← DISGRACELAND
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Foreign. This podcast is supported by FX's love story, John F. Kennedy, Jr. And Carolyn Bessette. The new limited series from executive producer Ryan Murphy. It explores the complex courtship of the iconic couple, considered to be American royalty, whose love story captured the attention of the nation. Their fairy tale romance would unfold in front of the public eye, where their private love would also become a national obsession. FX's love story John F. Kennedy Jr. And Carolyn Bessette. Watch now on FX, Hulu and Hulu on Disney plus for bundle subscribers. All right guys, it's the new year. New year, new you. Are you ready for a New Year's resolution that's going to actually work out for you? That's going to actually stick? That you're going to be able to stick to? Well, Groons is the one resolution that actually sticks. Groons is the simple daily habit that will succeed. It's easy. Extreme resolutions, they're not easy. That's why they fail. 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And save up to 52% off with code Disgraceland at Gruuns Co. That's Code Disgraceland at G R U N S dot co. Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about the Grateful Dead are insane. Singer, guitarist Jerry Garcia dosed unsuspecting film crews with LSD. Drummer Bill Kurtzman reportedly slept with 13 women in one night. The band was arrested in New Orleans with enough acid and assorted drugs to fuel an alternate moon landing. The Grateful Dead were born out of the sonic boom of 1960s. Counterculture and carried the mantle further and longer and with more significance than any of their 60s counterparts. They were also kept under the watchful eye of the CIA, who, along with the indirect help of the Grateful Dead and their patron saint, soundman Augustus Owsley Stanley iii, were directly responsible for the mainstreaming of hippie idealism, an ethos of tune in, turn on and dropout styled freedom. The Grateful Dead believed in freedom to their core and adhered to this belief throughout one of the longest and most successful runs in music history. And they made great music along the way, some of the greatest music ever made. And that music you heard at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my melotron called mellow flute hoedown, BK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Mrs. Brown, you've got a Lovely Daughter by Herman's Hermits. And why would I play you that specific slice of adolescent shindig cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on May 5, 1965. And that was the day that Mother McCree's Uptown Jug champions walked into Magoo's Pizza to play their first show. A band that would soon change their name to the Warlocks and then to the Grateful Dead and become one of the most influential bands the world has ever known. On this episode, a mellow hoedown, adolescent cheese, way too much LSD and the Grateful Dead. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgrace. Charles Manson, the psychotic cult leader behind the Tate LaBianca murders, murders so brutal they grip the nation, once said that giving someone LSD without their knowledge, an act known by hippies as dosing, was something that he would never do, not even to his worst enemy. Despite Manson's murderous and manipulative behavior, dosing someone was a bridge too far. Why? Well, because it was just too fucked up. Unsuspecting individuals suddenly under the influence of insanely powerful psychedelic chemicals were in for a terrifying ride. Perhaps one they'd never re emerged from the high of being on acid. The trip is so intense that it is life punctuating. You ride a rollercoaster of emotions. You see yourself and everything around you differently. And I don't mean figuratively. I mean literally. That's why they call it hallucinating. You're never the same afterward. Those who willingly drop LSD know this already. It's a choice they've made, one that is born sometimes out of a great notion of self exploration. To open previously unknown Doors of perception, to become a more enlightened version of oneself. That's the theory, anyway. The reality is that you trip balls. Your mind scrambled like yesterday's eggs. You laugh at nothing and everything. You feel connected to the world, the universe, in a stronger, more visceral way. And for the first four hours, you ascend the great cosmic ladder until you peak midway through the eight hour high, your body and mind literally buzzing in harmony with the entirety of your surroundings. And then the road you're on turns. It's darker, bumpier. You question everything, including yourself. Nothing makes sense. It's all some sick joke. You hate yourself because you're unrecognizable. Just like all that surrounds you. You hold on for dear life, white knuckling your way through the remaining hours of your trip, descending down Jacob's ladder, past the horrifying screams of your psyche, praying to God that you land in a place where you can still recognize the person you used to be, swearing to your Lord and savior the