The Grateful Dead Pt. 2: The Ballad of Pigpen and Old, Weird America—an Origin Story

Summary

DISGRACELAND Episode Summary: "The Grateful Dead Pt. 2: The Ballad of Pigpen and Old, Weird America—an Origin Story"

In this gripping episode of DISGRACELAND, host Jake Brennan delves deep into the tumultuous origins of one of rock's most legendary bands—the Grateful Dead—and the pivotal role of their harmonica player, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan. Exploring themes of tradition, rebellion, and tragedy, Brennan paints a vivid portrait of the early days of the Dead, intertwining true historical elements with dramatized storytelling to captivate both music enthusiasts and true crime aficionados.

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1. The Warlocks: Seeds of a Legend

Timestamp: 00:00 - 14:20

The episode opens by setting the stage with the Warlocks—a precursor to the Grateful Dead—highlighting their unique blend of blues and improvisational rock. Unlike many contemporaries drawn to the psychedelic influences of the time, the Warlocks anchored their sound in traditional American music, specifically blues and jug band traditions.

• Jake Brennan narrates the foundational influences: "Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, and their early bandmates were now a part of the tradition of old weird America."

The Warlocks' commitment to authentic blues music distinguished them from peers and laid the groundwork for their later transformation into the Grateful Dead.

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2. Ron "Pigpen" McKernan: The Heart and Soul

Timestamp: 14:20 - 24:40

Pigpen emerges as the quintessential bluesman within the Warlocks, embodying the raw, unfiltered spirit of traditional American blues. His dedication to the genre was not just musical but also personal, influenced heavily by his father's legacy as a boogie-woogie pianist and R&B DJ.

• Jake Brennan highlights Pigpen's authenticity: "He was almost solely interested in the blues. He grew up with it."

Pigpen's lifestyle—characterized by heavy drinking and a penchant for the blues—set him apart from his bandmates who were increasingly exploring psychedelics like LSD. This divergence would eventually strain his relationship with the band and contribute to his tragic downfall.

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3. Formation of the Grateful Dead: A Name from Fate

Timestamp: 24:40 - 37:21

As the Warlocks navigated the burgeoning hippie movement and the acid test parties spearheaded by Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, the necessity for a new identity became apparent. The serendipitous selection of the name "Grateful Dead" from a dictionary page symbolized the band's commitment to a deeper, almost mythological narrative.

• Jake Brennan explains: "The Grateful Dead is a folk tale about a hero who comes upon a dead man...about karma, about paying it forward."

This name encapsulated the band's ethos of generosity, improvisation, and a profound connection to American folklore, setting them on a path to become icons of the 60s counterculture.

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4. The Watts Acid Test: Triumph and Turmoil

Timestamp: 37:21 - 43:53

The Grateful Dead's participation in the Watts Acid Test marked a pivotal moment, blending intense improvisational music with the mind-expanding effects of LSD. While the band thrived in these experimental settings, Pigpen struggled to keep pace, his abstention from psychedelics creating an invisible rift.

• Pigpen's Struggle: Despite the collective high, Pigpen felt increasingly alienated, his focus on the blues clashing with the band's evolving psychedelic sound.

During a fateful performance, Pigpen's inability to synchronize with the band's LSD-induced improvisations led to a fractured show, symbolizing the impending challenges he would face both personally and within the band.

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5. The Decline of Pigpen and The Weight of Tradition

Timestamp: 43:53 - 44:48

As the Grateful Dead ascended to fame, Pigpen's heavy drinking and deteriorating health became untenable. His contributions, once the lifeblood of the band's original sound, were overshadowed by his inability to adapt to the demands of a professional and increasingly drug-dependent lifestyle.

• Jake Brennan poignantly summarizes: "Pigpen's drinking had spun out of control...He was in his Marin county apartment fixing to die."

Pigpen's departure from active participation in the band and his eventual death at the age of 27 underscored the tragic cost of the rock and roll lifestyle and the unforgiving nature of fame.

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6. Legacy: The Ballad Lives On

Timestamp: 44:48 - End

Despite his struggles, Pigpen's legacy remained indelibly etched into the fabric of the Grateful Dead's history. His tombstone reads, "Once and forever a member of the Grateful Dead. He died at 27 and that is a disgrace," encapsulating the sorrow and respect the band held for him.

