2000
Steve Parish 
Author of Home Before Daylight: My Life on the Road 
with the Grateful Dead 
Dead to the World 9/24/03 
KPFA-FM, Berkeley, CA 
 
Host: David Gans 
transcribed by Bill Kramer, Lexington KY
 
Gans: His name is Steve Parish. We have a long and colorful history together, 
some of which will be revealed tonight. Steve has a new book, it's called 
"Home Before Daylight: My Life on the Road with the Grateful Dead," co-
written with Joe Layden. Hello, Steve.
Parish: Hello David, how are you doing?
Gans: I've got a strong temptation to throw you the hell out of my studio on 
general principle (laughing).
Parish: Go ahead -- I think you should. I'll do this from out in the street, but 
you're not gonna stop me from getting on the airwaves tonight! (Laughing) I've 
been thrown out of better radio stations than this, too. 
You'd be surprised at how many people I meet that tell me right off the bat, 
"You remember the time -- You don't know me, but you collared me and you 
tossed me off, and thank you so much. I didn't belong there, and thank you."
Gans: What about guys like me who did belong there?
Parish: You -- now, if we're gonna talk about you, you're a whole category all 
unto yourself. 
Gans: I'm sorry I brought it up. (Laughing)
Parish: 'cause you actually worked yourself into our scene in the toughest way 
possible: that is, from the outside in. We tried to knock you on the head 
repeatedly -- everybody in the band did, everybody on the crew did at some 
point. But then, we learned to love you, man, and that is something to your 
credit, you know.
But you helped me to understand some stuff, because I was so dead against 
doing any interviews of any kind after I'd done one in 1973 in "Rolling Stone" 
and it came out so wrong that it really annoyed me how they twisted your 
words, you know? And then you kinda rigged one up one time where Jerry and 
I were at Phil's house and sprung an interview on us. And we had so much fun 
doing that interview, which I know you put some excerpts in one of your 
books, that you got me back and talking again in public, you know. You helped.
Gans: That's cool.
Parish: Because in the Grateful Dead we were a guarded society. We didn't 
like to share a lot of things, and we had enough maniacs right there -- friends 
and enemies alike -- to keep it all real boiled up. So if somebody came around, 
they'd better have a good reason -- and you did.
Gans: Well, thanks. You know, I was encouraged. Jerry kept telling me to 
come around, you know, that there was stuff I could contribute. But it was 
hard to convince some of the rest of you.
Parish: He used to scream, I remember, "Don't throw him out! Whoa, no!" 
(Gans Laughing). You had the AUDACITY to ask to get into the vault. Now, 
that was something that NOBODY asked, you know, ever. I think you were 
the first, really, of anybody.
Gans: I was doing a radio show. I was putting Grateful Dead music on the air, I 
needed access -- 
Parish: But you know, you ran up against what I'm talkin' about -- that 
protective wall -- to get into that inner sanctum.
Gans: And somehow, I survived passing through the blowtorch gauntlet of 
Front Street many times. Well, enough about that. Let's talk about you and 
your book, man. I want to just read the introduction. Bobby Weir wrote a very 
interesting, beautiful -- 
Parish: He did a great job. I thank him and thank him again -- 
Gans: So, I just gonna read it, because I think it's worth reading; do you mind?
Parish: No, go ahead.
(Gans reads the entire introduction, written by Bob Weir, of "Home Before 
Daylight: My Life on the Road with the Grateful Dead")
Gans: So, Steve, I've that heard that said about people, even from people who 
had nothing nice to say about you, they would say that you were an extremely 
entertaining guy, and that when you and Jerry got going -- 
Parish: We had a very strange comedy thing that triggered off. You know, 
when you're comfortable with people, your comedy gets deeper and deeper, 
right? And we had a comfort level that was unexcelled. I mean, we lived 
together, we shared hotel rooms, we knew everything about each other, so you 
can do comedy on the psycho level and that's the funniest, 'cause you know 
what make people laugh, so you can tailor-make it to each other. Jerry had a 
weird sense of humor, I did, Bobby did, and we spent a lot of time up there 
entertaining ourselves on the stage. And like Bobby says, in hotels, airplanes, 
and it's us against the world, right? So you find any way to make a joke or find 
something to tag onto out there, you really play it, you riff on it.... sometimes 
Jerry would come in the next day and go, "Hey man, I had the weirdest dream" 
and I swear to God, a few times I'd have the same or similar dream, and so 
would some other people around us. And you realize -- hey we're all sleep-
deprived anyway. We're sleeping on these buses and planes and hotels, and 
some of your psyche drips into each other, so you get to really get to 
understand how to tickle each other's fancies. So we'd go out of our way 
sometimes to go for some jokes and strange stuff, and usually it was at the 
expense of what happened that day. The food -- that was always something 
you could laugh at. That's why we began the whole thing of our own food on 
the road, which we ended up making the best you could get, 'cause when you 
travel like that -- and we wanted all those comforts -- when we first went on the 
road, you'd never see any comforts at a gig. You'd go out there and it was a 
hostile environment, you know, very sparse. So we had to make do with 
whatever. If there was one hot dog, it became a joke dividing it up, you know. 
Who would get the mustard? And then the mustard was everywhere, and you 
know, the fraternity jokes come out fast.
I really thank Weir for writing that the way he did; he did an amazing job. The 
guy sometimes can't express himself really fast, but if he sits down and writes 
something, he comes out with some beautiful stuff. He's a gorgeous fellow and 
I love him immensely, and he's always taken care of me since I threw myself 
on the doorstep (laughing) of the Grateful Dead, which is all in the book there. 
We had a lot of fun and always some of the weird humorous places we'd end 
up -- the White House making jokes, and other places all over the world. We 
had a lot of fun.
Gans: We're talking with Steve Parish, who was a long-time roadie for the 
Grateful Dead -- and more than that, he was Jerry's manager and one of the 
great larger-than-life characters in a weird-ass scene.
Parish: I gotta say something about that. We on the crew, we tried to have a 
thing where if you got into management, you were making a big mistake. It was 
like an unwritten rule that you don't step over that line. You stay with the gear, 
where you can grab onto that gear, you can grab onto that truck -- we looked at 
life from the back of that truck, and we had our own way of looking at it. I 
borrowed from another good roadie friend of mine, Herbie Herbert, who 
always told me that was how he always looked at life, and it makes a lot of 
sense. 'Cause if you don't get your head raised too high -- 'cause you're right 
there with these guys and you're getting a lot of lavish attention if you're 
working for the Grateful Dead, and those guys were really good to us. But you 
gotta keep your head at a certain level and I always, like, even when I did the 
management of the Garcia Band, I still kept my hand in the equipment, 'cause I 
couldn't let go of it, you know? And I think that's the important part, that 
welding point we had with the guys and their gear, because each one of them 
loved his equipment so much we became that bridge. It was a beautiful thing. 
That was an unspoken relationship -- that Jerry, especially... Ram Rod and I 
always would talk about how when we were behind his amp and he was 
playing, somehow, when he was plugged into that guitar, somehow this guy 
became a being of something else, you know. And when he was out there on 
stage
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, if you went near his amp, he immediately knew. He would almost half 
turn his head to look back there to see if somebody was back there. In the old 
days, when people were all over the stage at Winterland, it was just a wild party 
onstage. People would just grab his cigarettes off his amp and put beers up 
there, and he always was distracted by that. That became part of the reason we 
started moving people back a little bit, you know? Not to lay it all at his 
doorstep: as we got more and more technical, we got more and more into 
having an area on the stage that we could work -- this very technical equipment. 
And that bond between us and the guys was what kept us going.
Gans: You have to admit, though, there was a certain amount of wanting to 
have them all to yourselves -- 
Parish: Well, no it was -- it was a mutual agreement on that. When they 
stepped down off the stage, they could belong to everybody, but when they 
were up there with us, we made an environment that they could live in. It 
started just by sittin' on road cases and hanging out together in places where we 
didn't know anybody. Then, at home, we were overwhelmed with people at 
Winterland. Winterland was just the biggest party on earth. I don't think there'll 
ever be anything like that again. It was a free-for-all, and there was no law in 
there except Bill Graham's law and us, but going to head to head with him and 
lovin' that.
But the reason I wrote that book, a lot of it, was to talk about the crew, which 
was something so special. And no other band, I don't think, ever has had a 
crew that got that much leeway or became that much a part of their scene in 
that sense, you know. And there were some people who I realized are gone 
now, and their stories needed a little telling.
Gans: I would go as far to say that it seemed like the crew was in charge a lot 
of the time -- 
Parish: (Laughing) Well, I had a saying on the road. It would come up 
sometimes, like "Who's in charge here?" You know, we were always getting 
asked that. And I used to say, "Well the situation's the boss." Sometimes, a 
crew guy would make the right decision and he'd have to call the shot. Another 
time, it would be a production guy or be somebody in the lights, even. 
Something to do with the band... we all had a say in what was happening there. 