whole way down that you'll never, ever touch the stuff again. Then, hours later, you crash, emerging from the trip with the worst hangover you've ever experienced and the feeling that the only thing that will save you from its debilitating grip is strong grass and quite possibly more acid. And thanks to the CIA, Americans have plenty of acid at their disposal. In the 1950s, the Central Intelligence Agency theorized that if LSD was capable of altering one's perception, then it could be used by the military as a form of mind control in its ongoing Cold War with the Soviet Union. So under a top secret government program known as MK Ultra, the CIA began testing the new drug on military personnel and even civilians to measure its effectiveness and thus calibrate its usefulness as a weapon. Unsuspecting military contractors, mental patients, prisoners, street walking johns and sex workers were experimented on, dosed, decoded and disregarded, despite whatever lasting effects the acid had on them. Noted and alleged subjects of MK ULTRA experiments included Boston gangster Whitey Bulger, eventual Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, future Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, and author of the best selling novel One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. Ken Kesey. One military scientist, unaware he'd been dosed by his CIA colleagues, believed he could fly and so famously jumped through the glass window of his bedroom on the 13th floor of the Statler Hotel in New York City. That was in 1953. In 1969, Jerry Garcia, guitar player and singer of the world's preeminent psychedelic band, the Grateful Dead, knew Nothing of the flying Statler scientist. He did, however, know the effects of dosing someone with lsd. But he didn't care. To Garcia, it wasn't about fucking with someone so much as it was about enlightening them, getting them on his level. Garcia's level was high as fuck. He and his bandmates made sport out of tripping on powerful lsd. The Dead were professionals who used the drug to explore the outer limits of where their music could take both them and and their live audiences together further. Which is precisely why Garcia, AKA Captain Trips, was hunched over the coffee maker on the set of Hugh Hefner's cheesy television studio, secretly mixing high octane LSD into the hot black java mischievous grin on his mug. He was dosing anyone who'd be on the set or in the made for TV audience that his band was about to perform for. Because if the Grateful Dead were going to perform, Garcia wanted the audience to be on his level. A level that this audience was far from naturally inclined to be on. Playboy After Dark was the brainchild of Hugh Hefner, editor of the men's magazine Playboy. A sort of TV version of the Playboy philosophy. A free flowing televised salon of 60s Zeitgeist staged in Hef's small screen bachelor pad. Pseudo intellectualism, subversive sex, as much skin as sensors would allow, Rocks, glasses and stems. For days, Hefner positioned himself at the center of mid century masculinity. A reimagining of sexual norms and personal freedom not unlike the thinking of the Grateful Dead. But where the band and the man differed was in style. The Grateful Dead presented themselves as a ragtag group of music surrealists. Hefner presented himself, his magazine and his television show as sophisticated, far more Don Draper than Salvador Dali. And that difference in style was seen by the Dead as being square and squares made for shitty audiences. So Garcia dosed them. The result was wild, unhinged freedom. A coming together of two seemingly different types of people ascending the cosmos on the sounds of psychedelia. Pre Dead performance. The set was humming, Garcia tripping, waxing poetic with Hef on the Aurora. Boris. Sid Caesar hung back, banged down barbiturates in straight vodka and felt an unknown buzz settle about his brain. And the show's PA searched frantically for that night's guest astrologist, who was last seen circling unknown rabbit holes backstage. The rest of the Grateful Dead sat on the Playboy After Dark stage, patiently waiting for their singers, Jerry Garcia, who was now making his way through the manufactured television audience wearing his familiar shit eating all knowing grin, the one that perfectly matched the green and orange drug rug he was wearing. Cameras rolled. The crowd cued into the imminent performance and their applause grew louder. Someone confused by the acid booed. Someone else yelled out, you're the Dead. Garcia shouldered his acoustic and slyly responded, right you are. Laughs, Giddy pitched anticipation. A quick check of the tuning on the six string and straight into Mountains of the Moon. When the song ended, the audience, having suffered through an uninspired version of the tune, leaned a bit too heavily into their applause, excited more for what they hoped was to come than what they just tolerated. And what was to come was worth the wait. The Grateful Dead fell in soulfully to St Stephen. Garcia now swung an electric SG and it sung a wildly