So Many Roads (4 page)

Even when the music finally started up, the vibe felt sour. Chris Hillman, the former Byrds bass player then in the Flying Burrito Brothers, walked through the crowd to the stage to play his set, stumbling over participants who already seemed wasted. Arriving at the stage, he was stopped by a Hells Angel, who asked who he was and almost didn't let him up. At the airport Sue Swanson, a longtime friend and fan of the Dead's, saw fear in the faces of other musicians who'd played and were on their way out. “Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were there with their big coats on,” she recalls. “The looks on everyone's faces were just very serious. Everyone wanted the hell out of there.”

The Dead had forged an alliance of sorts with the Angels several years before, during the early, untroubled days hanging with band friend Kesey in the Palo Alto hills. Some in the band weren't rattled by the sight of tattooed, hairy, and burly Angels backstage; others were less pleased, though there wasn't much they could do about it. As much as anything, that relationship between these two seemingly dissimilar camps spelled out the growing duality in the Dead's world: a seemingly sunny gentility with an undercurrent of hardened swagger that wasn't remotely for the faint of heart. A reporter covering a 1970 show noticed that Garcia's case sported a sticker that read, “Blackjack Garcia, the baddest fucking guitarist in the world.” For all the field-of-flowers beauty of their music, the world of the Dead was unsentimental and demanding; to survive, one had to adapt and hold on tight.

At a Fillmore East show that January stagehand (and future movie director) Allan Arkush, an NYU student who worked part time at the theater, heard a knock on the backstage door, and he and a few other employees found themselves confronting a bunch of Hells Angels from the nearby Lower East Side chapter. The Angels name-dropped one of the Dead's road crew—Lawrence Shurtliff, otherwise known as “Ram Rod,” a muscular, wiry man with old-sage eyes and strong-silent-type demeanor. But even if the Angels hadn't been on the guest list, Arkush and his fellow Fillmore employees wouldn't have dared turn them away. That night they had come bearing gifts. As Arkush watched in astonishment, the Angels began lugging nitrous oxide tanks to the dressing rooms, no easy feat given that each one probably weighed about two hundred pounds and had to be dragged up several flights of stairs. A short while later Arkush popped his head into one of the dressing rooms to alert the band that showtime had arrived. What he saw—everyone sucking on nitrous tubes—was so cartoonish it was almost funny. The band happily stumbled their way down to the stage, took their places with their instruments, and waited; Graham had arranged for Richard
Strauss's “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” best known in 1970 as the theme song to the sci-fi sensation
2001: A Space Odyssey
, to blast out of the speakers before the show started. When it finished, the Dead just stood there, gazing up at a screen and giggling in a nitrous haze. To make his guitar sound like it too was laughing, Garcia began stroking the strings.

By the time the Dead were helicoptered onto the Altamont site the festivities were no longer festive. After the Airplane's Grace Slick had mentioned to Mick Jagger the role the Angels had played in security for Airplane shows, the Angels had been recruited for Altamont; whether it would be for security or to hang out in front of the stage and protect generators (as Angels had done at so many free area shows before) would be debated for years. Fights broke out early, and it became clear that some of the instigators weren't Angels but so-called “prospects,” not full-on Angels. It didn't help that many in the crowd upfront were wasted. The uniformed local cops on hand were cowering at the idea of dealing with the Angels. As soon as they arrived on site the Dead were informed that an Angel had punched out Airplane singer Marty Balin. (Vicki Jensen, backstage with the crew, saw Balin come flying through the back of the stage after he'd dared to stand up to Angels beating on someone in the audience. “I'm sorry, man,” one Angel was overheard saying, “but you don't say ‘fuck you' to an Angel.”) Walking through the dusty air and sun-scorched crowd on their way toward the stage, Lesh and Garcia saw dazed fans sprawled all over, and Lesh accidentally hit Garcia on the head with the back of his bass. It was that kind of day.

Although Woodstock had transpired a few months before, Altamont would not be the good-vibes sequel many had hoped it would be. Freaked out by a scene becoming gnarlier and more menacing by the moment, the Dead retreated to a bus behind the stage, deciding whether or not to play. At one point Dead roadie Rex Jackson, an imposing cowboy who was no pushover, was seen walking around with
a black eye, which Cutler presumed was delivered by an Angel. (It's possible he received it when he intervened on Balin's behalf during the Angels skirmish, and Jackson was smart enough to know not to fight back.) Ultimately, in what even Lesh would call a mistake—and Cutler would sharply criticize as an act of “cowardice”—the Dead decided not to venture anywhere near the stage. As nighttime arrived and the Stones cranked up, the Dead returned to a helicopter and flew off while most of their crew retreated to their equipment truck and drove back to San Francisco, where the band was due to play at the Fillmore West that same night. Soon after, Meredith Hunter, a young African American, rushed the stage with a gun and was stabbed to death by an Angel. The Dead were too unnerved to even show up at the Fillmore, and Graham wound up screaming at the crew instead of the band. An after-party at the theater, which was never firmed up but was pitched to the Dead by a local promoter as “the most memorable evening in San Francisco ballroom history,” never materialized. Given the Dead's role in the show, paranoia ensued. Some at Hart's ranch fled, fearing for their safety from angry Angels.

Another reminder of the dark side of the Dead could be found in an office closer to home. A year earlier, the band was fairly dazzled when Hart's father, Lenny, a former drummer and now self-ordained minister, reappeared in his son's life after leaving Hart's mother during their Brooklyn years. With his short hair and southern-car-salesman vibe, Lenny Hart didn't look much like his son or anyone on the scene. At first Mickey seemed thrilled to have his father around, at least to those who saw their interaction, and Lenny promised to help the Dead's shaky business operation. At the ranch the previous spring Lenny would spout lines like “I've seen the light!” while holding a Bible, and somehow he convinced the band and its entourage he could be their financial savior. In 1969 Garcia had spoken with
Rolling Stone
writer Michael Lydon about their business and admitted, “Mickey's father is
now doing it. He's fronting our whole management thing. He's taken charge. We've given him the power to do what we want to.” Garcia added, somewhat less optimistically, “Right now, things are looking good. But the whole thing about money is still something weird.”

Since then the situation with Lenny had only grown stranger. “He looked like the straightest white man you ever saw,” says a member of the Dead world at the time, “but he had a good goddamn rap. Some people, you can't read truth or falsity in their face.” Jon McIntire, another member of the Dead organization, was suspicious of Lenny, as was Ram Rod. Garcia would tell McIntire, “I believe what people tell me.” But not everyone was convinced. Mountain Girl once said to Hunter, “Why can't you just trust Lenny? We need a manager who understands business.” Hunter reacted with what Mountain Girl recalls as “utter scorn at my naiveté and unwarranted confidence.”

For the first time the air was filled with the promise of more income. Feeling guilty after the Altamont debacle, Garcia had asked Cutler to be the Dead's tour manager; Cutler accepted and soon realized the band needed to play more gigs than ever to shore up their finances. Throughout 1969 they would make only a few thousand dollars a show: $5,000 for two nights at the Fillmore West; $7,500 for two nights at the Pavilion in Flushing, Queens; and $1,059.50 for appearing on Hugh Hefner's TV series
Playboy After Dark
. “They knew that if they didn't start to make serious money, the Dead would cease to exist,” says Cutler. “Every penny counted. We were living on $10-a-day per diems.”

It would take Cutler months to get the Dead out of hock. Until then, when the musicians would ask where the money was, Lenny would tell them their “old ladies” had spent it, which wasn't the case. When some in the organization asked Lenny to show them the books, he hesitated, then eventually turned over ledgers with entries that had clearly been erased and written over. (Lesh and Mickey Hart also confronted him at a Bob's Big Boy restaurant and realized he also had two different sets of
books.) When questioned, Lenny had a habit of veering into extended Bible talk, almost as a way of zoning them out. The thought of dealing forcefully with Lenny Hart didn't sit right with any of them—Garcia and Weir especially were not the most confrontational—but something had to give.

At the same time, other parts of their operation were to some degree or another in jeopardy. Owsley Stanley, their acid-king soundman and quality-control inspiration, would soon find himself behind bars after the New Orleans bust. Those close to Garcia were beginning to notice that he could unexpectedly fall into grumpy, blackened moods. When Garcia came home at night he'd frequently grumble to Mountain Girl about one thing or another having to do with the band, then ask when dinner would be ready. Although Mountain Girl didn't know it then, later she wondered whether this was the beginning of what she calls Garcia's “secret drug life.” Cocaine was already on the scene; in fact, the band would give it a plug in “Casey Jones,” another new song they'd record for the new album. No one considered the drug even vaguely addictive.

Three months after “Dire Wolf” was cut, a few Deadheads managed to slither in backstage at a show at Temple University in Philadelphia. No one knew how, but in the early days of rock 'n' roll security, crashers were always possible. One of the fans found Garcia and asked what the band was working on, and Garcia boasted about the new album they'd just finished,
Workingman's Dead
. “I like it better than any album we've done,” he told them.

“That's all we do, is sit around and get smashed and listen to that album,” the fan said.

Even though the album wasn't in stores yet, Garcia let that odd comment slide—he was growing accustomed to remarks like that from
their budding fan base—and amiably replied, with a smile, “We get smashed and make 'em.”

Sometimes they did; the nitrous tanks at Pacific High were testament to those habits. But something rare and miraculous was happening with these new songs. Everyone in the Dead had complaints about their first three studio albums: too rushed, too overproduced, way too expensive. It was impossible to satisfy them all at once. As they began filing into Pacific High, though, the mood was uncommonly optimistic. “We had pushed the envelope in experimental,” Hart says. “We had to simplify. That's why that record was acoustic. There wasn't a lot of percussion. Bill and I played it very straight. Maracas, congas—light stuff.” Garcia would be singing all but one of the songs, and he was eager to, in his words, “boogie” and not be bogged down in the tape-montage experimentation that ran through their last two albums.

From its inception the new album was mapped out. Bob Matthews, who had introduced Garcia and Weir before the Dead was even a glimmer in anyone's imagination, would be engineering, along with Betty Cantor. Matthews taped the band working on the songs, put the material in what he thought was a proper sequence, then gave a copy to each band member, who practiced the songs in that order. Omitted at the onset was “Mason's Children,” another song about death and collapse, this one swathed in campfire harmonies and a folk-rock bounce. (Like “New Speedway Boogie,” it had been written directly after Altamont.) “It was a no-brainer,” says Matthews. “It didn't fit. That was by agreement.”

Hunter and Garcia had crafted indelible songs before, yet something about these new ones, many written at the Larkspur house, had a special cohesiveness, a sustained vision. They were littered with images of hard-working, hard-living Americana types—the miners in “Cumberland Blues,” the jack-hammering highway worker in “Easy Wind,” the
careening conductor in “Casey Jones”—along with a mysterious character, “Black Peter.” “Dire Wolf” was set in “Fennario,” an imaginary burgh overrun with the creatures. Like classic folk songs, the tunes were both down to earth and mythical. Tapping into themes of community, terror, darkness, woozy love, and trains, the songs felt more universal and timeless than anything they'd done before.