And that was what was beautiful about the Grateful Dead: they took the crew 
and we sat in on meetings and we planned with them every step of our lives, 
and that really always made us feel good and part of something special.
Gans: Why don't you tell us about how you got into the Grateful Dead -- 
where you came from and how you got in.
Parish: Well, I was born in New York City and I was born in 1950, so I came 
of age right when the whole world was comin' apart at the seams. It was 1968 
when I was able to get off on my own and the first thing I wanted to do was go 
to San Francisco. And that's what I did as soon as I could. And then I went 
back to New York and I hatched a plan, a crazy plan. When I first came to San 
Francisco, I stayed with friends on Brady Alley. Brady Alley was right around 
the corner from the Carousel Ballroom, right across the street from PHR. So I 
got to observe roadies in their natural state. So I bumped up against the crew a 
little bit there at PHR and I -- 
Gans: Excuse me. That's Pacific High Recording, later known as Alembic 
Recording, later known as His Master's Wheels, where a lot a great records 
were made -- 
Parish: Right. And I just happened to end up right across the way in these 
apartments, you know we were crashing as hippies there, and so I got to 
glimpse that. And I so went back East and then I got into a lot of trouble. Oh 
God, I just did some stupid stuff, which is in the book, and I got detained there 
for a while. But I ended up in the theater scene back there and re-hooked up 
with the band when they came there, at the New York State Pavilion, and was 
working there at the time I was getting ready to go before this judge the very 
next day. And the first band there was the Grateful Dead and we had a great 
time. I looked up there and Keith Kevin, who was the stagehand who took me 
under his wing and taught me my stagecraft and took a rudimental, raw good 
and took me to the Fillmore East and let me hang there all the time -- and I 
began to learn about that stagecraft and then, that night the Grateful Dead 
played, and Jerry was so aglow and the band was so aglow, that it just took me 
off. And I became a Dead Head, I guess, at that moment. (Gans laughing) And 
then I knew, I said, "There's the band to work for."
It was only a short while after that that I was totally free and clear and I was 
invited out by Sonny Heard, who was on the crew, to come stay with him at 
Weir's ranch, at Rucka Rucka. This was a wild time, it was a free time, and it 
was a time when we were young men with hormones raging, and the crew 
began to shape up at Alembic. That's where I first started working, at Alembic 
on Judah and Ninth in San Francisco -- 
Gans: Tell us what Alembic was -- 
Parish: Alembic was a studio that Bear [Owsley] had started, to build a PA and 
experiment with sound. And the exact foundation, I can't talk about -- when I 
came in there, it was a place we all hung out, and like the name alembic, it was 
a magical place. And all day long, guys would hang out there, come through 
there from the Grateful Dead, and the guys from the Airplane would come in, 
and we would build them cabinets. We built them a studio there, and I learned 
many crafts. Bob Matthews ran the place, and Bear got in trouble and he had to 
go away for a little bit, and I first met Kidd Candelario, who was sleeping on 
the floor there in the studio, wrapped in the stage curtains. He and I were 
working down there, and every day the guys would come down there.
And then Jerry wanted to go off and play, stay in the city. He would come 
down and noodle around all day while we were working down there, and then 
he would want to go off into the city and play in clubs or sit in with people. I 
was the youngest guy hanging around -- I was nineteen, I had a car, an old 
Cadillac that I bought from Ram Rod for a hundred bucks.
I got stuck with takin' his [Fender] Twin [amplifier] -- as crazy as it sounds, 
nobody else wanted to do it. So that became the Garcia Band. He and I started 
hanging out, and the first gig was at the Matrix with Howard Wales. Jerry got 
there early in the afternoon, and we just started hanging out, and we realized 
we had mutual loves of old movies and all the crazy, odd stuff of life, you 
know -- and we both were really weird guys. I guess he -- Jerry always 
considered himself an oddball, and he always felt kindred spirits with other 
oddballs. Thank God for that, because the whole world is made up of oddballs, 
you know. [Gans laughing] And so that's why he's so beloved.
One thing I want to say about Jerry Garcia right now: kids loved him, and dogs 
loved him. I never saw a time when kids -- we had all the kids runnin' around 
onstage, they always loved to run up to him and gather 'round him, and stray 
dogs on the street or dogs at gigs [laughing] would sometimes come runnin' in, 
come up on the stage. They always zoned in on him and start licking his hand. 
And he'd always tickle them on the neck and this was the kind of guy he was, 
you know. And so he took stray dogs in like myself who was sleeping in a car 
and scuffling for a living down there at Alembic, and he respected that. And he 
started teaching me about his stuff and how to do club gigs and all that. Then 
the Grateful Dead bought the Alembic PA and we all went with it. There was a 
short period in there where Dan Healy and myself went off and worked with 
Qucksilver [Messenger Service]. They needed some help. And when we did 
that, Healy was a wonderful teacher. That guy knew amplifiers like nobody else 
I've ever seen. That guy could take Fender amplifiers and he could teach -- that 
was Dan's gift to us. Man, he taught. He took the 
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time to show me everything 
about amplifiers and would never hold back on you. He really gave me an 
understanding about what we were doing, although I had a lot of good teachers. 
It was a great, great teaching experience going on there. And if you were willing 
to work hard, and you could take (laughing) heroic doses of LSD and not end 
up on a puddle on the floor, and you were able to keep your wits about you 
somehow, you could hang. A lot of guys fell by the wayside, Dave, I'm sorry to 
tell you, man -- 
Gans: And you're still standing. Listen, we should take some phone calls from 
people.
Parish: I'd love that.
Gans: Anyone who went to Grateful Dead concerts for a long time will 
recognize this guy. You might even tell from his voice that he's the big, tall guy 
who handled Jerry's guitars and often barked at people from the stage and stuff. 
You'd recognize him if you're a veteran of Grateful Dead shows -- He's here to 
talk about his book titled "Home Before Daylight: My Life on the Road with the 
Grateful Dead." It's a very, very interesting read -- 
<Music Break>
Gans: Steve Parish is my guest tonight, and we're gonna take some calls from 
listeners, including this one here. Are you there?
Caller: Yeah right here. Just one quick question. I heard there was a location 
up on Woodside, on Skyline that the cats to hang out at. Just wondering if you 
spent any time up there?
Parish: That was way early on. I think you're referring to Kesey's place, 
maybe, at La Honda?
Caller: Yeah.
Parish: That was a little before my time, a little before my time. But that was a 
beautiful hangout, and through knowing Kesey and the Pranksters, I heard a lot 
stories about that hideaway. There are some great stories up there.
Caller: Right on. Hey, one more quick question, too -- Wasn't the band 
actually originally from San Jose, rather than San Francisco?
Parish: No. There were some Peninsula ties. Palo Alto was where they started 
hanging and meeting up with each other and that was actually where they first 
started.
Gans: Hello, you have a question for Steve?
Caller: Yeah, hey Steve, how ya' doin'? You know, I always loved that Tiger 
guitar -- 
Parish: Yeah -- 
Caller: Couple of questions -- Did you have a favorite guitar that he used, and 
a favorite amp, and a favorite guitar/amp combination?
Parish: Jerry always loved the Fender Twin Reverb, of course, and that sound 
was what he tried to put through as his front end on everything he played. Of 
course, the masterpiece of all his guitars was the Tiger, because he was at his 
peak when he designed it. We designed it with Doug [Irwin] hand in hand -- 
Doug hung with us all the time, and that piece of art was created to be created 
to be the exact guitar that Jerry wanted to play at that time. In between those 
times, he played a Travis Bean guitar that was really interesting and fun, 
between the Wolf and the Tiger there, which was in the mid-70's. That was one 
of my favorite guitars. And that's because Jerry and I discovered it together and 
all that, and we had a lot of fun with it. I didn't think he would play it, and he 
started playing it and loved it for a couple years -- 
Caller: Also, what was your opinion of them switching to the earpieces?
Parish: Well, I never myself -- I thought it was a strange move, but I 
understood why. We went 'round and 'round about that, because the guys 
wanted to have their vocals be as clear as possible. We always strove for the 
best monitors possible. They went and put them in their ears, and that worked 
real good. But it did take some of the spontaneity of playing live away. And we 
never did it exactly as you're supposed to -- that is, with the drums way 
removed and put under what we used to call a cake top, plexiglas, and the amps 
pulled way off the stage. You didn't need any -- you could have bared the stage 
completely, but it wasn't our style. So we did a mix of it, and still the guys do 
mix of it right now, and it works. They found a common ground, and they can 
hear their vocals better -- it's indispensable to them now. But it still comes up 
with some of the side bands and everything. Bob came up with a solution -- 
Weir, he would leave one [earpiece] hangin' out, you know.... I wasn't so sure 
about it when they first started, but it did change things.
Gans: Hello, you're on the air with Steve Parish.
Caller: When I was 15 over in Marin County, I remember listening to local gigs 
of the Grateful Dead and there was horn section with them. Do you remember 
anything about that?
Parish: I'm not trying to date your age or anything, but what year are you 
talking about?
Caller: I'm talking about between '74 and '76.
