For Dead, the Music Lives On : Most Deadheads Are Grateful That Band Decided Not to Go On Without Jerry Garcia

Bob Weir didn’t look like someone whose life had just taken a dramatic change as he stood casually beside the stage at the Wiltern Theatre on Friday night, a beer in one hand, a cigarette in the other.

Just hours before, he and the four other surviving members of the Grateful Dead had officially announced through a simple, one-page statement that the band was calling it quits. Thus, four months after the death of leader Jerry Garcia, the Dead’s unparalleled 30-year run as an American pop culture institution was over.

But having just performed his first concert of the post-Dead era with the band Ratdog, which now shifts from a side project to his main focus, Weir said that his emotion wasn’t one of mourning or fear, but of relief.

“We just got together and decided that at this point, no matter what we do, we can’t call it the Grateful Dead,” said the 48-year-old singer-guitarist, who just last month had said in interviews that he expected the Dead would reconvene for a tour before next summer.

“For four months we thought that we had a torch to carry. But each of us will do it in his own manner. We’ll play together in some fashion again, but we’ll take our time on that.”

If Weir was matter-of-fact about the turn of events, the Deadheads who gathered at the Wiltern for Ratdog’s two-night stand were downright blase, which shouldn’t be that much of a surprise to long-time observers. The subculture surrounding the Grateful Dead is the very embodiment of a go-with-the-flow philosophy.

In fact, looking around the ad-hoc village that, as at any Dead-related event, sprung up in a nearby parking lot, you’d hardly have a clue that anything of consequence had transpired.

“I have the deepest respect for whatever they want to do,” said John Enriquez, who led a circle of Deadheads in drumming and chanting in the hours before the concert. “This will always be the Grateful Dead--the people gathering like this. Things will be good. Things will be real good.”

Around him was the usual colorful throng of fans--from grizzled fiftysomethings to fresh-faced teens--singing Dead songs, smoking pot, and selling jewelry and incense to pay for their journeys.

A majority of the fans around the Wiltern, in fact, hadn’t heard about the Dead’s announcement yet. Among them was Stephanie Burton, 27, standing in front of the theater with Dave Stepp and their 11-month-old son Zane.

Told the news, Burton barely changed her placid expression and declared that it was no real surprise. It was merely the confirmation of what many Deadheads accepted in August as a simple truth: Without Garcia, there is no Grateful Dead.

“I knew that [the Dead wouldn’t continue]--how could you not know that?” she said. “ But as long as there’s good music being played, I will go--and everyone will go.”

Others were a little more shocked, having bought in to the rumors that the Dead would find some way to go on by recruiting someone to fill Garcia’s lead guitar role--Carlos Santana seemed to be the favored choice. It was, in fact, partly to dispel such rumors that the band decided to put the name Grateful Dead away, said Dead spokesman Dennis McNally on Friday.

But none felt that it would change their lives appreciably.

“They won’t be called the Dead, but they won’t be dead ,” said Marina Del Rey resident Louise Todero, 43.

*

The surviving members are now free to concentrate on other projects. Weir will focus on Ratdog, which grew out of duo tours with bassist Rob Wasserman and also includes Dead keyboardist Vince Welnick, and a musical based on the life of baseball legend Satchel Paige.

Inside the Wiltern, fans readily embraced Ratdog. Though it was the first time the group had ever played L.A., there was a base of familiarity from past Weir/Wasserman tours, as well as from the presence of Welnick, who joined the Dead following the 1990 death of keyboardist Brent Mydland.

A very faint image of a skull was projected over the stage as the band came on and reappeared several times later. But, wisely, that was it for Dead-related iconography. Musically, too, the band doesn’t over-rely on Dead connections. Besides a bit of “Not Fade Away” included in Wasserman’s bass solo showcase, only “Cassidy”--a song from 1973’s “Ace,” the first, best and most Dead-like of Weir’s three solo albums--had been a regular feature of Dead concerts.

*

The repertoire’s aesthetics did overlap, though, with that of Garcia’s ‘80s and ‘90s solo projects, drawing on Bob Dylan (“Queen Jane” and “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”), the Beatles (“Blackbird”) and classic pop Americana (a rippling “Twilight Time”)--though this very laid-back presentation substitutes easy-going blues for the Jerry Garcia Band’s soul-gospel punch. Wasserman’s round, resonant bass mastery provides a solid anchor for the band, while Welnick and harmonica player Matthew Kelly add distinctive colorations.

It’s certainly Weir’s strongest vehicle since his mid-’70s work with the bar band Kingfish. But can Ratdog fill the role of the Dead? Of course not, and it shouldn’t try. Garcia’s death really meant, no matter what the temptations might have been, that the Dead could no longer exist. Now the challenge for Ratdog it to develop its own style and own traditions.

After the show, Weir promised that it would, that new songs that he hopes to record with the band in a few months and then take on the road will show the band to have its own character and direction.

“For what we’re up to, we need more time,” he said.

But he pursed his lips bemusedly as he considered that Deadheads will likely embrace whatever he does.

“I’ve always felt that Deadheads had extremely narrow tastes,” he said. “Now they’ll have no choice but to expand their horizons.”