• Jake Brennan concludes: "Tragedy had befallen them. Their very own Bad man had broken down, and now the Ballad of Pigpen will forever be sung as an integral piece of the Grateful Dead's origin story."

Pigpen's story serves as a haunting reminder of the fine line between artistic genius and self-destruction, and his contributions continue to influence the band's enduring legacy.

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Notable Quotes

• Jake Brennan [00:37]: "The Warlocks were looking to learn and play music, not die or end up in jail."

• Pigpen [37:27]: "I want to know, do you feel good?"

• Jake Brennan [44:48]: "He was like an American Brian Jones, not recognizing the value of the very band he and his hypnos essentially created."

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Conclusion

"The Ballad of Pigpen and Old, Weird America—an Origin Story" masterfully intertwines the rise of the Grateful Dead with the personal tragedy of Ron "Pigpen" McKernan. Through rich storytelling and meticulous attention to historical detail, Jake Brennan not only chronicles the band's formative years but also explores the complex interplay between tradition, innovation, and the perils of rock stardom. This episode stands as a poignant chapter in DISGRACELAND's exploration of the tumultuous lives of beloved musicians, offering listeners both an engaging narrative and a sobering reflection on the costs of fame and artistic pursuit.

Transcript

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Disgraceland is a production of Double ELV stories about the Grateful Dead in their early days as a band, specifically about their harmonica player. Pigpen are insane. A band known for their drug use, Pigpen did not get high. His bandmates would smoke grass and he would drink booze. His bandmates would drop LSD and he would drink more booze. His bandmates would play improvisational electric music, and Pig Pen would play the blues. Ron Pigpen McKernan was obsessed with the blues. He was one of the band's strongest links to the traditional American music they loved, in part because Pigpen was committed to living the life of his blues musician heroes. Part of this meant dedicating himself to the canon of pre and post war black American music. But it also meant a steady diet of cheap, highly potent alcohol known as rock gut, supplemented with even cheaper barbecue and hot links. A diet that did him in at the age of 27. But prior to that, Pigpen made great music. 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 Open Door Blues MK1. 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 peacock cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on May 5, 1965. And that was the day the Warlocks played Magoo's Pizza Parlor in Menlo Park, California, taking the first step for what would become one of the most culturally influential bands of all time, the Grateful Dead. On this episode, Grass, lsd, Rock, Gut, Blues, the end of Pigpen, and the beginning of the Grateful Dead. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgrace. Iceland champ Sonny Liston versus Jerry Garcia. Bob Weir and Phil Lesh were sitting in the back of a car that belonged to a friend of Bob's. They were getting high on one of Neil Cassidy's joints. Cassidy, the inspiration for Jack Kerouac's Dean Moriarty character in his groundbreaking novel on the Road, was a hero to all of them. Smoking his dope was seen as a privilege. Jerry and Bob had just played their second show in their new electric band, the Warlocks. Phil had just seen the first rock and roll show of his young life. He was a friend, a fellow musician, but not part of their band yet. His mind was blown and the Energy of it all was unlike anything he'd ever experienced. It was a different type of gas from the singe of the newly electric Bob Dylan's explosive lyrics that Phil heard on the radio, the postal truck he delivered mail from. And different still from the energy of the Beatles backbeat and clanging electric guitars he watched on his television set on the Ed Sullivan Show. From afar, up close and personal, live electric music was something else entirely. It was enough to set your brain on fire smoking Cassidy's dope. They were all on a post show high and the performance was a success, sure, but that didn't matter. What made the moment special was that they felt an unspoken connection to something they held in the highest esteem. Tradition. Specifically, the tradition of American music. That night, May 12, 1965, at Magoo's Pizza Parlor in Menlo park, just south of San Francisco, the Warlocks burned the joint up with Chuck Berry, Howlin Wolf and Freddie King covers jumped up blues numbers played with the energy of pent up white teenagers desperate to shake some action. But Garcia, Weir, their drummer Bill Kurtzman and bassist at the time, Dana Morgan, didn't arrive at rock and roll from Dylan and the Beatles, as so many of their peers would. They instead arrived on the proper course of rock and roll lineage, just as Dylan, Lennon and McCartney had, via blues at country and for Garcia and company via blue and jug band music as well. Music that predated and informed and led to the creation of rock and roll. Prior to the formation of the Warlocks, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir and a long list of others put in time with Jerry's jug band, Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions. Jug band music was traditional black party music, a genre that dated back to the early 1900s. Its originators, the Memphis Jug Band, Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers and the Dixieland Jug Blowers traditionally featured an array of acoustic and makeshift instruments. Washtub, bass, juice, harp, harmonica, washboards, stovetops, acoustic