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Book Review: “This is All a Dream We Dreamed: An Oral History of the Grateful Dead” by Blair Jackson & David Gans

Virtually no one outside the Grateful Dead’s inner circle knows more about the band than Blair Jackson and David Gans.

Between them, Jackson and Gans have written seven Grateful Dead books, edited a fanzine and hosted radio programs about the band beyond description.

So when the pair decided to write yet another book about the legendary group - whose long, strange, 30-year trip paved the way for bands like moe., Widespread Panic and Phish - they went back to those who lived it and some who died doing it.

Acting more as editors than authors, Jackson and Gans skillfully weave together decades worth of archival and original interviews to tell one of rock’s most unlikely tales. And in the process, the authors-cum-editors also manage to dig up revelatory material 20 years after Jerry Garcia’s 1995 death at 53 - a remarkable feat.

The result is “This is All a Dream We Dreamed,” a thoroughly engrossing oral biography of the group that includes input from every band member (except the famously quiet Keith Godchaux and lyricist John Perry Barlow), friends, family (both blood and “thicker than blood”), promoters and - in one of the book’s rare missteps - members of Dark Star Orchestra to tell the Dead’s unique story.

Legendary concert promoter and unabashed Deadhead Bill Graham sums up the Grateful Dead’s impact perhaps better than anyone ever has when he says:

“But if the Dead gave me the highest experience of my life, they also gave me the seventh, nineteenth, twenty-sixth - so many separate experiences with the Dead are part of my top fifty or one hundred experiences.”

The speakers take readers on a three-decade journey from Magoo’s Pizza Parlor, where the nascent Grateful Dead played its first gig in 1965, to Soldier Field, where the American institution performed its final concert in 1995. In between are stops at the Acid Tests; Woodstock; the Great American Music Hall; Cairo, Egypt; Club Front; and Deer Creek among other famous and infamous Dead haunts.

Readers who lived some or all of it receive unexpectedly vivid insight into the eras they may have missed and are given the chance to compare their memories to what actually happened during their time on the bus. It’s a rare and different tome that allows for such enjoyable reading and “This is All a Dream We Dreamed” keeps the magic going over all of its 512 pages.

Younger Deadheads will revel in hearing Pigpen in his own words - Jackson and Gans seem to have used virtually everything available from the late Ron McKernan - and musings from family members such as Carolyn “Mountain Girl” Garcia, Rosie McGee, Ken Babbs, Steve Parrish, Ken Kesey and Wavy Gravy.

Also revealing are sections on the band reintegrating Mickey Hart after the 1974-‘76 hiatus and their struggles as keyboardists Brent Mydland (1979-1990), Bruce Hornsby (1990-‘92) and Vince Welnick (1990-‘95) found their footing among five musicians who spoke a unique musical language.

It’s interesting to note that vocalist Donna Jean Godchaux, Mydland, Hornsby and Welnick, more often refer the the band as “they” rather than “we” when speaking of their time as Grateful Dead members.

The book is highly recommended for both hard-core and new Deadheads because it paints with a broad brush and also fills in small gaps in the tapestry - and Deadheads love minutiae.

Jackson and Gans declare Hornsby a full-fledged member of the band in the Who’s Who section by calling him “Grateful Dead keyboardist;” they reveal that Hart was a huge fan of Saturday Night Fever and may have been responsible for the Dead’s mid-'70s disco arrangement of “Dancing in the Street;” they cite Bob Weir claiming he doesn’t forget the words to “Truckin’” so much as he has a hard time getting them out because they’re tongue-twisting; and they prove Hart to be a clairvoyant percussionist with this prescient quote from 1980:

“In 1990, we’ll be absolute killers! We’re pretty good now, but if we keep healthy, we’ll go on. Look at Count Basie and (Duke) Ellington. There’s no reason we couldn’t be one of the dance bands that last thirty years.”

Given that many band members and several fans cite 1988-1990 as the band’s high-water mark and that the Grateful Dead lasted exactly 30 years, this statement is remarkable on many - two, that is - levels.

If the book has a flaw, it’s that it comes to a screeching halt with Garcia’s death in 1995 and doesn’t even attempt to address any of the post-Grateful Dead collaborations the surviving members have played in during the intervening two decades. Instead, the book includes a handful of appendices that appear to serve no purpose other than to allow the authors to use material they couldn’t otherwise fit into the book proper.

In the end, it doesn’t really matter, because “This is All a Dream We Dreamed” is undeniably the best Grateful Dead book to be published since “Darkstar,” Robert Greenfield’s 1996 oral biography of Garcia, and a must-read for both die-hard fans and those who just want to know what all the fuss was about.

Grade card: “This is All a Dream We Dreamed: An Oral History of the Grateful Dead” by Blair Jackson & David Gans - A-

SETLIST: A Gathering of the Tribal Knowledge Celebrating 50 Years of Grateful Dead Sat. Nov. 7, 2015 Town Hall Theatre Lafayette, CA

A Gathering of the Tribal Knowledge Celebrating 50 Years of Grateful Dead Sat. Nov. 7, 2015 Town Hall Theatre Lafayette, CA Host & Panel moderator: Tom Stack Panel Discussion: Cameron Sears, Blair Jackson & Donna Jean Godchaux-MacKay. Music from: The Golden Rose Pat Nevins – guitar, vocals Mitch Stein – keyboards, vocals Matt Hartle – guitar, vocals Jeff Faust – bass Marc Corsolini – drums Neil…

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#Blair Jackson #Cameron Sears #Sunshine Garcia Becker #Tom Stack

'We were something of an invasion,' Rock Scully said. 'Because there were so many of us we could just take over a hotel or a restaurant. That's the meaning of the big American shoe coming through the rainbow on the cover of Europe '72. Most of the people had never been to Europe before, and it was also the longest Dead tour ever, so a group consciousness developed that tended to exclude the surroundings.' Which is a nice way of saying that the Dead family marauded through Europe like Huns, partying instead of pillaging.

