Grateful Garcia : His Archetypal ‘60s Group Is More Popular Than Ever

“The Grateful Dead is one of the last run-off-and-join-the-circus things, and there isn’t much like it,” said Dead guitarist-singer Jerry Garcia.

More than 25 years after its Haight-Ashbury beginnings, the Dead--which headlines the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum for the first time next Saturday afternoon--is more popular than ever as a new generation of teens has found in the Dead traces of the ‘60s social idealism and freedom that they had read and heard so much about.

Typically, the group’s performances attracts a coalition of those young fans and longtime Deadheads--some of whom follow the band from concert to concert, while others are just weekend hippies who trade in their coats and ties for tie-dye for a day or two of free-form celebration.

“America has been so dull lately,” Garcia, 48, said by phone this week from the group’s San Rafael headquarters, describing the attraction of free-spirited Deadhead phenomenon.

“These are the Bush years, dull stuff and unpleasant by and large. Doors are closing everywhere and the opportunity to do something adventurous and fun have gotten narrower and narrower. The Dead hasn’t changed much from our point of view, but the world has changed around it.”

But the Dead experience has changed: The increased numbers showing at concerts--often tens of thousands who camp out for the now-common two- or three-day Dead festivals, has led to ad-hoc Deadhead villages that often spill over into surrounding communities, with attendant trash and trampling and tension with neighbors and community officials.

And there have been two highly publicized deaths involving Dead fans in Southern California: the drug-related death of a 19-year-old male after a December, 1989, concert at the Forum and a traffic fatality caused by a 19-year-old woman who had reportedly ingested LSD outside a Dead concert at Cal State Dominguez Hills in May, 1990.

“I wake up every morning feeling like it’s too much,” he said. “It’s way too much on every level. But there’s also the thing that I still love it. It’s still fun. If someone makes music illegal they’ll have to drag me screaming and kicking off stage.”

“The only time it’s not fun is when one of those incidents happen,” he said. “It’s always a moment of decision for me. If one drop of blood is spilled or one person experiences even a moment of pain, I wonder. I take these things to heart and try to make them better.”

But such incidents, he stresses, are rare.

In conversation, gray-beard Garcia is anything but the laconic old hippie one might imagine, but an amiable, articulate fast-talker.

“The Deadheads catch more (flak) undeservedly,” he said. “I’d put our audience against any audience. Take the average sports audience: They drink a lot and are rowdy and wreck stuff, and no one complains. Our audience cleans up after itself and is caring and considerate.”

The problem, he believes, comes from the few who have not been as considerate. Garcia also said that the perceived association of the Dead community with drugs has not helped the band’s image in the Just Say No era.

“(The drug image) is always peering right over our shoulders, but it’s OK,” he said. “The whole drug thing has gotten really hysterical in the U.S. and I think they’re dealing with it wrongly, but that’s the way it is.”

Though up to 60,000 people are expected to show up for the Coliseum concert, police and community representatives and members of the Dead organization anticipate no problems out of the ordinary for a large concert or sports event. The urban setting and the facts that this is a one-day rather than multi-day event are expected to eliminate much of the loitering of Deadheads.

“When it’s two or three days people will come from far away even without tickets and get in the parking lot and party,” said Bay Area concert promoter Bill Graham, who has worked with the Dead since 1966.

Graham also noted that this is a reserved-seating-only concert due to a Los Angeles city ordinance prohibiting “festival” style general admission events. Deadheads tend to favor festival seating where they can mill around and work their way to the front of the stage.

“The Grateful Dead at the Coliseum is not as sweet a piece of sugar as a three-day festival at Telluride,” Graham said.

But for all the problems, the Dead and its Deadheads have become a respectable and respected cultural phenomenon: Bookstore shelves carry numerous volumes analyzing and celebrating the community, and such artists as Elvis Costello, Los Lobos and Suzanne Vega recently recorded Dead songs for “Deadicated,” a tribute album benefiting the rain forests.

“There’s that famous saying about whores and ugly buildings,” Garcia said. “If you stay around long enough, eventually you get respectable.”