guitar, piano, and of course, the jug. Stoneware or glass, and blown into by its player to create a deep, wild, buzzing sound. Jug bands were hopped up, energetic, intended to drive the party. Jug band music directly influenced the English skiffle groups of the 1950s and went on to influence the Beatles. And of course, jug band influence can be heard in the American blues, bluegrass and folk that ran from Ma Rainey to Bill Monroe to Woody Guthrie to Bob Dylan. Nick could now, in 1965, be heard in the music of the Warlocks as well. Their set that night was modern by bluegrass and jug band music standards. They played Dylan's It's All Over Now, Baby Blue, Rufus Thomas Walking the Dog, and Slynn Harpo's I'm a King Bee, among others. But it was all part of the same tradition, a tradition that Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir and their early bandmates were now a part of, the tradition of old weird America. Dylan, Rufus, Slim, their songs were part of the deeper lineage, a history of music that linked all the way back to traditional slave chants and field hollers, music that after the Civil War evolved into traditional ballads and breakdowns about bad, bad men. Stagger Lee, the loner, the pimp, the end of Billy Lyons, Railroad Bill, feared by brakemen everywhere, train robber extraordinaire Tom Devil, creeping up into unsuspecting girls beds under the COVID of night, and Willie Brennan, the highway robber. Bold, gay, of English descent from out on the moor, these men were legends, folk heroes desperate to survive their own demons in an America that didn't want them, an America that shut them out because of the color of their skin, the class they were born out of, and their refusal and or inability to conform to the standards of civilized society. Their legends were born of murder, robbery, bootlegging and other violent acts of rebelliousness. The mythology of these men detailed half a century's worth of rough and rowdy ways and songs, their casualties among them and their like Little Sadie, who caught a bullet from a 44 smokeless Viola Lee, whose fate inspired violence worthy of a life sentence, and the Knoxville girl, the victim of an unexpected dull thwack from a blunt stick to the skull by her psychotic lover, who then drug her by her golden curls down to the riverside and proceeded to beat her to death. Outlaws, scoundrels, men who were in league with the devil. It is perhaps this storyteller's good fortune that those three qualifiers all make up the Old English origin of the word warlock. But it is merely the humorous coincidence of cosmic Americana minus the Tolkien magic. Warlocks are bad men just the same as outlaws, scoundrels, rounders and ramblers. They are all part of the same musical alchemy that runs from Tommy Johnson to Led Zeppelin to Jeffrey Lee to Slayer to Jack White. What's the actual difference? They are threaded by the same spirit, the sorcerer's alchemy, their musical alchemy, the pharmaceutical alchemy, White lightning reefer, the opium gong, junk heads, moochers, sniffers and hoochie coochers. The men with the jive preacher drank some ginger, said it was cause of the flu that old man's been lyin' he's got the jake leg too. Tell it to me, tell it to me. Drink corn liquor, Let the cocaine be. Cocaine is gonna kill my honey dead. Drugs, liquor, magic, murder, killers, thieves, loose women and other sordid characters. Old weird America. This was the tradition of the Warlocks. This was the tradition of the music they played that night at Magoo's Weird. And they didn't mind. It suited them just fine because 22 year old Jerry Garcia, 17 year old Bob Weir, 19 year old Bill Krutzman and 25 year old Phil Lesh were all weird as fuck. At a time when other kids their age were taken solely by mop tops, beach blanket bingo and the ensuing space race, these kids were by comparison into some weird shit. Mainly music from way off the grid. Garcia with his jug band and bluegrass obsession. Weir with his Garcia obsession, Crutzven's New Orleans and R B obsession. And Lesh, by the time he'd attended his first rock show that night, was already deeply obsessed with classical avant garde composition. But as weird as they all were, they were all still just kids. Kids from diverse backgrounds, working middle and upper class socioeconomic backgrounds. They were children of the straight world, no matter how much they fancied themselves otherwise. And their approach to the music they were into at that young age was more scholarly than hand to mouth. None of them lived the tragic lives of the antiheroes portrayed in the folk songs they loved and performed. And that influenced influenced them. They mined what they could from those men, from the myths and the legends of folk, but otherwise they lived relatively straight lives, albeit lies that were quickly falling under the dominant influence of cannabis and LSD experimentation, but nonetheless straight in comparison to Stagger Lee and Railroad Bill. The members of the Warlocks, despite their youth, knew that by the rights of tradition and because of who they were as people and the nature of the music they played, that they were indebted to tragic old weird Americana. But the Warlocks were looking to learn and play music, not die or end up in jail. All but one of them. Where's Pig Pen? Someone asked from the back seat, inquiring about the fifth missing member of the Warlocks, Ron McKernan, aka Blue Ron because of his obsession with the blues, aka Pigpen because of his funk, aka Pig because his bandmates were not without a sense of humor or brevity. The answer came from in between hits of Cassidy's Grass. Oh, Pig. He's probably down by the train tracks drinking junk. Foreign.

