DS: Many times I’ve felt that the best concert experiences are those where I leave in some way a different person than when I arrived. In your book, Spirit Into Sound, I believe you call this transformation through the power of music.
MH: That’s what music does. It transforms your consciousness. It takes you to another place, a better place I like to think. That’s what music is really for, the spiritual upliftment of the soul and your consciousness. Besides, it gives you a good beat to dance and get funky with. It definitely helps with the sex act, and that does elevate human kind. Music is made for bringing people together. But it definitely lifts your consciousness. That’s the transformational power of music. And here we have all these people from around the world weighing in on what music is and also circling the wagons, because we can’t quite define this invisible energy we call music. We try.
DS: As in your search for The Grail, or the connection between music and trance?
MH: Well, science is starting to weigh in now on what the brain looks like and feels like after an auditory driving experience and once we can link music, trance, medicine and feeling. That what we call The Grail. We can repeat trance on a daily basis. We’ll know what it is. So that’s what’s happening:
DS: What is trance?
MH: Trance is a physical embodiment of music. It’s a head space. It’s an emotional physical place that the body, the mind, the soul, and the heart go to which is elevated from a normal waking consciousness. It is also achieved in different ways. We know there are certain things that are necessary for trance. Redundancy is the basis of trance. We know that when something is redundant, the mind catches it and keeps on it. It’s just like a focusing technique. It’s like the flow state is a trance. In sports, you get in trance because you concentrate, you get in sync with yourself. You listen to radio and miss an exit or two, or lose the sense of time for a minute or two, you are in trance. It’s a physical thing. It’s also an emotional thing, but we don’t have it figured out. We know when it happens, and we sort of know how to do it, but we don’t know really what the exact formula is for it. We know that it happens in every culture worldwide, and it happens to every one of us from time to time. But, how do we repeat it on a daily basis? We don’t know. That’s why we go after the code, the grail, to be able to find out what trance really is. We just know it exists.
A lot of it is culture specific, a lot of cultures encourage it, and a lot of cultures don’t. It all depends what situation you are in, trance will happen more or less.
DS: Do you feel here in America, our culture encourages or discourages trance?
MH: There will always be people not wanting other people to go into trance because trance is it’s own leader. You don’t take orders very well. You don’t take authority very well in trance. It has a mind of its own so to speak. It could be looked at as illegal in some way. But it’s your birthright, everyone is entitled to be able to go to one of these places. It’s not something that can be controlled, nor should it be legislated against. It’s very helpful. It elevates the mind. Actually, it’s one of the prime movers in developing the species, it’s perhaps one of our greatest assets, that’s made us human. Group trance is very important.
DS: So we all experience it, just in different ways?
MH: Right, Like a top 40 lightweight trance thing. But, serious players like the Grateful Dead, we were very serious about it. We tried for it every night. And that’s what made it a very powerful and potent energy. It wasn’t necessarily the songs we were playing. If you asked us what business we would be in, it would be the transportation business. Not necessarily music, but transportation is what we were in. That’s what jamming does, when you get lost and you don’t know what you’re doing, and you lose track of time and keys and rhythms, and you are just in the moment. Well then you are entering trance, and that’s why the people are here, that’s why they keep coming back They want to experience that unique creation of the moment as opposed to some prefab shit or some product that you’re recreating for the audience.
DS: You speak often of judging the mood of an audience, meaning the audience is different every night. I understand that in a small theater, but a Grateful Dead audience?
MH: Oh yeah, absolutely. Because you’re different every night, and the audience is different every night. It’s like trying to find the rhythm of the night, or the rhythm du jour. You’ve got to feel or let yourself go into that without trying to predetermine something. That’s how you connect to the audience. It’s an old trick that I picked up years ago. Actually, it started when me and Kreutzmann would feel each other’s pulse before we would play. We would just sit there for a few minutes and just beat together, get our rhythms in sync. That’s where it all started, and I tried to think of it in a grander scale, that there was some collective beating of the audience, heartbeats beating all at once, fluttering, and trying to find a common denominator in all of that.
DS: Did you feel that worked most nights?
MH: Oh yeah, sometimes it was more potent, or powerful than other times, and sometimes it wasn’t, but I always try to get in sync.
DS: One of my favorite Jerry Garcia moments occurred during the fall tour of 1994 when for a couple of shows, he stayed on stage during your drums segment, joining the rhythm on his guitar. He was really enjoying himself. I’ve always wondered what you thought of it and how it happened.
MH: Oh, I don’t even remember. We never talked about music. And we very rarely rehearsed, so it just was a moment.
DS: So, he just decided to stay out?
MH: That was his option. He was always welcome to join us or not. You know, that was something that was just unspoken. When we finished the gig, we got into the van. We never talked about music. We talked about everything else, but very little about the music. Music can’t really be talked about. You can’t crystallize it. We never tried to crystallize it. We never thought it was the appropriate thing to do. Play it, Yes. Talk it do death, Nah!
DS: Would that be your advice to the younger bands today?
MH: Don’t talk about it. Play it. Then the music will tell you, instead of you telling the music. The music plays the band. Then you are there.
DS: As obsessive music fans, we also take some harsh criticism from those that don’t understand our passion, and that’s why personally the book(Spirit Into Sound) meant so much. I feel that musicians and listeners are all in this journey together.
MH Yeah right! It does sort of shed some light on some very interesting subjects. Why music? That’s a good question, you know. This book tries to answer that. Why and What is music?
DS: We’ll never have the definitive answer.
MH You know, that’s OK. Just enjoy it and treasure it. Bring it into your home and your heart. We may never get the code. But you can’t stop us from trying.
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