1033
rgehr@well.ocm writes:


 For Dan Marsh, and anyone else who's interested, the following hidden post
 contains the long version of my Rolling Stone interview with Mickey Hart and
 Robt. Hunter.

**************cut here*************************************************

 Richard Gehr
 31 May 1996
 Opening the Mystery Box
 
 
 	So what's so mysterious about the Mystery Box ?
 
 Mickey Hart: The musical mystery is, How do you marry tuned percussion and
 voice? And on a metaphorical level, everything that's really important --
 like the clouds, the sky, and the earth -- is a giant mystery. Bob came up
 with the title. It started as _Tribal Space_,  an extension of _Planet
 Drum_.
 
 	Was it always intended to sound more like a pop album than your
 previous albums.
 
 M: Oh yes. I knew it was going to be more popular  than my earlier albums.
 
 Robert Hunter: When you strip away the chord changes, the lyrics, and toss
 the girls, you've got one of the most sophisticated *drum* records ever
 made. Everything else is an overlay.
 
 	I understand you had a certain amount of technical difficulty making
 "Mystery Box."
 
 M: This was the most complicated, hardest, most difficult, and gut-wrenching
 experience of my life. But I'm not laying that on anybody and it's nobody's
 business.
 
 R:  The sounds of grenades and machine guns have had to be erased from any
 great record that's ever been made.
 
 	How did you hook up with the Mint Juleps?
 
 M: Jerry put me on to the Juleps. Once Hunter gave me the words, I realized
 we had songs here, but I'm not really a singer. I wanted . . . see, I love
 the sophisticated vocal harmonizers of the late '50s and early '60s. I told
 Garcia I  wanted a vocal group that wasn't like either Aretha's backup
 singers or doo-wop. I wanted someone world-influenced. Garcia told me about
 Spike Lee's PBS documentary, "Do It A Cappella." I got the video, and there
 they were, a fully developed group from London's East End. The Juleps had
 never heard of the Grateful Dead. They didn't know anything about our songs
 or scene. They were like foreigners on another planet.
 
 	How did you write to the rhythms, Bob?
 
 R: I worked with raw* drum tracks mostly. I'd get up first thing in the
 morning, grab my tablet, and push the button before I had a chance to ask
 myself whether I was ready for another jungle of drums today.
 
 M: Drums for breakfast. I knew I wanted songs, and I wanted it to be
 percussion-based dance music, popular music. Garcia used to always say,
 "Keep it simple, make it big." That rang in my ears. The great challenge was
 to keep it simple with virtuoso percussionists like Zakir Hussain, Giovanni
 Hidalgo, and Sikiru Adepoju.
 
 It was great to work with Bob this time around, because we weren't rushed.
 It was a new vehicle; it wasn't the Grateful Dead. This was a fun record to
 make, unlike many Grateful Dead records, which were laborious in many ways.
 We never had a blow-out fun time in the studio, only moments of fun.
 
 	"Look Away" has a wonderful Hawaiian chant running through it. What
 does it mean?
 
 M: Nothing, it's gibberish. But it's so seductively alluring, I made a two-
 hour tape of the "Ao-waka-maki" chant and just let it flow. It was a mantra.
 In fact, every one of these songs is built on a multiphonic layer of vocals,
 like a chant. Most chant happens in other languages. I wanted an English
 chant, or better, a chant that meant nothing but sounded good. It doesn't
 hit me over the head. It just throws me a tractor beam and pulls me in.
 
 B: It means "Americans out of Hawaii"! It's kind of a Maxfield Parrish
 vision of Hawaii. Basically, you've got "Aum" with a few consonants.
 
 	And there's the pygmy chants in "The Next Step."
 
 M: I've come across a lot of extended-voice traditions in my archival work.
 Those singer remind me of me of little forest creatures, like the forest is
 alive.
 
 R: Have you ever been to the rainforest, Mickey?
 
 M: I've been to Costa Rica. But rainforests? I don't know, man, the bugs . .


 
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