Blair Jackson | Garcia: An American Life | Chapter 12: “Wait Until That Deal Come ‘Round”

#grateful dead #europe '72 #blair jackson #Garcia: An American Life #rock scully #wait until that deal come round #1972 #1970s

It could be that music is one of those things left that isn't completely devoid of meaning. Talk--like politics--has been made meaningless by the endless repetition of lies. There is no longer any substance in it. You listen to a politician making a speech, and it's like hearing nothing. Whereas music is unmistakably music. The thing about music is that nobody listens to it unless it's real.... Music goes back before language does. And music is like the key to a whole spiritual existence which this society doesn't even talk about. We know it's there.

Jerry Garcia | Garcia: An American Life | Chapter 10: “Listen to the River Sing Sweet Songs”

#grateful dead #jerry garcia #blair jackson #garcia: an american life #listen to the river sing sweet songs #1971 #1970s

It was in Rio Nido, too, that the Dead’s most famous improvisational vehicle, “Dark Star,” was born. “I was in my cabin,” Hunter recalled. “They were rehearsing in the hall [about 100 feet away] and you could hear from there. I heard the music and just started writing ‘Dark Star’ lying on my bed. I wrote the first half of it and I went in and I think I handed what I’d written to Jerry. He said, ‘Oh, this will fit just fine,’ and he started singing it. That’s true collaboration. I mean, I actually heard the Grateful Dead playing and those are the words it seemed to be saying. I’m going to take a big stretch here and say the music seemed to be saying that and I transcribed it.”

Dark star crashes Pouring its light into ashes Reason tatters The forces tear loose from the axis Searchlight casting For faults in the clouds of delusion

Shall we go, you and I while we can? Through the transitive nightfall of diamonds

“That did it for the time being,” Hunter continued. “Then, a couple of days or weeks later -- days, weeks, what were those in those days? -- Jerry said he’d like as much material again. So I went out and sat in the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park. I was sitting there writing some more lyrics and a hippie came up and offered me a joint. I took a hit on that and he said, ‘What are you writing?’ I said, ‘This is a song called “Dark Star.” Remember that, it’s gonna be important.’ He said, ‘Far out.’ Off he went and I finished writing it. I suppose it is important within the context of the Grateful Dead, and the most we can ask for is importance within a context.”

-- Blair Jackson | Garcia: An American Life | Chapter 8: “Poised for Flight, Wings Spread Bright”

#blair jackson #robert hunter #grateful dead #dark star #garcia: an american life #poised for flight wings spread bright #1967 #1960s #rio nido

by Blair Jackson.

The vending scene outside Dead shows started so innocuously. Before or after shows in the ’70s, if anyone was selling anything, it might be a handful of people peddling homemade T-shirts out of a backpack, or perhaps something small, such as pipes, stickers or low-key food items—brownies, cookies, etc. I remember buying my first Grateful Dead T-shirt—which depicted Garcia playing an acoustic guitar under the words “Grateful Dead” in nicely crafted American Beauty-like lettering—outside Manhattan Center in April ’71. In August of that year, I bought my first GD bootleg album outside Gaelic Park in the Bronx.

In ’72, “official” shirts started popping up inside shows—the initial wave of skull & roses Kelley-Mouse Monster Co. shirts, on light blue or white heavy cotton. I still have the tattered remains of my first skull-and-lightning-bolt shirt from that era (it wasn’t called a “Stealie” back then; that didn’t come into the lexicon until the design was used on the cover of the Steal Your Face live album in 1976). My shirt had that logo surrounded by marijuana leaves. Wow, what a rebel I was! (I’m joking.) I sure did love that shirt!......

#grateful dead #shakedown street #deadhead #dead freaks unite #blair jackson #golden road #dead.net #jerry garcia #parking lot scene

blair jackson's Garcia: An American Life is a wonderful book but it takes me 1-2 hours to read a chapter because i gotta google every damn thing or at least write it down for later (places addresses people albums etc)

#at least i got some sweet bluegrass/old timey music in general waiting 4 me in my torrents #grateful dead #jerry garcia #blair jackson #garcia: an american life #books #reading hesitation plus i am so damn distractable when i cave to look for just one thing

In May 1965 Phil Lesh reenters our story. He was living in the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco with Tom Constanten (T.C.), and working for the post office as a driver - shooting speed and driving aggressively through downtown rush-hour traffic, blasting a little transistor radio he smuggled onto his truck, digging Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Stones, the Lovin' Spoonful and all the other hip groups that were suddenly transforming AM radio and a lot of the people who were tuned in to it. (. . .) Phil's career as a postal worker came to an abrupt halt one afternoon after his superior complained that the haircut he'd forced Phil to get wasn't short enough. "I said, 'Fuck you,' and I quit," Phil said. "And the rest of that spring I spent letting my hair grow and taking acid and fuckin' off, having fun, and being supported by my girlfriend."

Blair Jackson | Garcia: An American Life | Chapter 4: "I Can't Come Down, I've Been Set Free"

#grateful dead #blair jackson #phil lesh #i can't come down i've been set free #garcia: an american life #hair