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The bread truck barreled down the side of the mountain above Palo Alto. Its driver, Tawny, a black man who'd rather do without a stop by the white buzz he suspected were on his tail in an unmarked car, pushed his truck to the edge of the speed limit. He believed his truck to have magical powers, so he named it the Seventh sun. And the truck lived up to its name. It had survived this run before down the mountainside from the bootlegger in the Honda filled to the brim with as much high powered illegal hooch Tawny and his partner could afford Whiskey. At only $1.50 a gallon, it was worth the risk. His partner in crime had faith in the truck and in Tawny behind the wheel, downshifting in makeshift jake brakes to save dough on worn pads for the bread truck, no doubt. More dough, more whiskey. Tawny was smart and so was his partner, Pigpen. They'd make it down without incident and take some of their stash out to the railroad yard and post up by the tracks with Pig's harmonica. Tawny's acoustic drink junk and play the blues drinking, quote unquote. Junk was a reference to the type of alcohol Pig pen harmonica player for the Warlocks preferred the lowest quality booze and wine he could get his hands on, bootleg whiskey, white port and lemon juice, sweet wine known as Ombre and of course Night Train. This constituted most of Pigpen's diet and the other part was filled by hot links, Pig's feet and cheap barbecue food and drink that he knew. His heroes, the blues men he worshiped, Lightning Hopkins, T Bone Walker, Howling Wolf lived off of pure rock. Gut didn't matter, it was part of the life, like the bootlegging and hanging out by the tracks playing music. As was everything about Pigpen, particularly the way he looked. Unlike the rest of the Warlock box, Pig did not look at all like anyone or anything even remotely connected to the straight world. He wore greasy denim, so greasy his jeans stiffened. The grease on his jeans was second only to the tremendous amount of grease in his black hair, leather jacket, a bike chain from a Harley permanently bolted onto his wrist, and a big bad boil marking his chin. He was the wild one without Brando's physical attractiveness, and he could have cared less. Little Walter was the archetype, not Little Richard. Blue and lonesome and Funky like Fred McDowell's Slide and Funky also like the filthy Peanuts character he drew his nickname from. Unlike his bandmates in the Warlocks, Pigpen wasn't interested in smoking grass or expanding his mind with lsd, or really anything that preoccupied the imagination of the middle class. Pigpen was almost solely interested in the blues. He grew up with it. His old man was a boogie woogie pianist who later turned in his heavy right hand for a gig as a rhythm and blues DJ for the Bay Area's KRE radio station. The old man spun records under the name Cool Breeze, and his son, young Ron, was knocked out by those records. He made the short leap backward from Elvis Presley to Arthur Crudup. Elvis was cool, but fairly rated amongst the originals. For every white version of a rhythm and blues song, be it Elvis Presley or Pat Boone or later the Beatles or Bob Dylan, there was almost always a more interesting, authentic black version of the song. And thus one of the earliest versions of white America's concept of hipness took root in Pigpen. To be hip in the early 1960s for young white musicians meant you were into the blues and that you identified with the plight of black Americans. It was