America is still mostly xenophobic and racist. That's the nature of America, I think.
An old friend of mine once said, yeah, the revolution is over, it was over the first day, the rest of it is a cleanup operation. All this is a cleanup operation. It may go on for another fifty years, but I believe that the battle is over. The victory is won. It's done. It's over.
And as far as I'm concerned, it's like I say, drugs are not the problem. Other stuff is the problem.
And for me there's still more material than 20 lifetimes that I can use up.
And the live show is still our main thing.
And there's a lot of that stuff with people bringing their kids, kids bringing their parents, people bringing their grandparents - I mean, it's gotten to be really stretched out now. It was never my intention to say, this is the demographics of our audience.
And Warner Bros. seems to be pretty much into re-releasing all of their catalog. So there's the Warner Bros. stuff and the stuff that we have control over, we're gradually re-releasing it. Some stuff we don't have control over.
But audio is a component of video, so there's always been that anyway, and although we've never expressed a visual side apart from the Grateful Dead movie, I don't find it that remote, you know what I mean? It's a departure of sorts, but it's like a first cousin.
But hey, when you live in Watts, you need a little smack to get by, you know what I mean? You need something soft and comfortable in your life, 'cause you're not going to get it from what's around you. And society isn't going to give it to you.
Constantly choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil.
Death comes at you no matter what you do in this life, and to equate drugs with death is a facile comparison.
For me, the lame part of the Sixties was the political part, the social part. The real part was the spiritual part.
Hunter can write a melody and stuff like that, but his forte is lyrics. He can write a serviceable melody to hang his lyrics on, and sometimes he comes up with something really nice.
I don't know why, it's the same reason why you like some music and you don't like others. There's something about it that you like. Ultimately I don't find it's in my best interests to try and analyze it, since it's fundamentally emotional.
I don't think that Slaughterhouse-Five was successful movie material. In fact, Vonnegut's books mostly I don't feel are movie material.
I have all the patience in the world about Sirens. For me it's not a Grateful Dead project, it's a Me project.
I mean, just because you're a musician doesn't mean all your ideas are about music. So every once in a while I get an idea about plumbing, I get an idea about city government, and they come the way they come.
I mean, whatever kills you kills you, and your death is authentic no matter how you die.
I read somewhere that 77 per cent of all the mentally ill live in poverty. Actually, I'm more intrigued by the 23 per cent who are apparently doing quite well for themselves.
I think it's too bad that everybody's decided to turn on drugs, I don't think drugs are the problem. Crime is the problem. Cops are the problem. Money's the problem. But drugs are just drugs.
I'm not trying to clock scores in this lifetime, it's just that things are better now than they were like five, ten years ago. Music has gotten a lot better. There's a lot of people who are committed to - soulfully.
I'm shopping around for something to do that no one will like.
I've always been really fond - in folk music, I've always been fond of the fragment. The song that has one verse. And you don't know anything about the characters, you don't know what they're doing, but they're doing something important. I love that. I'm really a sucker for that kind of song.
If we had any nerve at all, if we had any real balls as a society, or whatever you need, whatever quality you need, real character, we would make an effort to really address the wrongs in this society, righteously.
Music, once you're in that thing where it gets to be so facile, where it's all technique and no substance. It looked like it was going to hang there for a good long time, but luckily it didn't last very long, because ultimately it's really boring. People are not that interested in it.
Nobody stopped thinking about those psychedelic experiences. Once you've been to some of those places, you think, "How can I get back there again but make it a little easier on myself?"
Our strong suit is what we do, and our audience.
So it's one of those things where we have to - our problem is pacing ourselves and still reaching a large enough number of our audience. Because we don't want to burn the audience. And we don't want to be excluding anybody.
So we are pretty convinced we don't want to play huge stadiums unless we can play them well.
Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.
Stuff that's hidden and murky and ambiguous is scary because you don't know what it does.
Talk about your plenty, talk about your ills, One man gathers what another man spills.
The alternate media are becoming important and viable alternatives to playing live. Records, videos, that kind of thing. They're going to start to count for something. Because there's only a limited amount of us-time available to us.
The real problems are cultural. The problems of the people who take drugs as a cultural trap - I think there's a real problem there, the crack stuff, the hopelessness of the junkie. The urban angst.
The whole thing is remembering, this is who we are. Remember who we are? We are in reality a group of misfits, crazy people, who have voluntarily come together to work this stuff out and do the best we can and try to be as fair as we possibly can with each other, and just struggle through life.
There is a road, no simple highway, between the dawn and the dark of night, and if you go, no one may follow, that path is for your steps alone.
We're not uncomfortable with it, and we've already been through enough of the music business where I'm not really worried that commercial success is going to in some way - we're already past saving, you know what I mean? It's too late for us.
What we do is as American as lynch mobs. America has always been a complex place.
Yeah, I think we have to. If we want our shows to be - if we want the quality of the shows to be good, and we want the energy to be high, and if we want to be in good enough physical shape to do them, and not exhaust ourselves on the road, and not get stale, we have to pace.
You do not merely want to be considered just the best of the best. You want to be considered the only ones who do what you do.
Jerry was honored by President Bill Clinton as being 'an American Icon' at the time of passing, and his memorial services were held in Golden Gate Park on August 13, 1995. Thousands of fans, some playing in drum circles, joined his family , bandmates, and friends to pay their last respects to the legend.
Jerry was an avid reader and huge fan of cinema, his favorite work being Kurt Vonnegut's The Sirens Of Titan, owning the novel's film rights, struggling to adapt it with the likes of Al Franken.
Jerry spent twenty five years with his various solo projects, the styles were varied. He played bluegrass, rock, folk, blues, country, jazz, gospel, reggae, electronic music, and jazz band.
Jerry lived in the heart of Haight Ashbury district in 1967 and played at the Human Be-In, which inaugurated the 'Summer of Love'.
Jerry was introduced to Bob Weir on New Year's Eve 1963, by mutual friend Bob Matthews. He then met Ron 'Pigpen' McKernan while playing in a local bluegrass and folk band called 'Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions'. The friends evolved into their own group in 1965, calling themselves the 'Warlocks'.
Jerry, a poet named Robert Hunter, and David Nelson teamed up to make music together after he was discharged from the Army. Down the road, Robert went on to become the main lyricist for 'The Grateful Dead'.
Jerry's grandfather Manuel, earned his living as an electrician, but insisted that his sons and all of his grandchildren learn to play an instrument and sing.
Jerry witnessed the drowning death of his father in Northern California in the summer of 1947.
He is a diabetic.
He grew up in the Excelsior District in San Francisco.
Jerry dropped out of Balboa High School and enlisted in the United States Army on April 12, 1960. He was stationed at Fort Winfield in San Francisco's Presidio after completing Basic Training and Service School training as an auto maintenance helper at Ford Ord, California.
Jerry toured with the Grateful Dead as the guitarist and frontman from 1965-1995 almost constantly, they had a die-hard fan base known as 'deadheads', who were known for their loyalty and devotion to the group. Some of the 'deadheads' dedicated their enire lives to the band, following them from concert to concert selling handmade goods, arts & crafts to get by.
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