psychedelic and different tune than his acoustic. Playboy Bunny swayed with abandon on the edge of three. Four time horny male bachelors, all black ties and brill cream, did their best to keep cool within the staunchy confines of their starched white collars. A fundamental lack of understanding for anything that was going on. Reeling from the sting of LSD and the sharp jabs of pheromones, Fernet and pent up sexual aggression, Garcia hit the solo. The band swung. The pocket was big. It sucked in everyone. While the television cameras rolled and speeded for sound, Hef lorded over the scene he'd created, the modern man forever turned on and decidedly tuned into the hipness of the Grateful Dead. Hef rocked. Garcia killed one man, gathered with the other man, spilled America got laid down night to Jerry Garcia and his bandmates Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kurtzman, Mickey hart, Ron Pigpen, McCarron and Tom Constantin on stage that night. It was magical. It all reminded Garcia of a sort of ready for primetime version of the acid test from a couple years back. But not as dark or scary. This was pure freedom. A type of freedom that was impossible to imagine in the the beginning days of the band when they sweated over regimented bluegrass scales and pitch perfect harmonies. Here in the psychedelic present, they were free. Free to take the audience wherever they wanted and free to let the music they were making take them on a very long and very strange trip. Very long, very long, very.
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Why have I asked my electrician I found on Angie.com to bury my pet hamster Nibbles in our yard for me? Because I was so moved by how carefully he buried my electrical wires, I knew I could trust him to bury my sweet Nibbles after his untimely end. Huh, Nibbles gone too soon. May he scurry in peace. Hey, sorry about your pet, but I just wire stuff. Nibbles would have loved you like a brother. Connecting homeowners with skilled pros for over 30 years. Angie the one you trust to find the ones you trust. Find pros for all your home projects@angie.com well, the holidays have come and gone once again, but if you've forgotten to get that special someone in your life a gift, well, Mint Mobile is extending their holiday offer of half off unlimited wireless. So here's the idea. You get it now, you call it an early present for next year. What do you have to lose? Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch limited time
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Free will and Frank was freaking out. Nobody knew who it was. All they could hear was his voice along with the spectral tape sounds being looped out of a small DIY tower of hi fi equipment, something the heads all called the Nowhere Mine and it was bleeding out from behind a raggedy army blanket hanging from the ceiling. Frank was behind it too, sitting cross legged on the floor in front of the psychedelic public address system he'd commandeered, rocking back and forth, forth and repeating his mantra over and over again into a cheap microphone. God, I'll put the devil down. Frank was spooked by the square on the scene. His unconscious registered something odd about the dude. His hair was long, well, long enough. It was blonde, parted on the side and growing over his ears in that disheveled but still conservative kind of way that Robert Redford was making famous. But his clothes were hip hop kinda, at least. Raggedy blue jeans and an untucked Oxford standard college kid garb. But his boots. His boots, that was it. Frank thought the boots too black, too shiny. Dude was a narc, had to admit. Fuck God up with the devil. Frank normally would have confronted the guy. Frank was no shrinking violet. He was a Hell's Angel, a real outlaw. In another life, he was a pirate. And in a life previous to that of Viking. But here and now, he was a stoned, paranoid, diminutive version of his otherwise badass self. And the acid was just too strong even for freewheeling Frank. This Owsley dude knew what he was doing. His acid was next level, literally. He and his old lady Melissa, a Berkeley chemistry major, formed a quote unquote research group and paid Cyclochemical Corporation for bottled lysergic monohydrate to make professional grade psychedelic drugs, which was all perfectly legal at the time. But the acid Owsley was making was far better than anything being amalgamized in dirty bathtubs by heads scattered about Northern California. Owsley's acid was legend, the best in the world. And it fueled Ken Kesey's Acid Tests, a psychedelic social experiment where partygoers would gather to blow their minds on acid in large rooms full of strobe lights, sound effects, music and other sensory delights or terrors, depending on what kind of trip any particular person might be having. And the Acid Tests were the vanguard of what was becoming the hippie movement, the sonic boom of what we now refer to in shorthand as the 60s. And this movement was fueled by Ozzley's powerful LSD, sometimes too powerful for even him to handle. But