Parish: Okay. And the horn -- you're talking about -- 
Caller: Hadi el-Sadoon and Steve Schuster would -- 
Parish: Those guys would sit in occasionally. They were friends of ours, both 
of them, and local Marin County players. They did some recording with us too, 
around '74, Schuster did, and Hadi -- There were some other horn players 
around. There were always horn players around.
Caller: The Furay Brothers. John Furay and some other guys, they all went to 
high school with me -- 
Parish: They might have played or sat in with Jerry or something. I don't 
remember them too well, but there was a couple of interesting horn players that 
came in and out of our scene through Doug Sahm's band when we went on 
tour with him around that time. Joe [Ellis] was one of them. Martin Fierro, of 
course, would be a sax player that sat in with us. And then there was Ornette 
Coleman, who was an amazing sax player. And then there was, uh, let's see -- 
Gans: Branford Marsalis -- 
Parish: Branford -- I'm sorry Branford. He was the most amazing to ever play 
a horn on stage with those guys -- 
Gans: Clarence Clemons -- 
Parish: Clarence Clemons! My dear friend, I forgive myself for not 
remembering you! He always called me Uncle Steve, man. I love Clarence 
Clemons -- 
Gans: He sat in with the Jerry Band, too -- 
Parish: He played with Jerry's Band. He had a hard time sittin' in with the 
Grateful Dead. It wasn't easy for him, because it was a big thing and he'd just 
get out there with his horn and blow -- but with the Garcia Band, he found a 
home. He went on tour with us, and that was wonderful.
Gans: David Murray... 
You're on the air with Steve Parish.
Caller: Hi Steve, my name is Lee. We met in 1972, at San Anselmo, at the 
Lion's Share gigs with the New Riders and the Dead --
Parish: Oh wow!
Caller: Those concerts aren't mentioned anyway in any -- 
Parish: No, because the Lion's Share sort of fell off the map. A lot people don't 
know about it. It was our little local hangout in Marin, there. We had some 
great gigs -- 
Caller: You remember me? I was at the back door when you were first loading 
off the equipment, I helped you set up the equipment and stuff.
Parish: Let's see, were you the guy -- was that the night we had that nitrous 
tank back there? (Laughter) What color truck did we have? -- 
Caller: Either you or Ram Rod had a girlfriend who lived across the street, too.
Parish: That wasn't me -- but we were real close to that place -- 
Caller: And the second night, there were Hell's Angels and the New Riders and 
me -- 
Parish: Well, see how much fun you had, and now you can look back it as a 
fun place. That place was a lot of fun, it was wild and wooly -- 
Caller: It was high.
Parish: It's where the Harley-Davidson shop is now on the Miracle Mile -- 
Caller: I remember, the second night, Bill Graham pulled up in his XK-E with 
some blonde and we were sitting on the bench outside the place, and you said 
"What'd you do Bill, come to check out the competition?" (Laughter)
Parish: Yeah, he was always interested in that, you know. Jerry loved playing 
there because it was a nice little low-key place and it was not too hard to do a 
show there. We always had some wild rollicking times at that place. Thanks for 
reminding about that place -- 
Caller: It's a wonder more people didn't come to those things..
Parish: 
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There wasn't anybody really recording them. I think there's one or two 
recordings. One night the Beans opened up for the Garcia Band. Now, the 
Beans were the first incarnation of the Tubes -- 
Caller: Vince [Welnick], huh?..
Parish: Yeah, Vince was there. That was a crazy night.
Gans: That was right after they moved out here from [Arizona] -- 
Caller: A lot of good music came out of the that place.
Parish: Yes, it did.
Gans: Hello, you're on the air with Steve Parish.
Caller: Hey guys, its Blair Jackson.
Parish: Hey Blair.
Jackson: Good, I've got a couple of questions for you tonight.
Parish: All right!
Jackson: First is a point of information. 
Parish: Okay.
Jackson: Who was Jimmy Warren, the piano player -- 
Parish: Ha! Good one -- 
Jackson: -- for the Garcia Band in the early 80's, and how did he get that gig?
Parish: Well, you know something, Blair, you're talking now about the 
"shadow people" that walk in and out of the scene of the Grateful Dead -- 
Jackson: It always seemed like a guy of limited talents, and you always wonder 
how a guy like that gets in a band like that...
Parish: Well, that's an interesting question.... all the years I was with Jerry 
from when we started the Garcia Band until the end of it -- Jimmy was a 
mystery to all of us. Jerry and him had a nefarious relationship, and one day we 
were at the rehearsal hall and Jimmy came down with a Rhodes and Jerry said, 
"Set him up. Set his Rhodes up." And I said "Where?" 'Cause we had a pretty 
tight little setup, you know. He said, "He's gonna come play with us tonight." I 
think we were playing at the Keystone in the city and it was -- he had Jimmy 
play way in the back -- I'm trying to remember now -- do you know what year 
that was exactly, Blair?
Jackson: I think Melvin was in the band.
Parish: Melvin, Okay, it was behind Melvin's organ -- I was trying to 
remember who was playing organ at the time -- but he was set way back there. 
That's right, it was Melvin, I'm positive, and he was set in the dark, in the 
shadows and I thought at first he was just trying to learn the music, but it was 
the only time I ever saw Jerry put anybody in the band -- and understand this, 
Blair -- through the years, people ended up in that band that shouldn't have 
been there at times -- (Laughter) -- people that just came in and sat in and 
wouldn't leave (laughter). There were people brought in -- at one time, Tom 
Fogerty played in that band, and we had a great time with him. Merl [Saunders] 
would bring other people in, but Jimmy was something that Jerry and John 
[Kahn] -- they wanted him to play there, and it was for other reasons besides 
the music. It's the only time that ever happened. He didn't last very long, either. 
To his credit, he tried to fit in and he was a wonderful guy, Jimmy -- he was 
really a good-hearted guy -- but had he other problems that were 
overshadowing him being able to go and be a full-on musician. And he did 
travel with us on the road, too. 
Gans: You're a diplomat, Steve. 
Parish: He was a "shadow person," definitely a "shadow person."
Jackson: My other question is about John Kahn, who gets a hard time from 
various people because they think he was a bad influence on Jerry.
Parish: Sure.
Jackson: I wonder what your observations are about his relationship with 
Jerry, particularly in the later days. 
Parish: Well, you know, Blair, if you only focus on the later days, you see a 
man who used to be a full-bodied individual, a wonderful player and a guy who 
was in our comedy so deep -- that very comedy that we talked about that kept 
us going. John and the Garcia Band, we just rollicked and laughed and rolled on 
the floor to an intellectual brand of humor that only John could have mixed in 
there with us. It was fabulous. He was a very smart guy and a wonderful guy, 
but he went to a place in drugs where it could look easy to blame him for 
things. But one must stop themselves at that point because this was mutual 
directionality of musicians. Musicians get that influence where they think a drug 
is going to put this on them or that and then they go too far sometimes. And I 
believe that is what happened, and he disintegrated. Now, if you want to 
concentrate on that last part of the relationship between them, it wasn't as 
vibrant, as original, as musical any more. It started to get a little harder for Jerry 
and John to create. There was a friendship there that was deep, but it got 
twisted. It got really twisted. And when you add those powders in, my friend, 
life becomes a twisting, twisting thing -- 
Jackson: Can I ask you one more question?
Parish: It's okay with me. 
Jackson: Towards the end, one of the things John told me in an interview 
shortly before his death was that it seemed the Grateful Dead had turned 
against the Garcia Band. How did you deal with your conflicting loyalties -- 
Parish: Oh, man. From day one, that was always coming up. Because if you 
straddled those two worlds like Jerry and I did -- Jerry and I were the ones that 
straddled the Grateful Dead and the Garcia Band, and I thank God, because I 
got to hear that man play so much music because of that. I loved both bands 
with all my heart; they both kept me alive at various times in my life, and the 
Garcia Band was an amazing resource in my life. But, I constantly had to 
balance things with the Grateful Dead. We shared equipment, we shared a lot 
of stuff, and there was a beautiful symbiosis, and there was never a biting thing. 
But there was an underlying current in both bands against each other. In other 
words, if we were doing too much Garcia stuff, the guys in the Grateful Dead 
would say, "No, you can' do this, we gotta do this." The schedules would get 
too conflicting, and if there was too much Grateful Dead stuff, there was 
nothing but complaints from the guys in the Garcia Band. And so that began to 
grow and grow.
Now, John was with us a long time. That was a long span of almost 25 years, a 
little longer, where he was solidly playing, right? So, he had built up a big 
resentment of that thing and the last couple of years when I was managing the 
Garcia Band. I saw Jerry's health becoming more fragile, and I tried to keep it 
so [he] at least did local gigs and maybe not tax him so much with so much 
road stuff, but we had to keep those musicians alive because they were relying 
on the Garcia Band, too. So John became very sore and sensitive about not 
being able to work as often as he thought we should. When you were with Jerry 
-- Jerry told him, "Hey I want to work, I want to play every night!" you know, 
and then it just wasn't' possible sometimes. So that's what some of that stuff is 
you're talking about; it happens to all people who are in two bands. You get 
jealousies, because it's really difficult to balance, and Jerry had three or four 
other bands going, too, so sometimes it would really get complicated.
