Over the course of my life, I have endured the death, pain, and passing of many of my musical heroes: John Lennon, shot; David Bowie, cancer; Prince, overdose. Each loss serves as a painful reminder of our fragility and mortality. But for me, the loss of Jerry Garcia in particular still weighs heavily.
Music has always been an intense emotional experience for me. I am among the number of people who experience musical frisson, a subject of study among neuroscientists and others in which some individuals feel “chills” or euphoric sensations when listening to certain music. The Grateful Dead is an exemplary source of my euphoric experiences. The famed concert promoter Bill Graham of the Grateful Dead stated, “They aren’t the best at what they do; they are the only ones that do what they do,” a very apt appraisal. My earliest memory of the Grateful Dead was in Springfield, where I lived and went to high school. I recall taking the public bus after school near a square downtown, where tents were erected and a multitude of “weirdos” gathered, the scent of burnt sage, falafel, and patchouli; long-haired, scruffy vagrants decorated the quad near the stop. It felt like a mini-Woodstock in my hometown. As we boarded our bus home, a friend responded to a snide comment from another friend regarding their appearance, saying, “They may look strange, but (Deadheads) are the sweetest people you will ever meet.” She spoke with such authority and conviction that years later I would realize she spoke the truth.
Sometime in the mid-eighties, I became a fan of their track “Touch of Grey” thanks to its cool video on MTV. I later learned that “true” Deadheads derided them as “Touchheads,” but by that time, I was deep into bootleg collecting. A local radio program would air full shows, and I would sit poised at my stereo, fingers splayed over the play/record buttons to capture some bit of magic on cassette, mining for gold. At one point, I boasted a collection of over 50 shows. My true love for The Grateful Dead came through a roommate in culinary school. I caught the “bug” when I heard the bootleg of their legendary live performance at Barton Hall on the campus of Cornell University on May 8th, 1977. The specific date is important because listening to the Dead and their penchant for long improvisational jams often required the listener to endure some rough patches, but then the stars would align, and the band would connect. Brilliant, cathartic, euphoric—something akin to “catching the spirit.” Sometimes a fellow Deadhead would exclaim, “Jerry is on!” when, on those rare occasions, his playing elevated to an almost spiritual crescendo, reaching the stratosphere of sound. That performance is lightning in a bottle, capturing a specific moment where sound in time aligns to create a profoundly impactful performance of art in which the band members spoke their truth at 100 decibels.
I lived for a time in San Francisco, the land of their birth, with the legendary neighborhood of Haight-Ashbury, the epicenter of the band’s fusion with the times, amidst the social climate of drugs and free love. I recall gazing at the home where they spent time, fantasizing about what it must have been like to live in that petri dish of creativity and artistic freedom. While I was not a “true Deadhead,” following every show or obsessively listening to their performances, I saw them live a total of four times, each experience unforgettable. I was one of “Jerry’s Kids,” a term used for those who intensely loved Jerry Garcia’s solos—at times, a plucking, soaring, staccato melodic hymn, and at others, a deep meditation in sonic waves.
Time passed. In 1992, the news broke about Jerry being admitted to the hospital. I lamented; a steady countdown began. In 1995, he checked himself into a rehabilitation clinic. A low-grade anxiety crept into my mind, but I ignored it; I was busy with life, after all.
On the day of August 9, 1995, I was working in a seasonal restaurant in Cape Cod, my first chef position amid a crisis, facing all the fixings of a terrible job: a predatory sous chef, an owner who exhibited signs that could only be described as evil, difficult staff, a horrible miscalculation of my kitchen’s ability to execute, undercapitalized and aging equipment… my ego was shattered; it was the most challenging time of my nascent chef career. And then the hammer fell… some truly devastating news to punctuate a really awful year. A lifetime of cheeseburgers, milkshakes, constant touring, and heroin had finally taken their toll, and Jerry Garcia died in his sleep from a massive heart attack. It was a loss for music, for the fans, and I did grieve.
The Dead have a song, one of my favorites, entitled “The Music Never Stopped.” On that day, for me, it did.