he had a trick. Whenever the trip would get too heavy, he would lean into the music that the Acid Test house band was playing. The band was incredible, and that band was the Grateful Dead. Ozzie had never heard anything like them before. Their sound seemed to chase itself around in a circle underneath the pulsing strobes and in between the blinking tracers, it was one exhilarating high straight into another. Sonic clarity of the highest order. It was grounding and compelling at the same time. But Ken Kesey had no tricks. And there was no such thing as any trip being too heavy for Keezy. So there was nothing to trick himself out of other than reality or sanity. Keezy was a lost cause. Osley thought the CIA got to him early. That early acid they shoveled into him was too strong. It changed him for good. There was no coming back from it. So the Acid Tests were his way of bringing in as many squares as he could onto his level. Because the rest of the real world was now closed off to him. The Acid Tests were Keezy's attempt at bending the world to his bent reality. But if it weren't for Keezy, Osley never would have met the Grateful Dead, so he owed the no Neck Prankster that much. But other than that, he regretted ever meeting him. He was more trouble than he was worth, a walking cop magnet rolling up and down the PCH in a psychedelic school bus detailed with a DayGlo hallucinatory mural with beat icon Neil Cassidy at his side and a group who called themselves the Merry Pranksters, always on road trips and always on acid trips, handing out LSD to civilians like candy. He might as well have had Freewheeling Frank's prison buddy tattoo Arrest me across his forehead. It was Keezy who first introduced Owlie to Bent, and Bent spooked Owlsley out. Something about his intense stare and a disregard for all things hip that was so effortless that it was somehow cool. Bent was post hip and it scared Owlsley. Even his name. Bent. What the hell kind of name was that? So cool Squares can't be that cool. Something was up with that guy. Bent was Death at his door. Owlsley knew it, and Owsley could have sworn he saw Bent milling about the crowd of stoned heads earlier, which, if it was true, would have been entirely fucked up. Owl was paranoid, spiraling, so he cued in on Jerry Garcia, who was spiraling himself musically in the best way possible through the opening riffs of Death don't have no Mercy, a foreboding blues dirge originally done by Reverend Gary Davis. The band had emerged from whatever far out plane they were on previously and settled effortlessly under the dark star. Garcia was nearly whispering the lyrics. The rest of the band stirred menacingly beneath him. Garcia's guitar, every note pitch perfect and pointed straight at Owlsley Temple Owl could feel it. Garcia hit the second chorus, gave Death his due, and then exploded into the guitar solo. The band rose up below him like a seaquake, whipping him into a tidal wave of sound. Owlsley held on tight, scanned the room for a life preserver, found none, felt the pull of the acid undertow, tumbled over backward into some deep oceanic void past Freewheeling Frank's spectral madness until he landed flat on his back so hard that he got the wind knocked out of him. He gasped for air. His jaw ached like he'd been punched hard by someone who meant it. He could feel the cold floor on his cheek, his chin perched over his left shoulder. He blinked, opened his eyes. There, inches away from his nickel sized pupils, black shiny boots. He turned his head, looked up, and there he was, Death staring down at him in the form of Maximus Bentley Scottsdale iii, AKA Bent. Owlsley closed his eyes and prayed for another tidal wave. We'll be right back after this.
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Word, word, word.
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The backside of the hill was steep and there was no doubt about it. The brakes on this Volkswagen shipbox were shot behind the wheel. Ken Kesey stomped on the brake pedal. Regardless. What else was he going to do. The tall Victorians on Ashbury street were quickly becoming a passing blur as Keezy's borrowed VW Bug gathered speed, each revolution of its wheels more reckless than the last. Keezy held on, and there was only one choice. Crash this Bug into something forgiving before someone, namely himself, got hurt. Real hurt. He knew what he had to do. Midway down the hill, he could see them both. Both houses coming up quick. On one side of the street, 710 Ashbury. On the other, 75015 Ashbury. Keezy had a choice. 710 was the home of the Grateful Dead. They wouldn't mind a small German economy vehicle in their living room, would they? Keezy hated to do it. He loved Garcia and the boys. 715 was the home of the local Hell's Angels. Kesey had soured on the Angels recently. Freewheeling Frank was freaking everyone out. The Bug gathered speed. The Victorians zipped by. Local hippie stood up on their stoops, wondering why in the hell some dude was speed racing through their mellow. Fuck it. Frank had it coming. Keezy cut the wheel to the left at the last minute and crashed the car dead into the bay windows of the Hells Angels rented home at 715 Ashbury street about 20 yards up the street. Bent, shook his head in disgust, threw his cigarette to the ground and walked off in Anchor. It would only be a matter of time before the local cops showed up. And that was all he needed. Some mouth breathing, baton twirling, blue Meanie stumbling blind through the accident scene and blowing his cover inside. 