You are currently browsing the tag archive for the 'Rod ‘Pigpen’ McKernan' tag.
Now that I am over a month into my intensive focus on the Grateful Dead, I have confirmed my suspicion that my perspective will change wildly in small amounts of time. Things that completely baffled and intimidated me are now commonplaces, and I see how quickly things that were at one moment for me insights can disappear suddenly into the obvious, not worthy of comment or reflection.
But the point here is to document that exact phenomenon, so here’s a small stab at reflecting on impressions gleaned thus far.
Jerry Garcia
Garcia’s reluctant charisma appears to be a self-reinforcing phenomenon. The more reticent he is, the lower his mic volume, the more still he stands, the less he says, the more we love the things he does do that stand out.
The big, dark arrays of hair and beard allow him to hide. There is a sparkle to his eyes and voice that is at odds with the countenance we otherwise see. The effect is of a sage or oracle. Easy to see how the lay, mainstream view became that Jerry was a guru to be followed. The knock from that camp was that Jerry was a pied-piper leading youth astray in a sort of willful gambit.
Most individuals with such an intent would have been much more direct, I would think. The Grateful Dead phenomenon could never have been predicted to end up where it did, growing holistically after so many years. Tyrants and tricksters simply aren’t that patient.
The answer seems to be in a basic personality type, and a love for playing the music above all else. The personal appetite for drugs, which came to be so closely associated with the band both among outsiders and fans, really was a function of his personality rather than some overarching agenda. I say this despite the video clip I referenced earlier, where Garcia and others do pin some “hope” for human progress on drugs. That clip, from 1967, represents a point in the 60s when there was such a broad-based optimism about consciousness expansion via drug experiences.
At this point in my journey, I see Garcia as a modern exponent of a collective model of artistic creation. He was clearly the most charismatic and musically talented of the band’s members. But he really did as much as he could to sublimate himself to the collective whole. We would see this attitude get more play in later decades, in flattened corporate org charts, going green, charging less for tickets than the market would bear and other seeming acts of beneficence where a person with power “leaves money on the table” in a way puzzling to those fixated on profit and power maximization.
Jerry Garcia was a sage, but he was singing someone else’s words almost all the time. The music he created to propel these words was a perfect match, in that we cannot imagine the songs with different melodies (but of course they could have been different, but maybe then we would never have heard them). So much of the 60s and 70s was about authenticity of the singer-songwriter’s personal experience, that I remain fascinated about the division of songwriting labor between Garcia, and Robert Hunter as lyricist.
More to come, as I try to figure it out.
Bob Weir
Weir has an interesting charisma. Not nearly as strong as Garcia’s, nor really close to any of the other “frontman” type in contemporaneous rock music — Jagger, Stewart, Tyler, Page, Mercury, etc. He has a much more typical masculinity than most rock stars, who on stage play exaggerated visions of macho but who in real life would have been the least masculine on the spectrum back in high school (imagine Mick Jagger standing next to a rugby player in high school).
I am struck by pictures of Weir onstage in an Izod and jeans in the late 70s or early 80s. Utterly casual in what would have been termed preppie attire, singing Estimated Prophet. What a strange dichotomy.
An all-Garcia or all-Weir fronted band would have had a very different impact. I know that much. I am guessing neither would have been as successful as the Grateful Dead was. Maybe Ratdog and the Jerry Garcia Band existed to prove the value of that synergy.
Coming into this project, I assumed that Garcia was amazing, I just didn’t know the exact evidence yet. I wasn’t really familiar with exactly what Weir contributed.
Bob Weir has impressed me, for one because I really like rhythm guitar, and he is a revelation, but also because his very limits as a vocalist are what make him so enjoyable to listen to. I don’t think it’s an accident that one of the songs he is most associated with is his One More Saturday Night. The spirit of that song is the everyman deciding to let it loose. He never sings anything that we couldn’t replicate ourselves in the car or shower. Let the party begin.
I also think that he provided a slightly different model from that of Garcia — a more grounded version of the Grateful Dead lifestyle, which served to broaden the appeal beyond hard-core consciousness-expanders and seekers. Weir seems to indicate that you can be a regular guy and still stick a toe or more into the waters of the Grateful Dead and come out the better for it without completely writing off the straight life (for you youngsters out there, that’s not straight in the straight/gay sense of today but straight/hip sense of yesteryear).
The addition of Donna Jean Godchaux as a vocal foil for Weir for much of the 70s only underscores Weir’s role in the band as the hip captain of the football team.
Phil Lesh
How many fans of major bands have such passion for their bass player? Sorry, bass players, but you don’t generally rise to the level of our consciousness. Even the great Motown hits, many featuring the uniquely melodic and propulsive bass playing of James Jamerson, are not known for the great musicianship among most fans.
A casual reading of the literature indicates that Phil Lesh holds a high place of distinction and honor among Dead fans. I have certainly heard moments where Lesh’s bass adds something distinctive and good, but I am not at a place yet where I can say that without him, the band would not have had its success or even would have lost something truly distinctive.
Of course, behind the scenes may be a different story. Maybe Phil has been the glue that has held the whole strange trip together for so long. I just don’t hear it yet in my tour through the music.
I do hope to get to a point, especially in the jams, where I see the uniqueness and come to appreciate it. But like with the drummers, my ability to listen is just not there yet where I can appreciate it.
If we base impressions solely on his looks and interest in the technical, Phil Lesh presaged and foretold the rise of Silicon Valley and the high tech boom that would come out of Northern California. I think he defined “business casual attire” decades before it became commonplace.
Bill Kruetzmann/Mickey Hart
Sorry guys, I tend to hit skip when Drums comes along. Too much other sweet candy to consume before taking on the rice and beans. Someday, though, I hope to be able to savor the differences in your performances and distinguish between these forays on the skins.
And to understand exactly how your particular contributions underpin the Grateful Dead’s canon.
Donna Jean Godchaux
I have to admit if you are a stickler for pitch, you might be amused by some of the things that happen live. I chalk it up to bad monitors and the general difficulty of singing only sporadically over three-hour shows.
On the other hand, after you get over the technical elements, and come to appreciate the fact that the Dead had a female (known then as a girl) onstage with them, her contributions not only add a welcome musical element but also a crucial social element.
The Grateful Dead must have realized at some point that their seeming social values suffered from the lack of gender diversity onstage. If the band’s methods and optics lent themselves to comparison with communal life, how could the whole shebang be run wholly by men onstage?
Not to say that with Donna onstage that the whole hippie thing was not still rife with misogyny, because it clearly was in those days. But the hat-tip toward inclusion of women certainly scored a lot of points for the boys.
Donna Jean’s limited role (vocals) and limited singing time sort of sums up the vision of equality in place at that time. And don’t forget, it was an improvement from before.
Over the years, I have met ten times the women heavily into the Grateful Dead than into any other rock band. I don’t think it was all due to Bobby’s good California looks either. Being represented onstage had to mean a lot.
As far as Donna’s musical contribution is concerned, I think if John Lennon had fallen for Donna Jean rather than Yoko, we still might be buying tickets to see the Beatles.
Pigen/Keith Godchaux/others
I have quickly come to understand why the Pigpen-era fans have never gotten over his departure and death. He renders a much more rugged, blues-based feel to the Dead’s music. Sort of like the difference between alcohol and acid. His departure created a void that seems to have been filled by more focus on Garcia and Weir, rather than by bringing in another vocalist with a strong creative view.
Bands under dual leadership are fragile enough, I have to think ultimately the tripartite structure with Pigpen would have been even more subject to problems. I don’t know close to enough yet, but I wonder whether the Pigpen version of the band would have worked the way it did in the 70s and 80s and 90s.
On the other hand, I would have been much more likely to come into Deadhead status as a teen in the 70s with his deep focus on rhythm and blues and blues music.
Keith played a mean boogie piano when he first joined the band. Some have written that he lost some verve over the years, I would say my limited listening of some 1977 shows indicates that may be true. Playing keys in the era of guitar is an exercise in frustration. Another subject to give more thought to.
I haven’t gotten beyond the Godchaux years so we’ll have to wait for the Mydland, Hornsby and Welnick eras for a while.
Key to my introduction to the Grateful Dead has been the intro point provided by Beat It on Down the Line and Goin’ Down the Road Feeling Bad, two boogies fronted by, respectively, Weir and Garcia as lead vocalists. The 1971 Gaelic Park show features both tunes, and the songs appear to me as bookmarks in that their provenance (Jesse Fuller and a traditional, respectively), similar lonely laments and general musical attitude are similar but with different vocalists.
Both performances feature sprightly rhythm guitar from Weir, and nice lead work by Jerry in a clear two-guitar configuration of the time. The appearance of one or both of these tunes in a show provide me with a benchmark or baseline against which to measure the likely energy and inventiveness of the rest of the performance around them. Both songs also provide a showcase for the Dead Sound in a very traditional context. Whether an outsider will like the Dead or not might well come down to the enjoyment they get from these songs, before venturing into more proprietary creations of the band further afield musically.
The way the performance of these songs mutated from 1971 to 1973 mirrors the changes happening during those years. It’s easy to forget just how much happened in the music world in that three year span.
I came across a brilliant piece of video of the band performing Beat It on Down the Line on European TV. While I might already be able to point to a couple of even better versions in my small but growing collection, it would be difficult to find clearer video or sound from 1972. Check out Pigpen and Keith Godchaux both tinkling the keys. I love Jerry’s facial expressiveness from behind all the hair, even when it’s a stone cold poker face. I’ve watched it seven times already.
And if that doesn’t rock you, try One More Saturday Night, from the same TV broadcast. Another song in the same boogie vein, which could be a traditional or a cover of an old tune atmospherically, but which Bob Weir wrote solo. Although there is an interesting story that Robert Hunter actually started the song, and disavowed it after Weir rewrote his lyrics. Hunter cost himself some royalties there.
Finally I can talk about the music. While I was reading the McNally book mentioned earlier, I decided I needed some Dead music to listen to.
The two shows I downloaded ended up serving as my exclusive Grateful Dead music for over two years. The multiple CDs I burned for each show never left my car.
Knowing I wanted to relive the days of hearing Europe ‘72 with my friend, I selected largely at random the Berkeley Community Theater show of August 21, 1972 and the Gaelic Park show from NY of August 26, 1971.
My reaction to these shows was to be stunned. Perhaps my decade-plus enjoying Americana (Alt-Country) had softened me up, but I was shocked at the breadth of the song selections, the rocking element, the clarity of the soundboards and the fact that the performances did not sound dated in any way.
A relatively obscure (to me) Chuck Berry number Promised Land smokes. The lyrics exalt the trip to California from the American South, and I raced to learn about who was playing that amazing Jerry Lee Lewis-style piano. I learned quickly that Keith Godchaux joined and overlapped with the late Pigpen, who died in late 1973.
Pigpen, I soon figured out, was the guy singing the emotional and earthy blues numbers prevalent on the Gaelic Park CDs. One of my first “revelations” was that Pigpen’s illness/death deprived the Dead of a rougher blues element that would have made them more attractive to me in the 70s as a blues-rock fan.
His Empty Pages on Gaelic Park is stunning, especially the emoting at the ending. The Dead sound like Big Brother and the Holding Company on the tune, it’s completely San Francisco psychedelic blues a la Janis Joplin.
Back to Berkeley, I fell in love with almost every song. He’s Gone tied into the story about Mickey Hart’s father, and the song’s languid and mournful pace made a lot more sense after I knew the story.
Jack Straw sounds almost like a Broadway show tune in its complex multiple parts and lyrical wordiness, and has great playing by Jerry. It also always gets a rise from the crowd with the “we can share the women we can share the wine” line, which gave me a sense of how the lyrics are taken to heart by the fans.
I also got a kick out of the following line that shows a concern for “sharing” one’s own with others when maybe they haven’t shared theirs yet. The cheer after that line indicates that the 60s ethos clearly didn’t wholly eradicate normal human behavior as far as selfishness goes.
Me and My Uncle turns out to be written by John Phillips and is a staple of these shows from that time. The storytelling is fun and fits well with the Dead’s themes of western cowboys, poker games, theft and treachery. Bob Weir seems to enjoy portraying the evil nephew in a way that makes each version a unique performance.
I could go on and on and am just scratching the surface. I can’t think of a better era than 1971-72 for a newbie to digest. The bands’ classics/staples, such as Uncle John’s Band, Sugar Magnolia and Playing in the Band are all there and sound fresh and inspired.
The shows are so long that digesting them can take weeks of casual listening.
Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo was a revelation for me in the Berkeley show. The multiple voices repeating the “across the Rio Grand-eo” line are ragged and sometimes off key (Donna Jean) but majestic nonetheless, then Jerry resolves the tension with a great solo dancing simply around the same melody line.
It makes you want to sit around a campfire and sing, regardless of whether you can sing or not. Well, some people. In my car, two of my family members who can sing were sort of appalled at the harmonies. Meanwhile, I had a lump of joy in my throat from the feeling of the entirety.
At that point, I realized that I would be going this path largely alone, and that I was indeed falling into Deadhead-hood. Better late than never.
I also suddenly understood that there were hundreds, maybe thousands of these multi-hour shows over decades. How would I ever penetrate the catalog?
I punted for a while on the project and simply enjoyed MY two shows. These two will always be the standard I use for evaluating new shows I obtain — do they make it into the circle of that Berkeley date and the Gaelic Park show “on the whole”?
A normal person might be satisfied with two great shows from an era. The obsessive in me has very recently gone back to the archives to experience a slew of other shows from that time. It will be some time before I can compare the other shows against the others, but what I am realizing is that I can sit and enjoy 3 hours of any show without getting restless to hear my old standbys.
The sheer volume may in fact be a curse of sorts. We’ll see. But the human desire the find the best show, the best performance of each song, begins to snake around me and interfere with what I have, an embarrassment of riches in terms of free, fantastic quality Grateful Dead.
Time to start thinking about other eras to explore as well.
Recent Comments