Editorial note: Opinions expressed here are solely those of the blogger
For me it started off being about the music, before it became about something else. In the fall of 1984, I was visiting friends of my parents’ and bored, started paging through their record collection. I stumbled across a copy of American Beauty and asked if I could borrow it.
Until that point, the Grateful Dead seemed more an entity to me than a band. In my mind, they existed as t-shirts and bumper stickers. But I realized that music truly fueled the Grateful Dead. It was unlike anything I had heard before – country without really being country, bluesy without being trite or depressing and enough rock without the gratuitous showmanship.
As time passed, my perception of the Grateful Dead changed. Growing up in rural New England, listening to The Dead seemed somewhat a rite of passage and not for the faint of heart. To be viewed as a worthy fan, you had to rattle off set lists, have access to plenty of bootleg tapes and ensure your only frame of reference wasn’t In the Dark.
I soon began sensing an hypocrisy in the Grateful Dead subculture – a reverse snobbery, if you will, that was nothing more than a class distinction. Grateful Dead fans, at least the ones I knew, lived in big white houses and their parents drove nice foreign cars. The bead necklaces, tie-dye t-shirts and peasant skirts became costumes – a way to safely rebel while remaining encased within a privileged existence.
By the time I left for college, I had mostly stopped listening to the Dead; viewing them, in fact with some degree of embarrassment. Then, in March 2007 I sat in a rocking chair, holding our newborn daughter who wouldn’t stop screaming. I whispered, I cooed; I hummed, but nothing worked. Finally, I started singing one of the first songs that popped into my head – “Box of Rain,” off American Beauty. It worked.
Since that time, I still will listen to the Dead sporadically, often when I’m running or in the car by myself. Except now I don’t envision freshly scrubbed WASPs playing hacky sack or Steal Your Face stickers adhered to parent’s Peugeots. I listen instead of visualizing. And I hear sadness, yearning, and waiting for redemption, with some hope mixed in for good measure.
I’ve also softened the cynical way in which I once viewed the Grateful Dead subculture (age does that too you). Those boarding school kids who embraced the band were looking for a sense of adventure and family that perhaps their privileged upbringings didn’t provide. And who isn’t seeking adventure and family, especially when they’re young.
Jerry Garcia died 25 years ago today, on August 9, 1995 at 53; young chronologically but quite old considering his state of health at the time. By all accounts, Garcia was as complex, flawed and gifted as the music he leaves behind. And in my mind, it’s the music he created, not the subculture, that makes him worth remembering.
Image credit: Time
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