7:10 Ashbury, Owlsley and Garcia ran to the window to catch what all the commotion was about. Oh, shit. Keezy fucked up good this time. They decided to split before the Angels got too heavy. They'd seen this movie before, so they bailed for the hate. Haight Ashbury in 1967 was the epicenter of American counterculture. The effect caused by the sonic boom of Kesey's acid tests. It's where tie dye and Two Fingered peace signs were invented. It's where the first ever head shop opened its doors. In short, it was Plymouth Rock for hippies. And they were fueled by Osley's acid. All of their psychedelic dreams, their idealistic counterculture delusions, sprung from the influence of Osley via his spiritual interpretation of chemistry. And it was all soundtracked by the Grateful Dead, whose presence on the scene was ubiquitous. They played constantly, whenever and wherever they could. Pizza places, acid tests, free public concerts, house parties, the Fillmore, the Avalon at Winterland, at the Human Being. And the Dead were in large part surviving as a band because of Osley. He bankrolled them, paid for their equipment, their sound system, their travel when they needed it, and even their rent from time to time. Therefore, Ali's influence on what would become known as the 60s, that sprawling, catch all phrase used to describe not only the turbulent decade but also everything the baby boomers affected afterward. Politics, media, social programming, advertising. In all of that, Owsley's influence is undeniable. The 60s were America's tipping point. In Owsley, through the manufacturing of his illicit LSD and patronage of the heavily influential great Grateful Dead, was the one shoving the culture off into the deep end. Authorities were understandably in a panic. Their world was no longer recognizable to them. Men dressing like women, women dressing like men, and children suddenly asking questions. It was all spinning out of control. But authorities had only themselves to blame, because it was the CIA who turned on Kesey, who turned on Owsley, who turned on the Grateful Dead, who turned on the world. Which was why Bent was there, to keep an eye on it all and to report back to his CIA higher ups if and when things started to spin out of control. So Bent made Owsley a pet project. He knew Owsley would trip up bad enough, and when he did, Bent would be there to make sure he didn't get up. Owsley met Bent at one of the first Kesey parties he'd attended. At least he thought he did. He remembered his name, Maximus Bentley Scottsdale iii, so similar to his Augustus Owsley Stanley iii. And he remembered his dress jeans, Oxford, also similar to what Osley wore. The Oxford gave away his blue blooded background. The shiny boots gave away his profession. Bent Red narc to Owlsley from the second he laid eyes on him. And there he was, leaning casually against the lamp post in broad daylight, right there on the hate. Owl grabbed Garcia by the shoulder there. Garcia turned to look toward where Osley was pointing, but saw nothing. Bent, if he was there at all, was gone. Garcia was used to this. Bent was Owsley's white whale. Garcia heard a lot about him but never saw him, though Owlsley swore at least two, three times a week that he'd encountered this square jawed narc who threatened to bring the whole shithouse down. This went on for years as Bent clocked Owsley and the Dead, reporting back to Langley any and all transgressions and trying in vain to keep a lid on the spiraling counterculture to prevent it from spilling out any further into the mainstream. Owsley was eventually arrested for possession of 100 grams of LSD, but a sympathetic judge let him off easy with probation. Then in New Orleans, Osley was busted down on Bourbon street with the Grateful Dead. The band got off easy, but Osley, because he was on probation, was sent to federal prison for two years. Bent and his CIA handlers back in Langley were satisfied with the band played on. Jerry Garcia came down with the rest of them band after the solo. He always loved the song Morning Dew, the post apocalyptic day after stroll through nuclear annihilation. Despite the song's subject matter, there was something so peaceful about it. Garcia stabbed his strings lazily and played off of Bobby's open chords. The band kept the song moving behind them, and they were all feeling it. Then Garcia did something he seldom ever did. He walked out from behind his mic to the center of the stage. He took a pass at a lead fill. The crowd pitched by this slight aberration in form, was at full attention. Jerry passed at another lead riff. The