Deadheads in O.C. Mourn Loss of Friend

Gene Prado was still groggy when he heard. It was his cousin Augie calling, rousing him from sleep, the same Augie Rodriguez who had taken Gene to his first Grateful Dead concert in 1986.

It wasn’t until Augie had called a second time, with more details about the death of Jerry Garcia, that Prado began to weep.

“I’m not one easily to cry and break down much,” said the 40-year-old Los Alamitos resident, who has contended with life as a quadriplegic since he was 18. “But some things hit close to home.”

Prado was among legions of Grateful Dead fans around the world mourning the death early Wednesday of Garcia, whose wizened voice and honey-sweet guitar playing helped turn the Dead into one of the leading concert draws in rock history. The band from San Francisco, together with the intergenerational caravan of Deadheads who followed it, formed a cultural phenomenon, an unbroken heritage lasting from the ‘60s into the mid-’90s.

The caravan stopped in Orange County as early as 1968 and as late as 1989, when the Dead were deemed no longer welcome by officials in Irvine, home to the county’s major amphitheater. But Garcia continued to stop in with his lower-profile side project, the Jerry Garcia Band. He last played O.C. on May 15, 1994.

Wednesday afternoon, Prado, the man who seldom cries, did something he said he never had done before: He picked up colored pens and finished a drawing in his own hand. He had begun his portrait of Garcia on Aug. 1, the guitarist’s 53rd birthday, intending to make copies to send to friends. He had set aside the drawing last week; he’d been in no rush to finish. But on the day of Garcia’s death, Prado made it his task to complete his picture of the familiar face, round, bearded and avuncular.

Prado said he loves Garcia and the Grateful Dead because they bring back something about the ‘60s for him, something spiritual. Though able to drive a specially equipped van, he hadn’t traveled a lot before his cousin turned him on to the Dead. As a Deadhead, though, Prado would jump in his ’81 Dodge Ram and drive to Nevada, to Arizona, to Northern California. Wednesday, he was planning one more trip: to an anticipated memorial event in San Francisco.

He said life as a Deadhead “gave me another outlet to do things. It broadened my horizons.”

Craig Marshall, a guitarist and singer who has played more Grateful Dead music in Orange County than the Dead themselves have, lay staring at his ceiling after getting the word. His daughter, Dena, had called him from Northern California, weeping on her 23rd birthday over the death of a musician they both loved.

Now Marshall, 43--who for the past seven years has led Cubensis, a Grateful Dead tribute band that plays the club circuit in O.C. and L.A.--found that a song Garcia had sung was circling through his mind and trying to pass through his lips.

“It’s called ‘He’s Gone,’ ” Marshall said. “I get through three or four words and I choke up. It talks about somebody passing away: ‘He’s gone, and nothin’s gonna bring him back.”’

Marshall, who grew up and still lives in the South Bay, remembers one of the first shows that hooked him on the Dead: their 1968 appearance at the Newport Pop Festival, held at the Orange County Fairgrounds. The Dead were part of a two-day bill with the Jefferson Airplane, Steppenwolf, the Animals and others, and from the start they were involved in the clash between the county’s ideal of the quiet suburban life, and the noisier, wilder ways of rock culture.

After hosting some 100,000 rock fans, Costa Mesa officials said that mob violence could have broken out and vowed never to host a big rock event again.

More than 20 years later, the Dead and their fans again found themselves at odds with Orange County officialdom. From 1983 through 1989, the Dead had become an annual fixture at the Irvine Meadows amphitheater, drawing sellout crowds--and then some. Camping was allowed on the grounds until the final year, making the Irvine dates a special attraction for a national fan network.

Anti-Deadhead grumbling began among city officials after a three-day stand at the venue in 1988 when an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 turned up without tickets; some camped on private property nearby, trampling crops in neighboring fields. In 1989, there was no camping allowed, but an epic traffic jam resulted as the Dead’s stand coincided with the annual El Toro Air Show. Police said they scuffled with some 500 Deadheads who had turned up without tickets.

To Cameron Cosgrove, then an Irvine councilman who led the fight to keep the Dead from coming back, the gathering had caused “a potential riot,” as he put it at the time. “It was apparent that it was more than oxygen that people in the crowd were breathing.”

Irvine’s ushering-out of the Dead left a bitter taste in the mouths of die-hard fans, who think that the essential gentle affability of the Dead’s audience compares favorably with the crowds drawn by most sports teams and other rock bands.

“I’m thinking of the shows that should have been but weren’t because of local politics,” George Rothfuss, a grieving longtime Deadhead from Yorba Linda, said Wednesday. “The shows that would have been probably would have been great.”

The Dead’s departure from Irvine wasn’t unique. In city after city nationwide, as the band turned into a mammoth draw during the 1980s, the unwieldy aspects of playing host not just a rock band but a sizable encampment of roving fans led to the un-welcome mat being rolled out.

For Brian Murphy, president of Avalon Attractions, which promotes concerts at Irvine Meadows, the most striking memory of the Dead’s last stand there wasn’t any trouble, but a moment that struck him humorously as military jets from the air show flew low over the packed amphitheater.

“They came in screaming at about 100 feet, and you had all these ‘80s-generation hippies cheering the jets, standing up and applauding and waving. They were cheering the jets because it was such a rush and so cool; it was the antithesis of what the ‘60s were about” when anything military at a Dead show would have drawn quite a different salute.

While the Dead packed off to play other places in Southern California during the ‘90s, Garcia himself returned to Irvine Meadows several times, fronting his own band, which didn’t draw the moving encampment of a full-on Grateful Dead show and brought no further municipal complaints.

On August 1, 1992, he played Irvine Meadows on his 50th birthday, celebrating in front of some 12,000 fans. The crowd greeted him with a serenade of “Happy Birthday to You,” but Murphy recalls that Garcia--whom he remembers as a funny, upbeat personality offstage--wasn’t in such a festive mood at a backstage cake presentation.

“I think it was a birthday he wasn’t particularly looking forward to,” Murphy said. “He wasn’t very glib that evening, as I recall.”

Craig Marshall--the guitarist who was inspired to start a band to bring Grateful Dead music to people when the Dead themselves weren’t around--said the philosophy expressed in Garcia’s music was about riding out life’s problems, whether they involve losing a concert venue or losing a dear, dear friend.

Marshall said yesterday that “He’s Gone,” the Dead song that kept choking him up, also includes a line that goes “Nothin’ to do but smile, smile, smile.”

“I think that’s what Jerry would wish for us now,” he said. “He’s experiencing now, maybe, what he’s tried to reach through psychedelics and through his music. The Dead’s music has always been about transportation into other realms, other planes, and he’s done it. He’s gone and done it.”

Times correspondent Russ Loar contributed to this story.