2000 Bob Weir 2/17/78 Backstage between sets at the Roxy, Los Angeles interview w/ David Gans Gans: Are you havin' a good time? Weir: Well, so-so. It could be a little easier. It could be a little less hectic, but I guess this the wages of my profession. Gans: When you get up on stage, it seems to be coming together pretty good. Weir: It'll be better next set, I'm pretty sure. It was respectable last set, I suppose, but it sure as hell didn't click. Gans: I saw some rough spots, but -- Weir: There are going to be rough spots for the next few dates, but basi- cally, we can play a lot better than that -- you'll see. Gans: What are you going for with this? Weir: Fun. Gans: Do you expect to keep this together on maybe a loose basis and work two groups together...? Weir: I don't really have any plans. Gans: Are things goin' good with the Dead? Weir: Pretty good. It's still happening. Gans: "Bombs Away" is the first single, right? Weir: Yeah. Gans: The songs on this new album are really different from anything I've ever heard from you before -- maybe not, maybe there's a gradual change -- but the earlier stuff you were doing with Barlow is different. Texturally, your music of course is really different, but the lyrics seem to be changing, too. Why is the tone so different on this album? Weir: It's a matter of practice makes perfect, I think. We're getting bet- ter at articulating fine points, and we're also getting better at finding stuff worth writing about. Gans: Do you think "Heaven Help the Fool" succeeds in what it set out to do? Weir: I think that it does, but I think that a lot of people misunderstand that song. It's not meant to be a putdown. Our protagonist has made a num- ber of decisions, each one of them eminently reasonable, and he's not hurting anybody. I'm not espousing that lifestyle or anything like that, but... it just a guy that I've seen, and I've tried to paint a picture of him. People take a negative inkling to this particular portrait without really examining it very closely. Gans: The song I really wonder about is "Shade of Grey" -- you've got two distinct directions in that song, and I don't quite see them tied together. Could you help me with that one? Weir: I'm not entirely sure they ever do tie together. That, once again, is just a picture that I painted. One evening I was in a hotel with a lover of mine, and it was a particularly sweet evening between the two of us. Now and again, I would get up and drift over to the window of this high-rise hotel, and I would look down on Hollywood Boulevard, and there was all this madness (or what looked like madness) going on, and if you go down onto the street and observe it closely, at least to these eyes it still looks like madness -- everybody in a state of distraction -- and I don't know what more to say about that. It seemed to me something of a contrast, what was going on in my hotel room and what was going on in the street, and I thought I'd write about it. Gans: How are you working with Barlow? Are you writing lyrics, too? Weir: Yeah. In order to get lyrics that really fit my melodies and tunes, I really have to do quite a bit of work on the lyrics myself. What it comes to is maybe just a few lines in a given song. Then he fleshes them out, or takes them further, in most cases. Gans: But we can take the lyric content as your inspirations and your ideas? Weir: Generally. For instance, I came up with the line "heaven help the fool," and [laughs] nothing else in that song. Well, a few other lines, but my few other lines came after he fleshed it out. I replaced a few of the lines that I couldn't get with a few of my own. The amount of work that he did on the lyrics would have been more if he'd been around, but he lives in Wyoming... pressed for time. I couldn't be on the phone with him all the time. He was in the middle of haying, for that matter, so I was doing the vocals and had to add new lyrics, and I couldn't get him off his tractor, so I had to write a lot of my own. Gans: There's a distinct attitude on the whole album. At first I thought it was just something about women, but it's not even that -- it's just an at- titude. Something new. There's a distinct Bob Weir personality on this record that I've never seen any of before in the Grateful Dead. Weir: When I'm working on my own, I don't have the Grateful Dead gestalt to fall into or be part of, so I have to do all the manifesting by myself, and so something is bound to emerge. Gans: Is there any reason why there isn't more in the Grateful Dead? Weir: Because I'm more committed to the gestalt, to the group endeavor. Gans: Do you guys get the feeling that it plays itself sometimes, with the Dead? That "the music plays the band"? Weir: On a good night, yeah. Gans: When I heard the album, I was a little stunned at first, because the mix as so different. But I realized that Keith Olsen was getting you out of the context of a guitar-heavy band and let keyboards have a lot more to do with it. It worked really well. How do you feel about the whole production end of it? Was it as much fun in the long run as it seemed to be when we were down there before [in August 1977, when we did our first interview]? Weir: I wish we hadn't been pressed for time. I would like to have done more guitar work myself, but as it was, I was on the road. Gans: Did you do three layers on the solo on "Heaven Help the Fool"? Weir: Yeah. Gans: Now I see you hired yourself a bunch of real hot players, too and it's not quite so keyboard-dominated here. Weir: You'll hear more keyboards as the keyboard player's equipment ar- rives... the Rhodes will be better amplified, it'll be a better organ... Gans: Do you think about adding another body? Weir: No. It's fairly complete as it is right now. Any more would start amounting to clutter, I think. We have sort of a clutter problem now. Gans: This nine-piece band is playing down there, and you talk about clutter in a five-piece band. It's interesting. But I think I know what you mean, cause you got a real spare -- each instrument has a lot of presence. I was wondering because Tom Scott's stuff was so nice... Weir: That's real good, but I can't afford that stuff right now. If it ever took off, sure I'd be interested in investigating the possibility of taking out a horn section. Gans: Any chance of hearing "Cassidy" or "Black Throated Wind"? Weir: Hmm -- that really belongs to another band. Some of the songs we're doing in this band already belong to another band, in my opinion, but we need material right now, so we're doing some of them. Gans: Don't they belong to you? I saw you react very slightly when I asked the question, and I wonder: is there a problem for you separating the en- tities? Weir: I think about it, I ponder it. Gans: Do you think this would stand a chance of cutting into the Grateful Dead energy for you? Weir: Nah -- it's just a matter of propriety, it seems to me. I don't know -- it may be my own weird idea of propriety. Gans: Do you mean in the sense of still belonging to that ongoing thing and then doing this? A conflict of perhaps trying to put this thing together and alienating that energy? Weir: No [seems to be trying not to show agitation -- very subtle, but he's thinking hard] just -- I don't know -- Gans: I'm not trying to upset you. How many black t-shirts does Jerry own? My neighbor asked me to ask you that. Weir: Probably not enough. In my opinion, not enough. If you get close enough to one of those black t-shirts, you'll feel the same thing. Gans: Does he wear the same one for a few days in a row? Weir: He wears one until it's worn out, then he gets a new one. Gans: I'd bet b6d ter let you go get ready for the next set. Anything you want to say to the crowd? Weir: Basically, what I do best is what I'm about to go do in a few minutes. Gans: Does it bug you when you hear somebody yell "Weather Report" out there? Weir: Ah, well, what I hope do to is come up with something that'll please those people that want to hear something else. Get 'em hotter on the new material. Gans: Have you gotten any feedback from the other guys in the Dead about wanting to do the material from this new album? Weir: Yeah. I sort of resist it. Gans: You told me in August that you'd play them the record and see what they wanted to do, so I was interested if anything happened on that. Weir: Then I got to thinking that if I'm gonna have two separate develop- ments of myself, one being the me that works with the Grateful Dead group and pretty much devotes himself to that group effort, and the me that develops his own self and his own style, then I should probably work on separating them somewhat, so that I have the two to play against each other. Gans: What do you like to do besides music? Weir: I run. Uh, I haven't done anything else in a long time. I would like to go skiing, for instance -- I haven't done that in seven years, I guess. I don't know. (shrugs, laughs) .... I've seen two movies and one play in the last year. That's the extent of my evenings out. Gans: Do you still like to play five and six hours at a time? Weir: Whatever it takes to make it happen. I don't like waiting in this two-shows-a-night situation. Gans: It gives you enough time to cool off before the next set? .... The Dead's shows have gotten a little more succinct... Weir: I've still got a lot of energy, but those guys are startin' to get old, I think. That's not fair to say, but this much I will say: they are get- ting more succinct -- we'll charitably call it succinct. Gans: No, let's call it what it really is. Weir: They're shorter. Gans: Are they into playing less time? Weir: It appears as though things develop like that. It takes less time to get to the point of whatever it is that we're chasing these days. We'll see if that's a genuine trend. Sometimes we do play long. Gans: Are the medleys and jams -- how can I put this? Sometimes it just goes into flux and comes out someplace else, and sometimes it seems like you know exactly where you're going, and you can't wait to get there, and BANG! Estimated Prophet -> He's Gone, you know what I mean? Weir: Sometimes we preplan the medley, but we always try to at least take our time developing it and be open to anything that might suggest itself, any new idea or idea that's contrary to prior planning that might emerge. Really, from my standpoint, it's about the same as ever. . 0