crowd responded en masse with a loud but spattered cheer. A conversation had begun between one man and 50,000 fans. It was a conversation that began some 20 years years ago and suffered through fits and starts over the years. More people joined in, however. Lately the conversation had grown old and uninspired. But not tonight. Something about tonight's rendition of Morning Dew had Jerry playing on his front foot. He scaled the neck of his guitar again, another beautiful lead riff, this one pulling the rhythm section up underneath him. And when it did, the whole stage stadium seemed to levitate for a split second. Garcia pulled back. He let Brent have some on the keys and surveyed the crowd as he walled slowly over to stage right. He could see them now, every last one of them, and they were all part of this free counterculture he created almost by accident, though he'd never take credit, nor did he want it, and there were many to credit for what the Grateful Dead had grown into, or to blame for what the Grateful Dead had grown into. It all depended on Garcia's point of view. On that particular day, he felt Brent wrapping up his solo. When the band landed, Garcia plucked at his strings playfully. He was teasing them now, and they loved it. It was almost showmanship, but not quite. The connection was too real, the connection between the musician and the crowd, between the crowd and the band, between the band and the culture. They sounded great, and Garcia thought of Owlsley because Owsley deserved a lot of the credit for the greatness of the Dead's live sound, crazy fucker that he was. After he Got out of prison, he applied his alchemy skills to sonic engineering and designed and built the Grateful Dead's famed Wall of sound, a 40 foot high, state of the art stereo sound system comprised of more than 600 speakers. Technically speaking, the Wall of Sound was years ahead of its time. It was a towering monument to creativity and imagination, and it allowed the Grateful Dead to develop their lives sound faster and better than any of their contemporaries, and to therefore reach and develop a much larger and more impassioned audience through their live shows. Throughout the 70s and early 80s, even after Owlsley had long since departed, split off the grid to live in the rainforests of Australia, the Dead's popularity exploded largely because of the way Owsley helped them envision their onstage sound. First it was his patented LSD, and in the 70s, it was his patented sound system. By 1985, thanks in part to Augustus Osley Stanley III, the Grateful Dead were bigger and more influential than ever. It drove Bent mad. And with Owlsley off the grid, he set his sights on Garcia. By now, hard drugs had firmly established themselves in Jerry Garcia's daily routine. Jerry Garcia got high a lot when he wasn't on stage. It was just about all he could do. The band's popularity made it so he couldn't leave his hotel when they were on tour, and there were too many fans milling about who wanted something from him. An autograph, a joint, tickets, the keys to life's unanswered questions. You name it. He seldom left his property, but when he did, he could be spotted zipping around Marin county or greater San Francisco in his newish black BMW 3 Series. Bent knew this, and so Garcia was easy to spot. On January 18, 1985, he rolled into the parking lot at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Killed the engine, checked the rear view. There was a man at the payphone. Dark sunglasses, wayfarers. Robert Redford looking coif, oxford jeans, black boots. Garcia heard Osley's voice in his head and in a moment of paranoia, looked down to his stash on the passenger seat, then back to the mirror again, and the dude was gone. He shook it off. Probably nothing. Garcia dipped into his briefcase, where he kept his drugs. He pulled out a brown paper bindle of heroin, keyed its contents, dipped his nose to the car key, snorted and tilted his head back and let the smack slide down the back of his throat. He then grabbed the tinfoil and tongs he had in the briefcase. He took another bindle, this one made of paper torn out of an old Playboy magazine, courtesy of his old friend Hef, and dumped its contents, cocaine onto the tinfoil. He took a glass straw, placed it between his lips, fastened the tinfoil with the tongs, held it over his lap, lit the lighter below and it quickly heated up the coke, turning it into smoke. Garcia proceeded to suck the smoke through the straw perched between his lips. The cocaine hit his bloodstream hard. It tangled immediately with the heroin in his system. Together the two pushed and pulled at his consciousness and then a hard fill of knocks on the BMW's passenger side window. Garcia took a second to register what was happening and then turned his head expecting to see wayfarers, but instead saw his reflection in a pair of aviators resting on the baby face of some John Pontcharello looking motorcycle cop shouting at him to roll down the window. In his stupor, Garcia made a half assed attempt to hide his stash. But it was no use. He was busted. As he was being cuffed, he looked up and swore he saw the quaffed Redford clone grinning at him from the other side of the parking lot. He blinked, refocused his eyes and the square was gone. Garcia was hauled in and in no time released on $7,000 bail. He received a relative slap on the wrist for possession of heroin and cocaine. The harmonies sounded great. Everything sounded great when the Dead played this song. It was that good. A perfect pop song, five minutes long, but it felt like three. A hook to beat the band, any band. A monster riff and lyrics that kept on giving. And those harmonies, they conjured some of the Dead's best work. Working Man's Dead and American Beauty. But those records were a long time ago. 17 years in fact. It was now 1987 and the dead were in the middle of five sold out shows at Madison Square Garden. They were bigger than ever thanks to this song, Touch of Grey. It hit number nine on the Billboard pop charts and rocketed the album it appeared on in the Dark to number six. More importantly, it sold and sold again, eventually going double platinum. The Grateful Dead to this point were massively popular. Stadium headlining popular. But with the release of Touch of Grey, they went from being a popular touring band to being one of the world's highest grossing bands and transformed into a cultural institution. Deadheads were no longer survivors of the 60s. Holding on to some bygone era. The Dead, now with a top 10 hit, appealed to a whole new generation. The size of their crowds swelled immensely. They played the packed stadiums and indirectly presided over massive parking lot parties that sprung up around their shows. When the Dead came to town. It was a party unlike any other, and they were drawing almost as many fans to the party outside of their show as kids who couldn't get tickets as they were drawing paying customers for the Grateful Dead. They simply didn't make stadiums big enough anymore. And it didn't matter how many nights they performed. From 87 to 94 on, they did five and six night stands at Madison Square Garden in December of 1992. Continuing through February 1993, they completed 11 sold out shows at the massive Oakland Coliseum. And of course, throughout the 80s and 90s, right across the street from Whitey Bulger's Lancaster street garage, the Grateful Dead invaded Boston for multiple five and six night sold out stands at the the Boston Garden. One can only imagine what was going through the mind of the Boston gangster who, while a prisoner at alcatraz in the 50s, willingly participated in the government's acid tests as part of the MK Ultra program in exchange for a reduced sentence. But I digress. When it came to the Grateful Dead's power to sell tickets, you get the feeling that if it weren't for city officials crying uncle, enough already. With the free love, drugs and sex happening on our city streets, that the Dead could have kept on playing and selling tickets for months at a time in any venue they chose, no matter the size. And here was the result. Spread out before Jerry Garcia as he hit the chorus A Touch of Gray. He could see them all. The Spinners, the Wharf Rats, frat boys, sticker nipple heads, tapers and bass heads in the fill zone. They were all there, as they were every night, and they were free. That's what it all amounted to. Freedom. That's all the Dead wanted. To be free. That was the whole point. Jerry Garcia and his bandmates saw the Grateful Dead as being wholly American. And wasn't that what America was all about? Freedom. The freedom to do what you want, to be who you want, live how you want. For the band, up until this point, it had worked. They'd avoided the straight world their entire adult lives and created something totally unique. And that thing inspired millions to reject a society that they believed infringed upon their freedom. So Deadheads followed the band on tour, lived off the grid, outside of society's clutches, and by their own code. Freedom. Absolute. Just as they had seen the band live for their entire career. So the band played on. And for most of their time as a band, despite the copious amounts of drugs they were on, they sounded great. And achieved a state of musical transcendence through improvisation that no band before or since, has ever achieved in rock music. But don't take my word for it. Lenny K, guitar player for the great Patti Smith group, literally one of the coolest and most influential guitarists ever, said to the Grateful Dead that their music touches on ground that most other groups don't even know exists. Lenny was right. But that sacred ground was seldom reached. By the time the early 90s had rolled around musically, despite their success, they were a walking corpse. But to Deadheads, it didn't matter. The music wasn't as important as the lifestyle. A roving carnival, Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters by way of P.T. barnum. Deadheads were chasing an experience, an idea, something they heard their cooler older brothers and sisters talk about, something they too needed