Playing In The Band

...........It's hard to believe that the same guy who'd driven across the country determined to become one of Bill Monroe's Blue Grass Boys all but gave up the banjo and bluegrass by year's end. Part of the problem, Jerry explained in 1981, was that "in the area I was in there were virtually no bluegrass musicians; very few, certainly nobody very good. I got to be quite a good banjo player, but I was really operating in a vacuum, and what I wanted was to have a great bluegrass band, but I only got occasional chances to put a bluegrass band together that was by my standards even acceptable. Although I had fun, none of them was serious or a very good attempt."

"I think he got disenchanted with bluegrass," Sara says. "it was clear he wasn't going to make it in that world. Socially, it was just too foreign. This was all these West Coast kids, some of them were Jewish, some of them had Hispanic surnames, and there was no way they were going to be part of the bluegrass establishment. It wasn't a good match socially."

But there was something else tugging at Garcia as 1964 turned into 1965. For one thing, like half of America under the age of twenty-five, Jerry had been seduced by the Beatles, especially their film A Hard Day's Night, which depicted life in a rock 'n' roll band as just about the most fun that could be had on planet Earth. The Beatles were deliciously irreverent and in-your-face anarchic; untamable gadabouts on an endless lark, always living in a completely different universe than the pitiably straight forces that were constantly trying to control, or at the very least, restrain them. Certainly the jug band had some of that off-the-wall spirit, but the Beatles were a whole different level of fun- that was obvious. And the screaming girls were real.

"[The Beatles] were real important to everybody," Garcia said. "They were a little model, especially the movies- the movies were a big turn-on. Just because it was a little model of good times....It was like [they] were saying, 'You can be young, you can be far-out and you can still make it.' They were making people happy. That happy thing - that's the stuff that counts- was something we could all see right away."

"The Beatles were why we turned from a jug band into a rock 'n' roll band," said Bob Weir. "What we saw them doing was impossibly attractive. I couldn't think of anything else more worth doing."

But poking at Garcia's other shoulder, all gruff and grumbly but still the essence of a different kind of cool, was Mr. Pigpen McKernan: "He'd been pestering me for a while; he wanted me to start up an electric blues band," Jerry said. "That was his trip. Because in the jug band we used to do blues numbers like Jimmy Reed tunes and even played a couple of rock 'n' roll tunes, and it was just the next step....Theoretically it's a blues band, but the minute we get electric instruments it's a rock 'n' roll band. Because, wow- playin' rock 'n' roll, it's fun!"

"It was always my impression that it was Jerry's decision to form the electric band," Dave Parker says. "That he was not that interested in playing the kinds of music he'd been doing before, and he'd done the jug band thing. That wasn't something you could really do for a long time, and the excitement of electric rock 'n' roll - what the Beatles and the Stones and Dylan were doing- was happening, and Jerry had this surge of energy to go and do that and make something happen.

"There was a feeling all around- and I think a lot of it came from Garcia- that anything was possible, so just pick out what you want to do and do it.".......... (excerpt from Garcia: An American Life)


Wow! I found that crazy when I read it. The Beatles, my number 1 band of all time had just as much of an influence on the Dead, whom I have been pretty much worshipping lately, as they did on me. I'm not in a band. I play guitar and jam every once in a while, but that's about it. The Beatles influence me just in general. But when it does come to an influence for jamming, It's all about the Dead for me.

La Chitarra: