Jake Brennan (25:31)
Go to your happy price. Priceline. The backside of the hill was steep and there was no doubt about it. The 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 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, 715 Ashbury. Keezy had a choice. 710 was the home of the Grateful Dead, and 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. The 715 was the home of the local Hell's Angels. Casey had soured on the Angels recently. Freewheeling Frank was freaking everyone out. The Bug gathered speed. The Victorians zipped by. Local hippies 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 Seven Fields, 15 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. Halsley 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 Osli'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, Owsley's influence on what would become known as, quote unquote, 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. And Owsley, through the manufacturing of his illicit LSD and patronage of the heavily influential 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 Ossie wore. The oxford gave away his blue blooded background. The shiny boots gave away his profession. Bent Red Narc Ed 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. Owsley 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, but the band played on. Jerry Garcia came down with the rest of the 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 and 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 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 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 waltzed slowly over to stage. Right. 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 taken 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 Owlsley deserved a lot of the credit for the greatness of the Dead's live sound, crazy 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 live 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 Owsley 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 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 Poncharello 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 the 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 the of 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 Touchdown of Gray, 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 Boston Garden. One can only imagine what was going through the mind of the Boston Garden 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 and 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 Kaye, guitar player for the great Patti Smith group, literally one of the coolest and most influential guitarists ever, said of 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 the Deadhead, it didn't matter. The music wasn't as important as the lifestyle. A roving carnival, Ken Kesey's married 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 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 literally elevated him to godlike status, it felt 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 Test and a far cry even from Playboy After Dark. And it wasn't like Garcia could dose a Stadium of 60. 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 Brigid Meyer, you know, I can do it. I can quit, leave the band. I can. 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 flavors 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 sell. 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 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 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 anyone. In pursuing freedom, they created their own sovereign nation of Deadheads, flying a freak flag of red, white and blue. A steelier faced skull with the white lightning dividing the red and blue parts of the brain. A logo which Owlie had originally designed, by the way. The Dead's 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 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 Disgrace. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and.