the same as it was for the beats in the 50s, whose own hipness equation was answered by the subculture affinity for early jazz, specifically bebop musicians. So as a young white teenager who was into almost nothing but blues music, Pigpen, when he wasn't hanging and playing with the Warlocks, hung out almost exclusively with Tawny, a black man in black populated East Palo Alto. Blues, booze, nothing else. The railroad yard. It was rhythm, not just romance. The sound of the big trains tracked Pigpen's harmonica, his vocal and Tawny's acoustic guitar. The world was suddenly smaller and the magic of history was suddenly less esoteric. Alongside those old freights, Pigpen rooted himself into his own place in time. He felt connected at one with the tragic and cosmic continuum of old weird America. The Pullman porter saw the fellow black man working his way through the private rail car he was assigned to and knew immediately that death had blown in through his door. He lowered his gaze, went about his business, waiting on his wealthy passengers, and ignored the man. The man was moving quickly toward the front of the train, brazenly, with his sidearm out in the open, down by his right thigh. All casual, it went unseen, coupled with his determined stride. The passengers were none the wiser, so they were allowed to live along with the porter. For now. The porter knew who he was. Railroad Bill, of course. He of the vendetta against the big railroads. He was the only black man not wearing a Pullman uniform who was either stupid enough or brave enough to enter the whites only first class train car in 1895. But the opulent Pullman cabin wasn't his final destination. He was headed to the jackpot, the freight car, because that was where the loot was. Sheriff McMillan, Stinsonville, Stewart, they all met the demise at the other end of Railroad Bill's rifle. And so too would whoever stood in his way on this day. Railroad Bill made his way into the freight car and there were two Pinkertons on guard. Bill immediately shot one and then instructed the other to open the safe. He did as he was told and then filled Bill's gunny sack with all the cash and gold and silver bullion that would fit. When he was done, Railroad Bill dispassionately emptied another blast from his rifle right into him. He reloaded and made his way to the engine car. At the front, he ordered the brakeman to halt the steam driven locomotive. His loaded shotgun pointed into his face made it clear Railroad Bill was not fucking around. The brakeman gripped the heavy brake levers, pulled on the safety trigger and he heave the levers down with all his might. And as the train slowed, Railroad Bill made his way to the sideboard of the engine car and jumped into the night, fleeing away from the train with the loot and bolstering the myth of Railroad Bill in the process. A myth that would echo down through the ages and out of Pigs harmonica decades later, the train barreled through the yard. The fire in the trash can burned passively warm Northern California spring air. A bottle of Night Train between them on the ground, Tawny beat down a crude rhythm on his acoustic the one to the five. Again and again he added time perfectly with the rhythm of the old train snaking its way past them. Pig Pen blew into his harp, came up for air after his solo and leaned into the lyrics. Railroad Bill standing on the hill. He never worked and he never worked. Will. Oh, ride. Ride, Bill, ride. Sounded about right to Pig Pen. We'll be right back after this Word. Word, Word.