Jackson: Okay, thanks a lot, Steve.
Parish: Thank you, Blair.
Jackson: I dug your book. I thought it was great.
Parish: Thank you very much.
Gans: Thanks, Blair. Let's take a few more calls. You're on the air with Steve 
Parish -- 
Caller: Hi, this is Barry Mitchell. I believe I met you in '71 at the Felt Forum. 
December 7 was the night I met Jerry and fell in love with him.
Gans: Do you have a question, Barry?
Caller: Yeah, when I first met Jerry he was wearing black jeans and a black t-
shirt and a pair of Birkenstocks, and when he died he was still wearing the same 
outfit.
Parish: That was what year? First of all, Jerry owned a pair of Birkenstocks 
[but] he never wore a pair of Birkenstocks. He loved them and supported them 
greatly. He tried 'em on, but he never wore them. It was not his style of 
footwear. When you met him, he definitely wasn't wearing them.
Caller: Well, he was wearing some kind of sandals.
Parish: Ah, that's possible, but anyway, he -- the black t-shirt? He started 
wearing those for practical reasons. Really. He would get kinda dirty on the 
road, like we all would, and black t-shirts wouldn'
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t show it as much. We used 
to all wear tie-dyes in the 70's, all of us, even Jerry.
Gans: Hello, you're on the air with Steve Parish.
Caller: First, I want to thank you. One time at the Fillmore you were there with 
some of Jerry's guitars, sharing that experience -- 
Parish: Oh yeah, yeah, that was interesting.
Caller: I never appreciated how special those guitars were, as pieces of art, so I 
really appreciate that. Just to continue on that whole thing of comparing the 
Garcia Band and the Grateful Dead and their relationship to each other: how 
would you describe the different kind of fun that Jerry had with one band and 
the other?
Gans: Great question.
Parish: Well. I'll tell you about that. You know, the Garcia Band started with 
Jerry going in real light into a club with an amp and his guitar. And we kept that 
light. We didn't want to have all the machinations that the Grateful Dead would 
have, and that was part of the reason. Because Jerry, when he started doing 
that, he told me many times, "I like just goin' down and playing, without all that 
extra fuss of buildup to it, all the work, all the people." And so we tried to 
model that on the Garcia Band, but as the years grew on, it's own moss grew 
on it, too, you know. And it got bigger and more important. When you get 
serious about things, that's when that stuff starts happening. But Jerry's love for 
playing kept the Garcia Band totally a reflection of the music he loved and the 
people he liked around him, and that was a fun thing. That way, it was his 
baby, and so when you had his footprint on anything, it was a fun time. H was 
the kind of guy who always had that feeling of "Okay, we're cutting school 
today and we're gonna do some drugs and we're gonna have a good time and 
we're gonna do a show tonight, and then we're gonna get down the road." And 
that was always very beautiful thing. In the Grateful Dead, we had so much fun 
too, but you have to remember that was a bigger scene and it was the same 
thing; it was his footprint on that, too. And you know it was a beautiful, fun 
experience for everybody involved to work with him.
Caller: So it was just a different kind of party.
Parish: He loved everybody who worked around the shows. He paid attention, 
you know. He would come there so early in the afternoon -- in the Garcia 
Band, he'd be there at twelve noon with me. If I could get into the place, he'd 
be there and as soon as I set his stuff up -- I'd always set his stuff up first, 
whether it was the Grateful Dead or the Garcia Band -- and he would start 
playing while we did everything else. He knew what it took to put a show on. 
He watched, with his own eyes. He saw us take it from the truck. Sometimes 
he'd ride over in the truck with us. He knew all that stuff. And that's why he 
had a great love for the whole biz, all the people involved in it, and the fans, 
you know.
Caller: Can I try a little theory out on you?
Parish: You can.
Caller: It seems to me that Jerry's humility was part of the appeal of why 
people appreciated him so much -- 
Parish: Definitely!
Caller: But in a way that seems to be kinda what brought him down, because 
he couldn't really acknowledge how much people really appreciated him and 
how big a guy he really was.
Parish: Yes, he would. But he was humble, like you say, and he used to say 
stuff like, "There's a million guys who can play the guitar this good, I know 
that." And yeah, he could pick up any stringed instrument and be a master of it. 
I watched him go into a studio and someone like Ornette Coleman could play a 
complicated song for him one time, and he'd pick up a guitar and play things 
that were just beautiful, fit in there. So he didn't really -- a prophet is without 
honor in his own home, as they'd say in the old days, and sometimes he didn't 
get all the respect he should have. And even me, sometimes I'd say to myself, 
"Can I do more for him?" Because you'd feel like that. But he'd never want you 
to. He was always very careful about not having people going out of their way 
for him.
Gans (to Parish): You're a natural, man. This is good, this is fun. Are you 
enjoying this?
Parish: Loving it.
<Break>
Caller: I've got a question about Jerry's guitars. Once he had them set up, how 
much was he actually controlling from the stage? Was it a like a pedal system, 
or was it mostly like buttons he was pushing on the guitar? Because it seemed 
like he accessed so many sounds, I don't know how he could keep control of all 
that while he was playing. Or was that someone else?
Parish: Well you know, Jerry, like all performers was real good at sleight of 
hand at times. He had a really elaborate pedal system. He had invented this 
system back in the early '70s. He came up with this idea because there was 
only one pedal in the late '60s, early '70s. That was a wah-wah pedal, you 
know.
Caller: That was all he was using?
Parish: No, no, hear me out here a second. He used to play that, but Jerry 
would just hate it because batteries weren't that great, your signal would go 
down, and you'd have weirdness and scratchiness as soon as you would go into 
that wah-wah pedal. And so he came up with this idea when he got some other 
pedals -- a wah-wah, a distortion pedal -- to send his signal through his amp and 
always control it from his guitar. In other words, the signals from the pedals 
came back into his guitar and them went to his amp. He designed this system 
and with Healy and other people's help, we came up with this system that was 
the Jerry Garcia System. Other people have tried to duplicate it and have never 
done it right. It worked for him, because he had that old-fashioned thing about 
wanting to keep his signal up. Now you can do it other ways. But anyway, he 
had a lot of great pedals out there, but he would do a lot of the effects right 
with his hands on the guitar. String bending and doing other things that you 
wouldn't notice unless you were watching him real close. He was a master.
Caller: How many effects did he have access to at one time?
Parish: Well, he had it set up so he could string as many as three or four, five 
even at one time. But he would use about two, maybe rarely three. But usually 
two in line
Gans: Thanks for calling. You know, that was one of those things -- you'd 
want to not use too many of those effects. You'd have them in case you 
wanted to change your sound, to have a certain kind of voice.
Parish: You can get carried away with those "zoo-zoos" and "wham-whams" 
sometime as he called them. (Laughter)
Gans: All right. Let's take a couple more calls. You're on the air with Steve 
Parish.
Caller: Thanks for everything, man. Got a question for you. In '86 when Jerry 
was in the coma for awhile, it seems like there was a change in his guitar style. 
Sort of a continuity runs from the beginning pretty much through '84 and then it 
starts to -- like the health problems start to interfere with it. Then after '86, he 
starts off and it's different. I don't mean it's better or it's worse, it's just 
different. I've been thinking about that difference, and I was wondering what 
you had to say about it.
Parish: Well, I've thought about that a lot, too. Because at that time he got 
knocked out pretty hard and when he came back, he was almost babe-like in 
the sense that he had to relearn how to play the guitar. And it was really scary 
to him, and it was a strange time. Through the help of good friends -- Merl 
Saunders would come over and get him started -- and we'd all sit around there 
with him. I'd bring his guitar over to his house and at first he would just hold it 
and play it. You know, he started off real baby-stepping, and then he came 
back and he rebuilt it, he relearned it. And I think it all came back to him, it all 
came rushing back. But it took awhile, so if you heard him when he was first 
coming back -- Let me tell you something else. That was one time, when we 
first came back, he was a clean gentleman. He was totally clear, Okay? So 
when he played that show, h
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e was getting back to some of those early roots of 
guitar. The man loved guitar. You know, you had to love guitar like he did to 
understand how deep his relationship went with that instrument. 
Caller: It seems maybe like it's more bluegrassy after '86, like it's more plucked 
-- 
Parish: Well he never liked -- in the early days, he didn't like to mix acoustic 
and electric. He had to be coaxed real heavily to do acoustic sets because he felt 
the chops were very different. I mean the guy played the pedal steel so great 
and he put that away because he thought he wasn't good enough at it, you 
know? He played the banjo like a master. He was a California State Banjo 
Champion in, I think, 1964, and he invented, up into the last year of his life, he 
invented a trick of filing a fret to slip a string under there on the five-string 
banjo -- I mean he knew so much about stringed instruments is what I'm telling 
you, and he did get distanced by his illness and coming back, from the guitar a 
little bit. But he worked his way back, he crawled his way back, he clawed his 
way back onto that thing, and it was a beautiful thing to watch. What you 
noticed, I think, he overcame in a few more shows after that.
