as a solo act: “Jerry was playing in dives in North Beach, these remnants of the Beat Generation’s places, but no one was going to them anymore. He would walk in at seven-thirty or eight and there might be nobody there, and sometimes nobody ever came and he’d play his set and go. But he had an amazing perseverence.
“Jerry used to take his guitar with him wherever he went, and one time we went down to Aquatic Park on the bus. We were sitting on the grass and he was playing the guitar and this old Basque man, who worked in a restaurant or something, had a pot full of food that he was going to feed to the birds, but he said he liked Jerry’s guitar playing so he gave us the big pot of food instead. It was very sweet. And this was at a time when none of us had any money; we were very poor.”
* * *
Alan Trist bid a fond farewell to his Palo Alto mates in September of that year and returned to England fundamentally changed. He had spent the year“experiencing life in the moment,” he says. “We weren’t thinking about the future. We were aware that we were experiencing something deep at that time. There was a lot of coherence to that little scene. It was this bunch of us going all around and hanging out just for the purpose of enjoying each other and sharing intellectual and artistic experience. We were all, in the broadest sense, involved in the arts—writing or drawing or both; playing music, listening to music. We were proto-artists; that was our sense of ourselves.”
“Jerry, John, Alan, Phoebe and I stayed up all night rapping at Phoebe’s before driving up to Twin Peaks at dawn, then driving Alan to the airport for his return to England,” Robert Hunter recalled. “I consider that the end of our old scene. We all thought so. Alan was really the prime mover of our group cohesiveness. Without Alan’s social focusing skills, the main group splintered, by main force of entropy, into several scenes rather than one.”
Also departing at summer’s end was Marshall Leicester, who returned to Yale. Leicester pops back into the scene during Christmas and summer vacations for the next couple of years, but his absence forced Garcia to look for new playing partners, as he dug deeper into the old-time string band repertoire and also began to explore bluegrass a little more.
Despite the generosity of Barbara Meier, who became Garcia’s girlfriend that autumn, Garcia was perennially broke, but his friend David McQueen reveals that from time to time Jerry would do odd jobs to earn a little scratch:
“Aside from my regular job, I used to do yard work for extra spending money. I knew Jerry was broke and I enjoyed his playing at Kepler’s, so we’d go on these yard jobs so he could earn some money for cigs. It was fun for both of us. Jerry used to call me a lousy blues singer, and I said he was equally lousy at yard work. Neither of us got offended; it was the truth.
“Jerry always had a guitar with him wherever he went,” McQueen continues. “One day, after doing a yard job, we were on the way back to my house in East Palo Alto. It was summer, kids were out playing in the streets, and Jerry was playing guitar and we were singing as we walked. I looked behind us at one point and saw there was a whole group of little black kids following us and dancing, like in those great but politically incorrect Marx Brothers movies. I was impressed—those kids were for real! When we stopped, they were all over Jerry: ‘Play some more! Play some more!’ Jerry loved it.
“He was listening to a lot of Reverend Gary Davis at that time. But blues, gospel, jazz—he’d play it all. He used to jam with the drummers who came to play at Pogo’s [Norm Fontaine’s] house. I’m sure Jerry was influenced by some of the music he heard in East Palo Alto. Sometimes he’d go to the Anchor Bar—white owned, black run—which had music on weekends. There was a house band, but anyone with a union card could sit in, and name
“Jerry used to take his guitar with him wherever he went, and one time we went down to Aquatic Park on the bus. We were sitting on the grass and he was playing the guitar and this old Basque man, who worked in a restaurant or something, had a pot full of food that he was going to feed to the birds, but he said he liked Jerry’s guitar playing so he gave us the big pot of food instead. It was very sweet. And this was at a time when none of us had any money; we were very poor.”
* * *
Alan Trist bid a fond farewell to his Palo Alto mates in September of that year and returned to England fundamentally changed. He had spent the year“experiencing life in the moment,” he says. “We weren’t thinking about the future. We were aware that we were experiencing something deep at that time. There was a lot of coherence to that little scene. It was this bunch of us going all around and hanging out just for the purpose of enjoying each other and sharing intellectual and artistic experience. We were all, in the broadest sense, involved in the arts—writing or drawing or both; playing music, listening to music. We were proto-artists; that was our sense of ourselves.”
“Jerry, John, Alan, Phoebe and I stayed up all night rapping at Phoebe’s before driving up to Twin Peaks at dawn, then driving Alan to the airport for his return to England,” Robert Hunter recalled. “I consider that the end of our old scene. We all thought so. Alan was really the prime mover of our group cohesiveness. Without Alan’s social focusing skills, the main group splintered, by main force of entropy, into several scenes rather than one.”
Also departing at summer’s end was Marshall Leicester, who returned to Yale. Leicester pops back into the scene during Christmas and summer vacations for the next couple of years, but his absence forced Garcia to look for new playing partners, as he dug deeper into the old-time string band repertoire and also began to explore bluegrass a little more.
Despite the generosity of Barbara Meier, who became Garcia’s girlfriend that autumn, Garcia was perennially broke, but his friend David McQueen reveals that from time to time Jerry would do odd jobs to earn a little scratch:
“Aside from my regular job, I used to do yard work for extra spending money. I knew Jerry was broke and I enjoyed his playing at Kepler’s, so we’d go on these yard jobs so he could earn some money for cigs. It was fun for both of us. Jerry used to call me a lousy blues singer, and I said he was equally lousy at yard work. Neither of us got offended; it was the truth.
“Jerry always had a guitar with him wherever he went,” McQueen continues. “One day, after doing a yard job, we were on the way back to my house in East Palo Alto. It was summer, kids were out playing in the streets, and Jerry was playing guitar and we were singing as we walked. I looked behind us at one point and saw there was a whole group of little black kids following us and dancing, like in those great but politically incorrect Marx Brothers movies. I was impressed—those kids were for real! When we stopped, they were all over Jerry: ‘Play some more! Play some more!’ Jerry loved it.
“He was listening to a lot of Reverend Gary Davis at that time. But blues, gospel, jazz—he’d play it all. He used to jam with the drummers who came to play at Pogo’s [Norm Fontaine’s] house. I’m sure Jerry was influenced by some of the music he heard in East Palo Alto. Sometimes he’d go to the Anchor Bar—white owned, black run—which had music on weekends. There was a house band, but anyone with a union card could sit in, and name
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