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The bartender Larry took his eye out and placed it on the bar. It was glass of course, like the many tumblers and martini glasses stacked into various towers behind the stick. There were hardly any pint glasses or stemware. Beer and wine were rarely served. This was a booze joint and when Larry took his eye out meant the joint was jumping. Which tonight it most certainly was. The Inn Room, A singles joint for the recently divorced, a stopover place for flight attendants and a must stop for travel salesman Between San Francisco and Palo Alto, the bar was where you went if you were middle aged, horny and hadn't quite given up yet on your chances of getting laid. Plush reds on pitch black interior, the in room was decidedly adult and it was also part of the west coast small to mid sized circuit rooms for touring artists Marvin Gaye, Jackie DeShannon and the Coasters where they all put in work on their paths up and down the coast. Someone decided to Warlock should be the house band, warm up for the headliners and keep the joint buzzing and the booze flowing. Five 50 minute sets a night, six nights a week. It was real work. Five sets a night. And by the estimation of all in the band but Pig Pen, the only way to work through it was while experimenting with their new favorite pastime, lsd. The drug had recently made its way to the west coast via Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters and during the Warlock's early days. Everything about LSD appealed to them, especially as it pertained to their musicianship, finding themselves as a band and learning how to write their first songs. For Garcia, LSD combined with electric music was total freedom. It was a liberation from the demanding rigidity of bluegrass precision playing and he carried the clarity of his banjo playing along for the trip. While the rest of the group melded their own influences. Classical avant garde, R and B rock and the blues with Garcia's bluegrass. The parts had been fused into one hole by the spark of acid and electric instrumentation. Out behind the in room, railroad tracks weaved their way north and south. While the band performed, they could hear the passing trains. They latched into the rhythm and Pigpen rode that old timey rail with his harmonica and sometimes with his organ, while Garcia, Lesh, Krutzman and Weir channeled latest their obsession, another Train entirely, jazz alto saxophonist John Coltrane, who had been dominating their collective musical imagination. Train, as he was referred to, provided a vision of improvisation for Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh. Train would vamp on one chord, which from a practical standpoint for Lesh, who had literally just begun to play his instrument, the electric bass guitar made all the sense in the world. And Train's genius wasn't that he as a soloist would improvise, it was that he would allow his highly qualified sidemen to improvise along with him. The root chord, vamping along was their platform, the song's melody, their throughline in their own creative imaginations, the steam powering their live performances far the fuck out down previously unheard track before inevitably returning back to the station from their trip together as one after achieving dizzying heights of collective improvisation. It was during this heady time at the Inn room where the Warlocks wrote their first song. Of course, it was called Caution, Do Not Stop on the Tracks. Garcia, Les, Weir, Christman. They knew they were onto something. They all did. Except Pigpen. Pig, as the only non LSD and Grass devotee, hung back and waited for his moment. When it would arrive, he'd dig into the parts of the set where the band's improvisation took a back seat to more traditional blues numbers aimed at making sure the crowd was still there with them. Howling Wolf's version of Little Red Rooster, Jr. Wells version of Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl. Pigpen's beloved blues have been reduced to becoming the functionary bridge between the traditional music that first inspired the group with this new, weird Americana. The Grateful Dead were alchemating at the Indoor room back in 1965. For Pigpen, this trip was getting strange, and it was only about to get stranger. They needed a new band name. A downtown New York art band had beat them to the vinyl press with the name the Warlocks, though they too would eventually abandon the moniker for another name, the Velvet Underground. But at the time, for Garcia and company, a new name was needed. They were at Phil Lesh's house, bandying about potential band names, all of which were utterly ridiculous. Garcia grabbed Lesh's dictionary, closed his eyes, opened it to a random page, pointed with his index finger, opened his eyes, and there it was, in black and white. The Grateful Dead. Without even knowing the meaning, the juxtaposition of those two words immediately spoke to the group. And when they read the meaning of the phrase, it was sealed. The Grateful Dead