Caller: It wasn't just a matter of overcoming stuff, it was --
Parish: It was a different style. Well, he went more into bluegrass roots 
because he remembered that, and he and he had some influences around him 
coming to play with him that reminded him of that -- his old friends.
Caller: MIDI was amazing when that came along. Suddenly you could hear 
Jerry play mariachi trumpet.
Parish: Exactly. Well that was a different thing. He got to do all those 
orchestrations like that, but bluegrass to him was a pure thing, it was very 
different.
Gans: Can I ask you a tough question, Steve?
Parish: Sure.
Gans: When he came back from that coma, you said he was "clean." That 
word has many meanings. How long did that last?
Parish: Well, you know, to put an exact date on it -- it lasted for a while, it 
lasted for a while and he was fighting those demons off, but slowly the life of 
the road or whatever, old habits come back. It's back into that world when 
you're there and where you're cushioned by a scene like the Grateful Dead and 
other scenes. Things slip back in without you noticing sometimes, and the 
"shadow people" are there all of the sudden. And then you're on the horns of a 
dilemma -- which I talk about in the book, was something that really bothered 
me a lot. 
Gans: Can we talk just a little bit about the Broadway run in '87? 
Parish: Sure
Gans: I was on the West Coast and didn't get to go to any of those shows, but 
I heard some of them on tape and that wonderful record -- 
Parish: That was a lot of fun.
Gans: You were sort of a hero of the newsletters.
Parish: Let me tell you about those shows, Dave, because we loved Bill 
Graham, Jerry and I did. We loved Bill Graham, and we'd come to that point in 
time where John Scher was our East Coast promoter and Bill Graham was the 
West Coast, basically. And we worked just about everybody in between and 
co-promoted with every promoter in America. But, I wanted Bill to do 
something special with us. He was on me all the time -- me and him would hang 
out after shows in the Bay Area and have a smoke and a drink and talk, and I 
said, "Bill, I can't take you to the East Coast unless you come up with 
something new." And we came up with this idea of Broadway, which was a 
place we'd never been. I said, that way I can take you into a market... where I 
felt we wouldn't be offending John Scher. But, John got mad, of course, and 
then -- to his credit, we're friends now -- he forgave me and I was able to work 
with both of them. But that was a special run on Broadway.
First of all, it was it was different from anything else. The rules and regulations 
of Broadway were in place and we had fun. Bill was in his element in New 
York -- he'd make us egg creams every night -- he'd come back stage and hang 
out, we had a rollicking time. There were a lot of celebrities come through, we 
had a Halloween bash were we had a great make-up team come in and do 
people, and it was a really remarkable time. Plus, Jerry told me one thing after 
that. "Never again," he says. "Never again something where we've got to do 
matinees on Wednesdays and Sundays." That really took it out of him to play 
those; it upset the "sched."
Gans: But -- 
Parish: But it was still memorable -- The Lunt-Fontanne Theater and the 
beautiful Dead Heads there, and we took Broadway by storm.
Gans: You certainly did. Let's take another call, shall we? 
Caller: Yes, Steve, it's great having you on tonight. You're like a national 
treasure -- 
Parish: Thank you
Caller: Got a couple questions. What is your greatest, most personal moment, 
most vivid recollection of Jerry Garcia -- one time that just stands out?
Parish: Wow. You gotta understand there's so many moments. But there was a 
time when he -- we went to Hawaii in 1990 on a half-vacation, half play-time 
with the Garcia Band. I booked some shows on Oahu, and we played in Hilo, 
and we went there and we dove and we hung out and enjoyed life and I had my 
birthday there. And that night, Jerry got to laugh his ass off, I'd never saw -- 
rolling on the floor. He was always a jovial character, but he came back that 
night and laughed and laughed and laughed because they got me drunk at this 
place we were at and got me to put a goddamn grass skirt on and coconut tits 
and [laughter] Jerry thought that was the funniest thing he'd ever seen in his life 
because we always used to talk about "How do they get guys to do that?" Well, 
there is a way that you can, if you get drunk enough. But, that's another story 
[laughter]. We had a really crazy time and he just laughed his butt off that 
night, and it was good to see that. He was always a laugher; he loved a good 
laugh.
Caller: Oh, sure. One other question, what was your greatest Grateful Dead 
and/or Jerry Garcia Band experience?
Parish: I'd have to pull that out of the European tour of 1972 because on that 
tour, we were screwed up out of our minds on these beautiful psychedelics, 
man. We would go all over the continent as free Americans seeing this world 
we had heard about and learned about, and we got to be there and play in great 
places, you know. And those are the greatest -- that was some great music, too. 
Gans: Can you tell us a specific story from that tour?
Parish: Oh sure, lots of 'em. Well, there was the time -- you see, on that tour, 
what we usually thought was our medication level was stronger than it usually 
was from what we took at home. In other words, we were getting' out of our 
mind laughing. So we all, on a day off, ended up in Heidelberg, okay? And.... 
there was this old castle, and in this old castle was this souvenir shop with these 
rubber skulls. When you pressed down on them, they just started laughing 
hysterically. So we took those on the bus, and all of us were out of our minds 
on psychedelics, and we walked around town with these skulls leading us 
around laughing hysterically, and nobody could figure it out. But what 
happened was we saw these faces on the side of the castle that were totally 
what we called 'Dilbert" faces. They were obviously too closely related through 
marriage or something [laughter]. There was something in the history of this 
place that was really funny, and we laughed our asses off but we couldn't figure 
out why, and we didn't stop laughing for two days. It doesn't make any sense, 
now does it? But we also went to the greatest cathedrals and stood in those 
places and whispered and heard our voices carried around. Phil Lesh was a 
great master of architecture of these European cathedrals, and he'd explain 
things to you. And trips -- on the top of Notre Dame, hanging on to a gargoyle. 
In those days -- I don't know if you can still do it -- you went right to the top of 
the place, and Ram Rod found Quasimodo's straw right there on the floor of 
the loft room -
2000
- oh, there's just so many stories.
Gans: Okay, Dilbert. You said the name Dilbert. That's a great name in 
Grateful Dead lore. 
Parish: St. Dilbert -- 
Gans: Who was St. Dilbert?
Parish: St. Dilbert -- 
Gans: Tell the truth, Steve.
Parish: St. Dilbert was something that appeared -- if you believe in things, if 
you have somebody with all this psychic energy that the Grateful Dead, and 
these two buses goin' around Europe, taking these amazing mind-altering 
experiences and something manifested itself on the bus. And that was the vision 
of St. Dilbert. And St. Dilbert was the patron saint of comedy. He came out of 
the comedy of the road and the comedy of us going by and a running joke of all 
Europe, you know. In other words, in the hotels in Europe, they have a thing 
that they do in the evening. That is, everybody puts their business shoes out or 
their beautiful ladies' pumps, and they put them out in the hallway and the night 
porter will polish them all and put them back in front of your room. 
Gans: Ohhhh, what an opportunity.
Parish: And Sonny Heard, who was one of our crew guys -- as I was going to 
bed about three in the morning, I saw Heard, and he put his finger up to his lips 
and he was walking up the back stairway with handfuls of shoes, his arms 
bulging with them [laughter]. He methodically went up and down the stairs and 
mixed everybody's shoes up. And that next day, when we left that place, the 
hotel was in chaos. It was in Hamburg, and they were screamin' and yellin' and 
people were at the desk holding up ladies' beautiful, delicate shoes -- a big 
businessman. And ladies with men's Oxfords, and it was chaos. And they were 
mad as us! [Laughter]
Gans: Hello, you're on the air with Steve Parish.
Caller: A couple things -- I had the privilege of seeing the Grateful Dead, I 
don't even remember what year, and on the way up to San Francisco tonight I 
was listening to the radio and thinking there's so little creative flow and 
improvisation type stuff, and I've got to say, seeing the Grateful Dead play was 
probably one of the most incredibly ethereal and emotionally enriching 
experiences in my whole life. I got the see the Jerry Garcia Band also, and that 
gentleness was really present, and I salute your book. I think it's something that 
I think a lot of people are going to totally appreciate, and I guess my question is 
what was he like as a human being?
Parish: He was so warm that to be in his presence, a lot of times you felt a 
physical glow, literally. I saw it a lot when he played in the early days, and then 
hanging out with him some days, it would just come out of him. It took him a 
long time to knock that shine back a ways, and that was another Jerry that was 
there, too, that wasn't in that light, also. He was just a man with his feet on the 
earth, and he loved people, he loved life, he loved music. He had such an 
eclectic music mind. As a matter of fact, when Jerry and I first got talking there 
at the Matrix the first night I worked with him, and we started the Garcia Band 
from there, he mentioned that his mother's favorite song was "Stardust." My 
uncle, Mitchell Parish, wrote the words to that song, and that blew us away, 
man. And from that moment on, we began a musical history lesson that lasted 
30 years. That guy knew so much about that stuff. He was a genius, too. And 
to be in his presence -- he would always help other people, but he never wanted 
anybody to be burdened by his problems, and that was a beautiful characteristic 
of his that not many people have, you know.
