questions, her deep understanding of language—written and spoken—and her demands for clarity drove me on, even when I found myself lost in writing.
Sometimes one loses oneself in writing—as well as in music. The Grateful Dead’s music has been and remains a deep well, one in which I find myself transformed, lost, renewed—or just happily smiling. The art, example, and work that define and inform the Grateful Dead phenomenon are the wellspring that nourished this volume and will continue to do so, for many others, for many years.
Introduction
On February 24, 1974, the Grateful Dead played at Winterland in San Francisco, California. The show, presented by Bill Graham, also was introduced by the promoter, who said “Whatever is going on in the rest of the world, if it’s war or kidnappings or crimes, this is a peaceful Sunday night with the Grateful Dead.” Indeed; this was just one of the fifty-nine shows that the Grateful Dead played at Winterland; one more night, then, in the life of a hardworking rock and roll band.
And, could we add, perhaps one more night protected from the evils of society? Maybe. The band played what could be called its standard repertoire, including “Dark Star,” probably their most requested song and their most frequently used vehicle for improvisation; and still, at that time, often performed live. This night, they feel their way into “Dark Star,” trying different sound figures, until they find a groove sixteen minutes in. When the music gels, the playing takes on an obvious jazz feel—and this Sunday evening is transformed into something special, turning (I imagine) an audience of a few thousand people into one dancing body. The Grateful Dead created that magic innumerable times during the band’s thirty-year career. Moreover, this transcending of the merely mundane was an aesthetic feat, and was not the effect of drugs. I did not attend that show. I listened to it on a CD (Dave’s Picks 13), and I am absolutely sober. This twenty-nine-minute interpretation might not be the most spectacular or aesthetically radical “Dark Star” the band ever played—they do not take it out to absolute atonality and distortion—not until twenty-four minutes have passed, when Jerry Garcia suddenly, and for just a short time, generates a formidable noise out of his guitar, while the rest of the band suggests something of a Spanish or Latin groove. But still, the music played this evening touches me, hits me with its power: the music cuts through the body, torments it, reminds it of another life that is at hand—in the music itself. Perhaps this music wasn’t so much about withdrawing from society; on the contrary, even now it seems intended to intensify the experience of contemporary life.
It is in improvisation that the Grateful Dead found and formed itself, even though the song, and the song format, grew more and more important with time. Improvisation meant that the band had to invent its music while performing it, but improvisation here also had a wider significance: it was the center of a continuous struggle for self-organization. In that sense, we can talk of a politics of improvisation. Self-organization is a key concept here, although I would hesitate to give it too fixed a definition, as self-organization spans so much of my argument here.1 In the background to my use of the concept is both the workers’ movement from the late 19th century and onwards, as well as looser forms of trying to gain control over one’s own life and working conditions in the 1960s. In both these traditions, self-organization meant both a care of the self and the material conditions under which different aspects of everyday life were formed. My hesitancy to give “self-organization” a firmly fixed definition arises from the fact that self-organization here encompasses both the individual and the collective. The care of the self—the forming of the self—in a refusal to adjust to handed-down, normative patterns of individuality and instead, through improvisational acts, trying out new forms of subjectivity, is one aspect of self-organization. Improvisation is the fundamental musical form of self-organization, with the musician inventing the music while it is happening. And the Grateful Dead were forming themselves as a kind of self-supporting machinery, and were generating a culture of self-organizational practices surrounding the band.