is a folk tale about a hero who comes upon a dead man. A dead man who left nothing behind, who has no family to pay for his funeral. The hero, expecting nothing in return, pays the dead man's funeral debt. Later, the hero comes upon some impossible task, whereupon the dead man from beyond the grave, grateful for the debt the hero paid for him, comes to the hero's assistance, helping him overcome his impossible task. That is the Grateful Dead. It's a story about karma, about paying it forward, about a generosity of spirit that was evident in the band's hip origins, demonstrated in their improvisational playing style, and in their personalities. The name was perfect. So, too was the newly christened Grateful Dead's timing. The West Coast, San Francisco in particular, was undergoing an evolution from its beatific and bohemian subculture into the big bang of the hippie movement, a movement that would not only dominate the rest of the 60s, but also go on to be the single most influential cultural movement this country has ever seen. Ken Kesey's acid tests were sweeping the subculture on the West Coast. These were the days before LSD was officially made illegal, and Atkiesis tripped out parties up and down the coastline in rooms painted fluorescent and lit by strobe lights, black lights, and flooded with visuals from video loops on repeat, and with the New psychedelia being improvised by the Grateful Dead as Kesey's Acid Test house band. The crowd was eclectic, turned on and strange. Hip college kids, leftover beats from the beginning of the decade. Hell's Angels poets, whoever was as Kesey and his band of traveling Merry Pranksters categorized as being on the bus, a phrase they coined while traveling the states in 65 and 66 in an effort to spread the gospel of LSD. The acid tests were a mostly west coast localized version of Kesey's roving tour. The Acid Tests were meant to enlighten the nation and subvert square circumstances society. It was a wild scene to say the least. For a Kezi and the rest of his Merry Pranksters, the idea was simple. Spread the message, get on the bus, bring the trip to wherever the people demanded. And in February 1966 that meant Watts, Los Angeles. The Acid party was about to hit the road and so too was its house band, the Grateful Dead. Someone had found an old rundown warehouse in Compton. Casey thought it perfect. Word got out that the Acid Test was coming to la. Hundreds of kids looking to get turned on showed up and the acid mixed with Kool Aid and served as punch was particularly strong that evening. Louisiana. Compton, Watts. This was not San Francisco, not the hate, not even the in room, and far the fuck away from Magoo's. This was dark. Maybe it was the potency of the LSD that night or the set that the band was putting out there. Death have no mercy in this land. Banging powerfully through the band's new sound system designed by Chief Head and LSD chemist Augustus Owsley Stanley. Maybe it was the scores of LAPD circling the warehouse with its curious young partygoers, wild eyed and manic. Young women with their skirts too short, talking to gibberish, young men with their hair too long talking jive. LAPD cruisers circled the warehouse. Welcome to the show. The only show in town. The long haired freaky people up to God knows what in that warehouse. The cops were all tuned into the same radio frequency in their cars, their windows open, the clapback from the patrolmen squawking into and out of the radios, escaping out into the urban nighttime air, creating a literal feed feedback loop of ignorance and squared them inside. The band played on. Normally the Acid Test gigs were freeing. But something about that night had the band on the run, frustrated by their inability to lock in. Scared like the crowd of the cops lurking outside with the billy clubs, their guns and their punitive, discriminatory, very unhip ideas about justice. The Dead Merched on. On stage, Pig Pen was apart from the band, drunk, not stoned, and unable to latch on to whatever his bandmates were failing to latch onto themselves. A woman in the audience began to freak out. Too much acid and the band stopped playing. And then Pigpen heard it through all the madness, familiarity, the sound again of a passing freight train up behind the warehouse. He looked into the crowd, saw the woman freaking out, saw the men trying to cool her out, saw them fail. He caught her eye and grabbed the mic on its stand. And in time with the rhythm of the passing train out back, Pigpen, blue wrong, sang out. I want to know, do you feel good? The woman was struck silent. The crowd began to come to focus on Pigpen again, a little bit louder now. I want to know you feel good. She mowed the word yes, looking straight at Pig. The train carried on and so did Pig Pen. I want to know, can you find your mind? The crowd, freak out Chick included, responded in unity with oh yes, I want to know, do you feel good? And this time the crowd was rapturous. Oh yes, give me a hell yes. I said I want to know, do you feel good?