Caller: Yeah, and you know, it's like I -- you know how you grow up and 
friends that like so and so, they like certain bands and acts and so forth -- I 
happen to like Neil Young a lot, and this friend of mine said, "You haven't 
heard anybody until you've heard the Dead." And I listened to records and stuff 
-- they were okay, but they didn't rock my boat. And the night that I saw the 
Dead, actually one of the nights they played with the Who, I believe it was, and 
I took a friend of mine -- we both write music -- and my friend and I were both 
blown away, and the Dead were way better than the Who. And it's not really a 
comparative thing because it is something that's internal that some people just 
appreciate certain things, but like I said, music and radio and all the stuff today 
has gotten so corporate and so excessive and stuff and I think it's really nice -- 
Parish: That was a beautiful era -- 
Caller: I'm glad Tom Petty came out with that song "The Last DJ," because I 
think a lot of people are fed up with a lot of things, but I can tell by the way 
you're talking and everything that you must have had a really good time. And 
it's something that I want to say, personally, thank you, because it helped to 
make my night better just to know that there's still people out there like you, 
man.
Parish: Thank you, and I want to tell you something. We did it for the people 
in the audience. That kept us going, my friend, at the toughest times in our 
lives, with death at our doorstep, with hurt in our hands and pain in our hearts, 
going down the road with feet blistered. We cared about that music and we put 
our whole heart and soul into making it as good as we could and every night, 
everyone of us got paid, not only by the band in cash, but by the music, man. 
We loved it too, and when you say ethereal, sometimes it literally lifted me off 
the ground. And I know it did that for a lot of people, man. And for some band 
to do that to you is a big thing in our lives.
Caller: It's interesting what you just said, because when we were music majors 
and we used to go see Graham's shows, he'd come out on stage and everybody 
thought he was kinda uptight and stuff. And then years later when I was living 
in southern California, years before he died, the L.A. Times did an interview 
with him. And at the end of the interview, they said, 'What's your definition of 
success, Mr. Graham?" and he said this, and I'll never forget this to the day I 
die. He said, "My definition of success is -- if the man down the street from 
you is dying from AIDS and you don't care -- you're not a success." And you 
know, music is something, that right now -- I'm writing a song about how music 
affects all of our lives and it's so true, but when the music stops, what's past 
that? And that's something I always felt from Jerry Garcia that there was 
something unspoken but felt very loving, and I feel that from you too. So, 
again, I just want to say thank you. I think there's going to be a lot of people 
who appreciate that man because when it's from the heart, it does have an 
effect.
Parish: Well, God bless you.
Gans: I want to ask you a question about Jerry and Bob Dylan. The tour 
wasn't such a glorious thing that the rehearsals promised, but it changed Bob 
Dylan's life and he acknowledged that later. I have this theory that Jerry and 
Bob Dylan connected not just because they were great musicians and great 
scholars of music, but also because each of them was the focus of such a huge 
amount of energy and attention and almost like psychotic stuff from people, 
having their trash analyzed and stuff. I thought Jerry Garcia must have been 
one of the few people who understood what Bob Dylan has to deal with, and 
vice-versa.
Parish: You know, you're right about that, Dave. Because Dylan walked into 
our studio and there we were, boy. And in those days, you know we had ten 
motorcycles out there, all of our bikes, and we'd had our own clubhouse there 
at Front Street for about twenty years by that time. He came walkin' in with no 
entourage, just him, without a shirt, with just a leather vest on, and walked into 
our world. And we welcomed him with open arms and he was an amazing guy. 
He felt right at home there and knew it. And Jerry, that night -- the first night or 
second night that they were playing together, they were going through all of 
Dylan's old tunes and Dylan was so amazed that these guys knew some of his 
old stuff, 'ca
2000
use he'd forgotten some of the words and all. So Jerry said -- 
started playing "It's All Right, Ma, I'm Only Dying" -- you know that song -- 
and Dylan started singing it and Jerry said "Hey Bob. How do you go home 
after writing a song like that and look you mom in the eye?" and Bob looked at 
him and said, "It wasn't easy." And I realized that those two guys did have 
something like that, because I would never have asked him that but Jerry asked 
him that and Bob, a man of few words, said it wasn't easy. And they knew 
that, they had that common thread, and just to be around the two of them 
together... they didn't have to say much, you know, they that mutual thing 
going, that Dylan and Jerry thing. Yeah, that was beautiful. There's a lot of 
stuff about Bob that he said changed him that time. He came there and you 
could see that he had things to work out, and he did, and he went on to play 
and play and play, and he realized that was what he loved.
Gans: And he's still doing it.
Parish: He's still doing it. He's a really perceptive guy and a great guy to work 
with.
Gans: Did you hang out with Dylan much?
Parish: Well, I got to do his guitars and he hung out with us, and I got the 
privilege of helping him with his thing, and it was beautiful.
Gans: Did you let him into the tent in the back there -- the private space on 
stage?
Parish: Hell, yes! He fit right in perfect, man. He liked all the things we liked. 
And he wasn't afraid to ask if it wasn't there. Some very strange things would 
come up but he could handle it all.
Gans: C'mon, give us an example..
Parish: Well you know, it's not -- all the simple things that you take for granted 
when you're sittin' in your living room, you don't have on the road, and so 
when he was with us, he'd want to know "how do I do this," "how do I do 
that," and I could tell him. And I could get very specific with you, but some of 
it would be -- uh, I'd like to have him sitting here in the room talking with me 
(laughing) about it. Because it gets personal. But he was very game lad, a very 
game lad. And very perceptive, like I say.
Gans: Let's go to the phones again. Hello, you're on the air with Steve Parish.
Caller: I'd like to know if there's any way of getting your book either on CD-
ROM or audio tape, or is it only going to be available in print?
Parish: Well, that's a good question. I don't know anything about that, but I 
would like to do that and get it out there on audio. I think --
Caller: If I send you tapes, will you read it..
Gans: Yeah, read a whole book on tape, Steve!!
Parish: Well, [laughing] ... if it comes to that, I will.
Gans: Hello, you're on the air with Steve Parish.
Caller: Hey I've got a question. Just wanted to know what Steve thinks about 
some of the current changes in the Dead organization, like a lot of the layoffs 
that have come about and the new Dead that's touring now, what's his take, 
whether he's still involved?
Parish: Well, I still work for the Grateful Dead and we have a studio in 
Novato, California that is in the process right now of downsizing. The band has 
done some changes in personnel, done some changes in the layout of how we 
had all of our offices and merchandise put together, and this is something that's 
ongoing and it's all related to the new things that are happening also. But you 
gotta remember that these guys now are different. They make their decisions in 
a different way then they did before. 
Caller: In what sense?
Parish: Well, in the past we all sat in on the highest level meetings. I'm talking 
about the crew and the band and management; we all sat in on those together. 
These days, we don't do it like that. The band sits as the ruling party and they 
make these decisions. So for me to try to explain to you how deep and 
convoluted those decisions are, I couldn't do justice to it, to them. I still work 
for them, for one thing, and those guys have been so good to me that if you 
look at anything changing, it hurts some people, you know. They've let go of 
some old employees, and there's hurt, you know. But they're doing things to 
streamline for the future, and let's see what that brings. 
Caller: How about the band. I just saw them at Shoreline -- 
Parish: What do you think? Tell me what you think.
Caller: Incredible, great show.
Parish: Good. When they rehearse at the studio I get to listen to them, and 
enjoy it very much. I'm not right now going on the road because this year, we 
have 30 years of stuff we've saved and I've been going through it all, sorting it 
out, and spending all my time up there trying to patch up our past. Because we 
no longer have the space to store it all, so we're coming up with some different 
ideas on what to do with these old treasures of ours. I've been pretty much 
working on that for a long while. So I didn't go on this last road tour. But the 
music has evolved to a different place, that a definite fact. For me, being so 
involved with Jerry on every level, sometimes when I'm at the shows, I miss 
him too much, you know. And if I let that take over my consciousness and 
mind, I'm not helpful to what they're doing right now, so I try not to get too far 
in that direction. You know what I mean?
Caller: It's interesting for someone like me. I got to see the Grateful Dead twice 
with Jerry Garcia. You know, I'm a young guy and I've seen them so many 
times without him..
Parish: Right, and that works and that's good. The music works and that's 
what it's about. But my involvement with Jerry was so intricate that I just have 
to find a separation point there, I have a difficult time sometimes. But I do love 
what they're doing and I support them totally.
Gans: Hello, you're on the air with Steve Parish
Caller: First of all, I want to thank you for all the great shows I got to see from 
'86 to '93. Aside from the obvious great venues like Winterland and the 
Fillmores, wondering since you got to see so many places so intimately from a 
great perspective, what were -- maybe the greatest, fine venues?
