"What a long strange trip it's been..."
Well, here goes something — or nothing. I’ll let you all be the judge of that.
It’s a new year, and having just had my birthday #74, I think it’s an appropriate time to come out of my cave and start to share some of the my experiences as a journalist in the rock ‘n’ roll world of late 60s, a career that officially ended, I suppose, with the last piece I did in 1986. I did write other things, but no longer about rock n roll.
Most of the narrative concerns the Grateful Dead, whom I wrote about, spent a lot a time with and had the exceptional good luck and intense pleasure of knowing back in the day. Before I started writing this piece, I was concerned about copyright issues and because most of the pieces I wrote are not online, I felt reluctant to scan anything. But lo! I googled myself and Phil Lesh (the last interview I did with the Dead, in 1986), and though I didn’t find that piece (I have multiple hard copies), I found something better: the the first story I did about the Dead. Full disclosure: as a sample of writing, it truly sucks. As does a lot of my writing from that period (I was 23 and 24 when I wrote a lot of it). Also, there’s a lot of BS about astrology, which we were all into big time.
The piece is actually a reprint. The original piece I’d written for Changes in October 1969. Changes was a rock n roll (mostly) magazine that I co-edited with the wonderful Lenny Kaye. His work at Changes is not mentioned in the Wikipedia piece, but he was there. The link to my Grateful Dead story has extensive commentary by someone that was made in 2014, and as ungenerous as the commentator is, he seems to have a better opinion of the piece than I do, myself.
But a couple of things stand out. The name of the piece, “The Dead Head” was the first use of that term that I know of in print. The Dead were not known in NYC when I started writing about them in 1969. I told Jerry years later, when both the term and the band became well-known, that I was the one who’d thought of it. “You want some money for it?” he asked. “Nah,” said my dumbass younger self.
Another thing from the comments on that piece was that it mentioned I was a drummer (or thought of myself as one). I’d totally forgotten that I’d had a drum set and I tried in a half-assed way to learn to play (I seem to remember a trip to Mickey Hart’s drumming teacher, possibly in Brooklyn or Long Island, but my memory is not as good as it was, so sue me if I’m wrong). Anyway, it was scary to find something online about me that I myself had forgotten. I have no idea where this person got their information, because not a lot of people knew. The somewhat arrogant commentator also said that I thought of myself as a drummer. No dude: I never did. I sold that drum set to a British musician who liked it because “it was an antique kit” and he had it shipped back to the UK.
Still, re-reading that piece (which I hadn’t done in years — I do have the hard-copy Go magazine where it was reprinted) has saved me some trouble. It does give my account of my first meeting the Dead, and in clearer terms than I probably could today. And I can provide more background. I first met them at a press party for Country Joe and the Fish at the Chelsea Hotel in New York, late September 1969. The Dead were opening for Country Joe at the Fillmore East the next night. I remember that I shared a cab with Jon and one or two of the band to go to dinner. Jon asked the cabby “Who makes the best steaks in New York?” And the cabby said “Max's Kansas City ,” a club I knew well, because it was frequented by other musicians. It was full of interesting people, which often included gorgeous young men sitting around waiting for Andy Warhol to discover them. A great place. “Okay, let’s go there,” Jon directed the cabby.
I also remember being impressed that Phil Lesh had heard of Igor Stravinsky, because I had just met and spent time with John Stravinsky, the composer’s grandson. Lesh’s eyes widened “You mean THE Igor Stravinsky? Only the greatest composer of the century?” I was so impressed. I didn’t think there were a lot of rock musicians, except for some British ones, who would have heard of Stravinsky. Tom Constanten, aka TC, would have known of course. He told me once that he believed himself to be the reincarnation of Scriabin, the Russian 19th century composer. TC explained that he had come up with a musical code corresponding to colors, and he’d discovered that Scriabin had had done the same thing, and come up with the same colors.
Anyway, that’s me dipping my aging toes into the pool. If you all would like more, let me know. If not, well, here goes nothing.