to experience, something they'd never quite be able to grasp and would destroy millions of brain cells chasing through football, football stadium parking lots and European hostels in search of capturing it didn't matter so long as they remained free in their pursuit. But now what the band had created was so big, so encompassing, that it had become a prison of their own making, and Jerry Garcia felt it the most. After all, he was the mayor of Crazy Town, the jolly, psychedelic teddy bear that fans looked up to, emulated, wanted to be and worshiped. Having lived literally elevated him to godlike status. It freaked him out. He became even more shut in and descended deeper into hard drug use, which was making it harder to deliver night after night, and harder to bear the weight of responsibility that he felt for his bandmates who counted on him, for the fans who believed in him, and for the Grateful Dead's expansive crew and their families over 50 and counting who relied on him. He couldn't just quit and let them all down. He couldn't fuck off at night after a show and walk the city streets to clear his head. He couldn't even go for a ride in his Beamer or be driven around by his bodyguard and his Caddy. He'd be recognized, harassed, arrested, or worse. The only place he was safe was the stage, and that had become a rough slog. The crowds were so massive that making any connection with the audience was near impossible. It was so unlike the acid tests and a far cry even from Playboy After Dark. And it wasn't like Garcia could dose a stadium of 60,000. And besides, Osley was long gone, so there was nothing left but blues and the Kia Bum the fuck out. Garcia was trapped, imprisoned by the freedom monster he had created. In early 1993, he told Bridget Meyer, you know, I can do it. I can Quit. Leave the band. I can't. I can live off the ice cream money. Garcia was referring to the royalties from the popular Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia ice cream flavor that was named after him, from which he received an estimated $200,000 a year for the rights to his likeness. But it was all talk. He would never quit. He felt too much obligation. That, or straight up trapped. For Garcia, there was no more freedom in playing in the band. It was a cell. The irony was rich, given that the band's motivation for being a band in the first place was the pursuit of freedom. The Grateful Dead had formed a group mind when they began Living together on 710 Ashbury, bound by powerful psychedelic trips they'd taken together. Nothing bonds a group of people like shared psychedelic experience. And nothing strips life to its purest goals. In psychedelia, you find out who you truly are and what you truly want. And what the the Dead wanted was freedom, Freedom through music. What the Dead wanted was to be playing in a band together and not to have to answer to anybody. In pursuing freedom, they created their own sovereign nation of Deadheads, flying a freak flag of red, white and blue. A stellier faced skull with the white lightning dividing the red and blue parts of the brain. A logo which Owley had originally designed, by the way. The Dead's philosophy, philosophy of freedom is the type of American beauty that is more closely aligned with what the Founding Fathers had envisioned than what American reality has become, where we are divided into safe highs of groupthink rather than freed by the power of our individualism. Jerry Garcia knew this. In the end, it was all too heavy for him to shoulder. The crowds, the fame, the failing musicianship, the paranoia, the man in the mirror and the man behind the man in Wayfarers. Garcia was freaked out, paranoid and hurting. A physical mess from years of heroin, cocaine and LSD use, cigarette smoking, a poor diet and diabetes. But still, quitting the Grateful Dead wasn't an option. So he attempted to quit drugs instead, to clean up his act before agreeing to go back out on the road for another tour. He checked himself into the Betty ford clinic in 1995. And then, motivated and sensing a new beginning, doubled down and checked himself into the Serenity Knowles Rehabilitation Center. But it was too late. On August 9, 1995, eight days after his 53rd birthday, Jerry Garcia's heart gave up and quit everything for him. Alas, he was totally free. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is is Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with double Elvis credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page@gracelandpod.com if you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to Disgracelandpod.com Membership members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland ad free. Plus you'll get one brand new exclusive episode every month, weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit disgracelandpod.com membership for details, rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, T TikTok, Twitter and Facebook Disgracelandpod and on YouTube@YouTube.com Disgracelandpod Rocka Rolla he's a bad, bad man
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