Parish: You know, we did to get to play in some special places. We always had 
a thing -- I've loved history since I'm a kid, so when we got to travel around the 
country and go and play in some of these great old theaters, the Stanley 
Theaters all over. When the Grateful Dead was doing theaters right? We would 
go in there, and those days there were old stagehands, guys who had been there 
since World War II, and they were older guys. And if you sat down with them -
- they didn't like us because we were young upstarts, rock 'n' roll, we weren't 
legitimate, we were something new, we were smoking pot, we were partying -- 
but I'd sit down with those guys in the afternoon, and what a wealth of 
knowledge they had about these theaters.
I mean, these were old vaudeville houses. The Fillmore East was an old Yiddish 
theater and a vaudeville house, and every theater had a great history to it. With 
the Garcia Band, I got to play in Constitution Hall with Jerry many times, and 
hang out and smoke weed in a place that I knew at one time was a big deal 
when Eleanor Roosevelt let Mahalia Jackson sing there because they wouldn't 
even allow a person of color in there! I mean this kind of places, we broke 
barriers of strange things, and then we knew little nooks and crannies that 
would make these theaters home to us, and they would be special things. Some 
of them sounded good, others had weird problems, like the Fox Theater in St. 
Louis. We had a buzz problem, we couldn't explain it. We'd go to all lengths to 
cure that problem because we were going to play there for there for three or 
four days. We even ended up putting copper sheeting under that stage to try to 
insulate it. We played Radio City, you know, great places. And some of the 
stadiums, the great stadiums of America. We had to try to make them feel like 
home, and that was a tough job, to walk into those huge places like Soldier 
Stadium and Giants Stadium and to feel at home at 'em. That was another trick. 
And so you grabbed it, you 
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grabbed that place and you learned about it, and the 
physical place became something you knew when you went back a few times. 
Like we got to do. And you got to master it, and so each place became a venue 
that we knew like a person, you know? And they revealed themselves to you. 
Amazing.
Caller: Wow, that's unique, and I'm glad somebody got to experience that.
Parish: Thank you.
Gans: You're on the air with Steve Parish.
Caller: Hey Steve, there's a famous old story in the early days where Bob Weir 
and Pigpen were almost fired but they didn't quite leave [laughter]. I wonder if 
there was ever a time when you got fired? 
Parish: Hell yeah! Of course I got fired, man! Here's what they did to me one 
time. This is when we just had started. We built the Alembic PA and I'd been 
working for the band for a few years, and needless to say when we were out 
there on the road as this crew of guys, we were all big guys and would be sleep 
deprived and get in beefs and arguments, you know. And one of the guys I was 
working with, he decided he would replace me with a guy who could fix any 
amplifier that broke. He worked at Alembic, this guy, and he was an interesting 
guy. I'm not gonna say his name right now, 'cause he's probably still alive 
somewhere and he was a good guy -- a technical guy, a very technical guy. And 
every day at lunch, he'd eat an olive loaf sandwich, so I knew right away this 
guy was not a bon vivant or a happening character [laughter] of the road scene. 
Anyway, they insisted, "Steve, we're going to take this guy out as a road 
assistant guy" and I knew what it meant. They were going to compare and see 
if he would make it. So the band would start playing, we go on road and we're 
way out there in Boston as a matter of fact, at the Boston Music Hall. The 
band starts playing and I just watched him onstage. He began to dance as wildly 
as any Dead Head I'd ever seen in my life! And he couldn't stop dancing when 
the music played. Well, this guy was a great technician and he could fix any 
amp, but he couldn't travel on the road. Because when the music played, he 
couldn't do his job. So he didn't last very long.
And we had a special way of doing it. Jerry himself taught me about his gear, 
and Healy and Ram Rod. So, they had a lot invested in me after a while, and 
they had me on what Kreutzmann used to tell me was a "soul contract." And 
"you ain't breaking it, you're not leaving, pal." So there were times you felt like 
leaving, when you wanted to get off road. There were times when you were 
heartsick to leave, but you didn't, and you stuck it out, and they knew it. When 
you went past a certain point, nobody messed with you. There were -- it took a 
lot to get fired, but if you didn't do your job, when you stopped doing your job 
and it went on and it got to be an impediment to the oiled machine -- something 
happened sometimes.
Gans: Hi, you're on the air with Steve Parish.
Caller: Hey a couple things. Legend has it Jerry would sometime break a string 
and you would change it while he was still playing.
Parish: We did that a couple of times [laughter]. And the first time I ever did 
that -- you're nervous, because when we wound the string on, the excess string 
would go on there and you would cut it with a clipper, right? So one time, I'm 
out there doing that, and Jerry was playing and he didn't even stop. He turned 
to me -- his E string busted -- he turned to me and I did it, man! I pulled that 
one off, and he faced me and I stuck a new string on, and I stuck it up through 
there and it felt -- it was one of those moments where a second felt like an 
hour, you know. It felt like it was taking so long, and I'm turning the string and 
getting it tight and pulling it and trying to get it somewhere where he could tune 
it while he's still playing away, right? So I go up to cut the excess and I was 
there and he tuned it back in, real slick and quick while he was playing, and he 
grabbed up and put it in tune and then he was playing. And I reached up like a 
fool to cut that extra piece of string and I cut the string too close (groans) and I 
cut it off, man. So then, BAM! I put another one on and he just laughed and 
looked at me.
But Jerry would do this thing... he knew his gear. He could tell -- and if you got 
to know what he could communicate to you, he would tell you what was 
happening with his gear better than anybody. He'd say "Hey man, the voltage is 
weird here!" And I'd go "c'mon, how could you feel that while you're playing?!" 
and I'd put a volt meter on it and sure enough, the voltage would be low. How 
he knew that kind of stuff, I can't tell you, but doing his equipment you became 
part of it with him. And so we did do that string change a few times. Usually, 
he turn his guitar up and set it on top of the speaker and we'd do it a little more 
easier than hanging it right on him and playing. But when you changed a 
speaker and he was playing, you'd better know how to squeeze your eardrums 
down with those muscles inside there, or you're gonna get hurt.
Caller: You talked about Bob Dylan. What about Bob Marley? Rumor has it 
that you guys went down to a show at the Roxy and got to see Bob -- 
Parish: It wasn't at the Roxy. It was actually the first time they played. We 
went to the Harding Theater here in San Francisco and saw him. I went with 
Jerry and Keith Godchaux and a few other people, and it was electrifying to see 
Bob Marley and the Wailers. These guys were blown away. As far as any 
collaboration, if that's what you're referring to, playing together, that never 
really happened.
Caller: Wondering what he thought of Bob?
Parish: Huge inspiration! Huge! That night Jerry was just charged. When he 
first heard that reggae played live I can remember us, we had great seats in the 
Boarding House -- I said the Harding Theater -- it was the Boarding House was 
where this happened and the Boarding House was this club in San Francisco 
and it was -- just to see these guys up there playing that music. It was like a 
new music that we'd never heard. And Jerry just took to it right away. He loved 
it. 
Caller: He did "Stir It Up"?
Parish: He did all that stuff, he started putting that in his act. He could play that 
stuff. It was beautiful.
Caller: What about when you guys went to Jamaica? 
Parish: We went to Jamaica. That was an amazing show, but there wasn't 
really any jamming because there were so many acts on the bill it was going 
through a mill, you know, working there. And the hang-out time, it was really 
hard to figure out how to get through the Jamaican barriers to the right place to 
play without getting in the wrong place. So -- 
Gans: Also, it started late. The show started late -- 
Parish: We didn't play until 8 in the morning, man, and it was a bizarre time to 
go on -- 
Gans: I was there. I took pictures, and the sun was coming up during the 
second set.
Parish: Yeah, yeah
Gans: It was raining -- 
Parish: And it was raining, and the President and his bodyguards were standing 
around. There was all kinds of crazy stuff happening. But it was a chance to 
hear reggae music all night but it was very controlled -- there was no jamming.
Gans: Yeah, a little Jimmy Cliff, and Gladys Knight and the Pips. The Beach 
Boys, Joe Jackson -- What a weekend that was, man.
You're on the air with Steve Parish
Caller: Yeah, you mentioned John Lennon as an honorary Dead Head in the 
book and I wondered how that came about a little bit -- 
Parish: On yeah -- 
Caller: How did he earn his honorary Dead Head papers?
Parish: Okay, I'll tell you about that. It was a really interesting story. There's a 
club in New York City called the Bottom Line, and we played there with the 
Garcia Band..
Caller: '75
Parish: Was it '75?
Caller: '74, too.
Parish: '74, I think, the first time we played there. John Lennon, at that time, 
was hanging out in New York City and there was this quasi-guy that we had 
known for years and years in New York, one of those New York characters. 