[Unknown Speaker]

Good.

[Jake Brennan]

Pig pound let loose. I want to tell everyone in the house there's many things you got to.

[Unknown Speaker]

Do one more time.

[Jake Brennan]

You got to think about your neighbors, you got to think about your friends, you got to think about your brothers, you got to think about your sisters.

[Unknown Speaker]

And everybody that means something to you.

[Jake Brennan]

He then pointed to the freak out chick who was by now enraptured with his sermon and blurted out, somebody got a little lost. Somebody lost a little bit of friendship. I want to know, do you know what I'm saying? Talking about? I said I want to know. You know what I'm talking about. Now tell me one more time, do you feel good? Then if you can, you better get on up out of this place because shit's about to get mean. And with that, Pig Pen walked off stage and into the LA air. By now the cops had had the warehouse surrounded. They'd place saw horses around the exits to corral the kids as they split. Pig was dejected and the gig was a bust and the party was a bust. And now if he wasn't careful, he might very well get busted. As he made his way out back out towards the tracks, he came upon Ken Kesey wrestling with a giant barrel of red glowing Kool Aid. And there were numerous cops shuffling about, wondering what he was up to. Kesey bent down by the sewer drain on the side of the the road Pulling the barrel down with him and emptying its contents out and into the drain, thus getting rid of the remaining batch of lsd literally right under the noses of the cops. Pigpen could not believe how strange the trip had become. And just a year later, his band, the band he'd started with his close friend Jerry Garcia, would go on to sign to Warner Brothers Records. They'd record numerous albums, two of them Great Working Man's Dead and American Beauty. And those two albums being the ones that he closest to the band's old weird Americana roots. Ironically, in an effort to write a pop hit for Warner Brothers. Because the bulk of the material on their other releases was like the Watts Acid Test, too far out for the record buying public. And admittedly too far out for Pigpen as well. He was like an American Brian Jones, not recognizing the value of the very band he and his hypnos essentially created. Because he was too fucked up. And by the time 1973 rolled around, everything had changed. The hate community was scattered. All that money had changed everybody. Janice was gone. OD'd. Three years earlier, she and Pig used to split half a gallon of Southern Comfort every night they were together. During their on again off again relationship, they used to make so much noise in Pig's bedroom that band members who used harder drugs wondered how they could ball home night while so gone on booze. It seemed like an eternity ago. The band was now settled into something resembling a professional groove. Writing music regularly recording it and then going out on the road to promote it. Like professional musicians, they even succumbed to traditional promotional tactics at the behest of Warner Brothers. Weird as promo, sure, but nonetheless part of the music industry machine all the same. They weren't part of the the straight world, far from it. But they were now part of the music machine, whether they liked it or not. And despite their far out acid inspired oral explorations on record and on tour, the new weird America the Grateful Dead were creating and living in. They were a world apart from the old weird America that inspired them. In the beginning, traditional American music was tragic. The Grateful Dead were becoming an institution. Beloved, lovable, tripped out teddy bears. A far cry from the bad men that inspired the ballads and breakdowns of the Warlocks, Railroad Bill, Willie Brennan and Stagger Lee. But the Grateful Dead were still indebted to that tradition. And the Bill was about to come due. Tragedy was the currency. Death was at the Dead's door. And death had no mercy in this land. July 1972. Pigpen's drinking had spun out of control. One too many times. He wasn't quite out of the band, but he wasn't quite in it either. The Dead were touring, but he couldn't keep up anymore. His drinking was so bad that physically he had flare ups of internal bleeding and his playing suffered greatly. At a time when the band was exploring the further reaches of improvisation, his place in the band was suspect, to say the least. Rock Scully, the band's manager, called him out on tour for falling asleep on stage, and after that Pigpen was forced to take some time off to try to regain his health. The band was certain he would recover, but Pigpen knew better. He was in his Marin county apartment fixing to die. He'd separated himself from his girlfriend, his family, his band, telling them, I don't want you around when I die. On March 8, 1973, Pig Pen, in the throes of an internal hemorrhage from cirrhosis of the liver, a similar cause of death that killed Jerry Garcia's hero, Jack Kerouac, lay back in his bed and contemplated the new set of lyrics he was working on. Seems like all my yesterdays are filled with pain there's nothing but darkness tomorrow if you're gonna do like you say you do if you're gonna change your mind and walk away don't make me live in this pain no longer you know I'm getting weaker, not stronger. When he closed his eyes that last time, he knew what he was doing. He knew where he was going, and he knew why. It was tragic and necessary as the debt had come due. Ron Pigpen McKernan generously paid it, and his band, the Dead, would forever be grateful. Tragedy had befallen them. Their very own Bad man had broken down, and now the Ballad of Pigpen will forever be sung as an integral piece of the Grateful Dead's origin story, rooting the lore of the band firmly in the tradition of old, weird America. His tombstone says Once and forever a member of the Grateful Dead. He died at 27 and that is a disgrace. I'm just Big Brennan and this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by by yours truly.

[Unknown Speaker]

And is produced in partnership with Double Elvis.

[Jake Brennan]

Credits for this episode can be found.

[Unknown Speaker]

On the show notes [e-mail] 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, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook Disgracelandpod and on [e-mail] Disgracelandpod Rocka Rolla.

[Jake Brennan]

He's a bad bad man.

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[Unknown Speaker]

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