david@cca.UUCP (David Kramlich) (05/23/85)
Forwarded from the Arpanet dead-heads list: ^From AP Newsfeatures< ^APN PRINT SUBSCRIBERS HAVE BEEN MAILED TWO ILLUSTRATIONS< EDITOR'S NOTE _ They compare their band to a bottle of fine wine that matures and improves with age. And in an age when even a couple of years can be considered a long life for a rock group, the Grateful Dead looks back over two decades. ^By MARY CAMPBELL= ^AP Newsfeatures Writer= NEW YORK (AP) _ The rock band Grateful Dead, a force behind the flower power of another generation, is alive and kicking after two decades. Born in San Francisco when Haight-Ashbury was the capital of the psychedelic universe, the group survived after that scene died and will celebrate an anniversary this month. Members say it's because the Grateful Dead learned to get high on music instead of drugs. ``You don't have to take psychedelic drugs to get high,'' says Mickey Hart, who joined the Grateful Dead as its second drummer. ``That's the thing we didn't know 20 years ago. Now, when we're playing, time stands still. You can cut lose from your physical realities, transcend your aches and pains. The more you play, the younger you can get.'' Hart, arriving for an interview with his kindergarten-age daughter, Sarah, is working on a book, ``Edge of Magic,'' which will trace the history of drumming from 4500 B.C. ``The shaman used drums to introduce a transformed state,'' Hart says. ``It was one of the earliest forms of healing. There's a correlation between what the Grateful Dead does and what the shaman does. The audience comes expecting a change. ``Bill Graham calls it the audience's time out from whoever they are.'' Nowadays, the Grateful Dead tours for three weeks, then the six members go home to their familes. When the group was formed, they all lived together in a house in Haight-Ashbury and tried to work every night. ``We were all kids learning to play our instruments,'' Hart says. Jerry Garcia learned guitar; he'd been playing banjo. Phil Lesh learned bass; he'd been playing trumpet. Hart can recall a review that said they were ``mad scientists using rusty scalpels on the minds of innocent, unsuspecting children.'' ``Some people call us a '60s band,'' he says. ``We're not. We're in the '80s and doing well. And we're much better than we were in the '60s.'' The Grateful Dead dates its anniversary from the day of Lesh's arrival in Palo Alto on June 7, 1965. The following weekend he played for the first time in Berkeley, with the Warlocks _ Garcia, rhythm guitarist Bob Weir, drummer Bill Kreutzmann and Ron ``Pigpen'' McKernan on harmonica and keyboards. The Warlocks name held until they discovered that a Florida group already had claimed it. Some say the name Grateful Dead came to Garcia in a psychedelic dream. The Grateful Dead isn't the oldest American rock group. The Beach Boys _three Wilson brothers, a cousin and a high-school friend _ started in 1961 but performs now without Dennis Wilson, who drowned two years ago, and the often-incapacitated Brian Wilson. The Jefferson Airplane, formed in 1965, flies now as the Jefferson Starship with none of its original members. ``The Grateful Dead used to play, free, in the park all the time in the Haight-Ashbury days,'' Weir says. ``As the crowds became bigger, they began to trash the park more and more, as big crowds will. The Park Department decided they'd had enough of that. I think 1975 was the last one. ``We had pretty much free run of the city in the early days. We were one step ahead of whatever laws could keep us out. One time we blocked Haight Street and played on a couple of flatbed trucks.'' ``There was more freedom around us in San Francisco,'' Garcia says. ``Weird behavior wasn't greeted with immediate hostility and paranoia. Now, anything weird and you're liable to get shot.'' About the group's music, Garcia says, ``The Grateful Dead is not the place for the traditional artist, one artist-one work. Weir and I do the majority of the writing. I write with Robert Hunter. Weir writes with John Barlow. It doesn't get to be a Grateful Dead song until the Grateful Dead plays it. It's not like I write it and teach it to the Grateful Dead. Its architecture becomes something the Grateful Dead builds on.'' Recently the band collectively composed the theme for TV's new ``Twilight Zone,'' but the group hasn't cut an album in five years. ``The Grateful Dead never was a recording group,'' Hart says. ``It seems like our magic doesn't happen in a cage. We're a live band that responds in the wild.'' But there probably will be an album this anniversary year, as well as the band's first video. After about 1,700 concerts over 20 years, they can only recall missing three. There was a riot, or at least a fracas, backstage in San Diego in 1980 and 34 people were arrested, among them Weir and Hart, on charges of inciting a riot. Weir claimed the police had ``bust fever.'' This year, Garcia was arrested in San Francisco for drug possession. Pigpen, the original keyboards player, never used drugs but was a heavy drinker. He died in 1973 of liver disease. Pianist Keith Godchaux and his vocalist-wife Diana joined the group then but were asked to leave seven years later. The keyboards player now is Brent Mydland. The most exotic concert of the last 20 years was at the Pyramids near Cairo, in 1978. Then there was the April Fools' Day concert in Passaic, N.J., where the Dead played each other's instruments. ``One of our worst was Woodstock,'' Weir says. ``Our sound man decided he wanted to use our own PA system, which was inadequate to the task. It was raining. Cameramen were crawling under us all the time. When I played the guitar I got a continuous low-level electric shock. Once I also touched the mike. A big blue arc came out and sent me back about six feet, almost knocking me out. We had the film destroyed. When you see the Woodstock movie in theaters, the Grateful Dead isn't in it. And a good thing, too.'' Garcia doesn't want to look 20 years ahead. ``In some ways it feels a lot like we're just getting started,'' he says. ``It has never gotten routine. It's never predictable. I wouldn't have been able to chart accurately any of the last 20 years; I'm not going to bother about the next 20.'' ``An ensemble is very delicate, something you can't push and shove,'' Hart says. ``It has to mature like fine wine. If you don't break the bottle you have something wonderful in 20 years. In the Grateful Dead you're looking at a hell of a bottle of wine.'' ^END ADV< AP-NR-05-20-85 2302EST< -------