He was named Ronnie Sunsh
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ine, and we thought he had a limo. He had this 
old, old limo for those days. It was like a '57 Cadillac, right? But a limo. So the 
guy was a limo driver but he -- he wasn't a limo driver, he was a hang-out is 
what he was. And so the years go by and all the sudden he showed up at the gig 
with John Lennon. And John came in early in the afternoon and was just sitting 
out there in the club, and I went out there and there was Ronnie and him and I 
brought them back, and Jerry and I were sitting in the back room and -- tuning 
up. And John hung with us and they had a great time, just sitting there talking. 
And Lennon looked exactly like you've seen him in that era, you know, with his 
army jacket and cap on and they sat and conversed and we all hung out and 
then the place started to fill up with people, our people, and then just all these 
people trying to get backstage to hang out. And that night Bernard Purdie 
showed up, an amazing drummer, you know, and Jerry was sort of talking to 
John about sitting in but he got overwhelmed by the people there. He was in 
this small, backstage room and he just kinda slipped off into the audience. I 
looked later and he was sitting at his table, and he watched the show and went 
on his way.
Caller: Do you know if he ever saw the Dead?
Parish: As far as I know, unless he came secretly -- he never came and hung 
with us at a Dead show. Uh, George Harrison came by Jerry's show and hung 
with us. He was a great hang. I remember we all talked about some interesting 
phenomenon that night, which interested him and us and he was a great guy. 
He hung out and talked to Jerry and we smoked a bunch of bowls and man, it 
was a good hang.
Caller: What do you mean, interesting phenomenon?
Parish: Well you want to know exactly? Okay, there was a lady up in the 
freakin' Bronx, man, that thought she had Jesus' face on the soot of her 
window! And it was in the papers, and so we were talking about that article 
because Jerry and I and him, and Sam Cutler who was our road manager, we're 
all sitting there talking about that thing and at that time only had seen tortillas 
with Jesus' face and now we were seeing a window soot that looked like it and 
so we started talking about that sort of religious phenomenon of people seeing 
things into random, natural physiological formations -- 
Gans: I've seen Jerry's face in pancakes -- (laughter)
Parish: That's right! And I've seen it in marble, man. I've seen it in marble on 
the wall of the Four Seasons bathroom once. It was him, man! On the marble. 
He shows up in funny places..
Gans: I'm sorry to interrupt. What were you going to sa,y caller?
Caller: There's a tape of that Marley gig at the Boarding House..
Parish: Oh there is? That was a great, electrifying gig, man. I'd like to hear that 
and see if it holds up like that, but Jerry was blown away that night.
Gans: Hello, you're on the air with Steve Parish.
Caller: Hi, I -- first to David and to you, Steve, thank you so much for making 
my life and a hell of a lot of others' better all these years. One thing I wanted to 
ask, since Jerry passed, I have become disabled and my next door neighbor 
went to the show Saturday night at Shoreline and came back home with a 
absolutely killer tie-dye t-shirt and a hooded sweatshirt and he got those at the 
show and I'm guessing they're Grateful Dead merchandise. I gotta have this 
stuff. Can you enlighten me?
Parish: Yeah, you can still go to dead.net, the Grateful Dead official site, and 
that'll take you -- do you have access to a computer, the web, so you have 
that?
Caller: Yeah, not really adept at it so I couldn't guarantee you I could get 
through -- 
Parish: Well, if you get somebody to put dead.net and get you to that address, 
all will reveal itself to you.
Gans: I think the phone number still works. 1-800-CAL-DEAD. I'm pretty sure 
that number still works for ordering stuff.
Parish: They have all that stuff that was available at the shows on that site.
Caller: Well let me ask you this. Since the Grateful Dead are now the Dead, do 
you -- are you folks planning any type of a catalog of merchandise like you had 
in the past?
Gans: They still do. They send out the Grateful Dead Almanac. If you call that 
number I just gave you, they'll put you on the mailing list. They send it out, I 
think, three times a year and it has merchandise on it and news about what all 
the musicians are doing and occasionally a picture of a guy like Steve.
Caller: Oh, oh, that's very cool. Well thank you so much for taking my call 
David and Steve and you've been a part of my life for 25 years 
Parish: Well stay strong -- 
Caller: It's a kick to speak with you.
Gans: Hello, you're on the air with Steve Parish
Caller: Hello, Steve, this is Laura Melvin.
Parish: Hello Laura, how are you?
Caller: I'm doing good. Say, I was wondering, now that I have you on the 
phone -- did he ever play with Mile Davis?
Gans: They shared a bill. But did the jam together? It was April, 1970.
Parish: They shared a bill, but he was supposed to show up and come and 
play, but he didn't show, which he was famous for. Mickey had -- I believe it 
was Mickey had invited him and they hooked something up and he was gonna 
come by, but he never made it. There was another time, earlier on, when they 
did play on the same bill and I don't think they played together.
Gans: That was 1970
Parish: Thank you, I'll run into you soon, I'm sure.
Caller: I know, I should have asked you in person but -- I thought -- I haven't 
seen you in awhile. But hey, thanks. I just really enjoy the shows.
Gans: Hi, you're on the air with Steve Parish.
Caller: Cool, hi. Great to talk to you. I was lucky enough to be here in the Palo 
Alto area. And from my window, if I opened up the window on certain nights I 
could hear Garcia warming his guitar up and finding his tones and stuff, even 
during rush hour.
Parish: Are you talking about the Keystone, Palo Alto days? On yeah, because 
we'd open -- we leave that back door there open and that alley would just fill 
with music, yeah.
Caller: It would fill with music and people -- 
Parish: That was a great place. Wasn't that a great place? 
Caller: The greatest place, Bob was the greatest.
Parish: You know, Palo Alto was fun, man. We'd go down there and just -- 
Yeah Big Bob you're talking about? Yeah, Big Bob who ran the place and 
Freddy Herrera -- oh man, those guys were so good to us. Man, that place was 
really fun. 
Caller: Well, how fun this is to be able to speak with you.
Parish: Yeah, man, you too. Because I think about all those nights we spend in 
those Keystones and those other clubs and guys like you who were there and 
affected by it and we had a really good time. Nobody got hurt.
Caller: I have a question for you..
Parish: Sure.
Caller: Why did they have the tickets day of sale there? It was always day of 
show.
Parish: What show -- 
Caller: The Keystone Garcia Palo Alto shows -- 
Parish: Oh man, when you have human beings dealing with something, you 
have things that are happening that are messed up. So probably somebody 
messed up and we were too lazy to sell them in advance and so they do them at 
the door. Plus, we always had such a good turnout, you'd never know.
Caller: Awesome times. I miss' em. 
Parish: Good, I miss 'em too. 
Gans: Okay, we're going to take one more call. This will be our last call. 
You're on the air with Steve Parish.
Caller: Hey Steve. I want to thank you for your hard work and creativity and 
for helping take care of Jerry for so long and I'm real -- it hurt me and my 
friends and everybody out there but I just can't even imagine what it was for 
you, so -- 
Parish: Yeah, it still hurts. You know, and whenever we have somebody like 
that in our lives, I believe every person who was touched by him -- in any way 
-- through his music or anything feels that loss, too. And we all share that. It 
helps. Thank you for that. 
Caller: One time I was with my friends and our car broke down in Europe and 
Jerry just happened to be there in the r
8ab
est stop and he offered money to fix our 
car -- it was unbelievable. It sounds like a dumb question in a normal state of 
mind, but it seems like -- people would always say the audience participated 
with the band and all that stuff..
Parish: Oh yeah..
Caller: On one hand you're clapping and getting them going by doing that, but 
on the other hand there's this whole state of consciousness type of thing -- 
Parish: That's right, that's right -- 
Caller: Where people sound like you really there and it sounds kinda crazy in 
normalcy. Did Jerry talk about that stuff?
Parish: He did a couple of times and something just popped into my head when 
you were saying that. There was this friend of ours and he'd been with us for 
many years. This guy had hung out with us, he'd been to a lot of shows on the 
stage with us, hanging out. I mean this guy was a high character, you know 
what I mean? And we all were. And one night he came up to me, a good friend 
of mine, and he grabbed me and he said "Man, I had such a great time last 
night." It was a second night of a show at Oakland Auditorium, which is Henry 
Kaiser, and he said to me, "Man, I'm telling you I was out in the audience and 
Jerry stared at me and he played that song to me, you know, and he played and 
stared in my eyes." And I said Okay, I kinda thought he was out there and later 
Jerry came up and we were hanging out, the guy was gone and I said "Jerry, so 
and so came up and said you played to him last night. Said you locked eyes and 
played." He goes, "Yeah, I did."
Caller: Yeah!!
Parish: He said "I did."
Caller: Because some nights -- 
Parish: And he really did get that off and I realized that he would go deep into 
your mind while he as playing.
Caller: I totally think..
Parish: It was that kind of thing we were talking about earlier when we touched 
the back of his, he's spin around. Because he was multifaceted when he was 
playing and God bless 'em all, man. That's all I can say.
Gans: Thanks to everybody who called. This has been really fun. Steve Parish, 
you should really come back and do this again sometime because you're good at 
it.
Parish: Okay, you invite me and we'll do it.
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