Image from http://www.billkreutzmann.com/ .
Bill Kreutzmann was only 18 years old when Jerry Garcia invited him to join some fellow Bay Area players in a jam session that would culminate in the creation of a new group: The Warlocks. These players would later rename themselves the Grateful Dead and begin a career that would span four decades. Today is the 70th anniversary of Garcia’s birth and yesterday afternoon Kreutzmann shared a few moments to reminisce about Jerry. He will honor his longtime friend and band mate over two special shows in the coming days. Tonight’s Kretuzmann’s 7 Walkers will appear at New York City’s Beekman Beer Garden. Then on Friday they will take the stage at the Rock and Roll hall of Fame. Here are his thoughts on Jerry…
Can you talk about the first time you met Jerry?
The first time I met him I watched him play at a little nightclub—more like a speakeasy coffee house— in Palo Alto called The Tangent. I sat and I watched him and it was just mesmerizing. He had the audience in his hand and they loved him and he was smiling the whole set. I got to sit right in front of him. He was playing banjo with Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions. It was just a remarkable moment and I commented to myself, “I’m going to follow that guy forever.” I said it right there and then and lo and behold it happened.
You saw him that night on banjo and over the years he really distinguished himself on both acoustic and electric guitar, which is rarer than some people imagine.
He was an accredited banjo player and he was pretty well known in the bluegrass circuit. I didn’t hear him play banjo a lot but with the acoustic guitar I remember around the time that Dylan went electric at the Newport Folk Festival, it kind of turned everyone around a little bit. Garcia thought the same thing: “I want to be an electric player. I want to go electric, it seems to be what’s happening.” Of course the Rolling Stones were already out there and the Beatles were just getting going, so he went electric and he was good at both those instruments.
Now when Jerry asked to you to play with him, at that time you were teaching?
I had a little job teaching basic drumming at Dana Morgan’s music shop. And he was teaching guitar.
Did you play with him at all?
We didn’t really play. Maybe I’d been there a few weeks teaching, I’m not sure how long he was there but he called me and asked if I wanted to play with him and Bobby and Pigpen and Dana Morgan on bass. I said yes and I just had an inkling that these were the guys that wouldn’t play safe, that they’d always want to be experimenting and going further out…and that turned out to be true.
What do you recall of that first session?
It was in Dana Morgan’s music shop. He taught lessons in the back and sold instruments in the front. We locked ourselves in with him because he had all the instruments and we couldn’t afford instruments back in those days. But unfortunately he had to be the bass player and that didn’t work. Jerry let me know right away that Morgan wasn’t playing bass in the band.
Before that point, you’d been playing rock in local garage bands?
Even a little bit bigger than that. I was in local high school band for a couple years there and we played at the YMCA dances and at the high schools around Palo Alto.
As the group came together did you have any expectation that this would be something that would carry you out of the Bay Area?
I always wanted to play in a band that was a great band and really inventive and I hoped everything could happen but when you’re starting out, it’s really a day-to-day thing. You’ve got to make sure you get food to eat and there’s a place for the band to practice. I used to drive the band around long ago in Haight Ashbury in an old 58 Dodge station wagon—all the equipment fit in there amazingly enough, the drums everything. And we had a p.a. that blew out in one gig of course and we didn’t have to carry that anymore. But that’s how it was, it was just day-to-day and to think about bigger and famous was just a waste of time. It didn’t seem like a possibility.
Do you recall the moment when it first occurred to you that it might be a possibility?
It kind of came at one time and then it spread out. One time I remember we were playing the Acid Tests at the Longshoreman’s Hall in San Francisco, a big old open hall and Ken Kesey at the time was on the run for the police. We’d be doing Acid Tests with him for a few months, once a week at least. There’s all kind of costumes and all of sudden this guy comes walking up to me and Jerry and he’s in a space suit. Then he opens the visor and it’s Kesey. He’s hiding out from the cops but he doesn’t want to miss the trip. It was the San Francisco Trips Festival and there he was. He says, “You guys are going to get much more known than just around here.” And I kind of went, “Oh, maybe he’s right.”
It’s kind of obvious but that happened: a guy walks up to you in a space suit raises his visor and tells you that you’re going to be more famous than you know and later on, sure enough…
Photo by Rob Chapman
You mentioned playing in a high school band. I recall reading in Dennis McNally’s book that back in high school you once played for Aldous Huxley. Can you share that story?
My parents unfortunately were getting divorced when I was about 16 and my granddad [Clark Shaughnessy] had been a famous football coach, is a famous football coach at Stanford University. The headmaster at Stanford had a prep school in Prescott, Arizona and my mom sent me away to get me out the house, because it was too much: divorce and Billy is too much.
I was 16 and luckily my dad sent my drums down there. I got kicked off the football team for whatever reason and my dad sent my drums. It was a miracle. I can remember opening these giant wooden crates and unpacking my drums and they would let me play after school hours in the auditorium. So one day I’m up there practicing the drums by myself and in walks the headmaster and this guy who looked like he was seeing through coke bottles and that was Aldous Huxley.
The headmaster gives me the finger to the lips like “Be quiet” and Huxley gives him a little elbow in the ribs like, “No, I never heard anything like that, tell him to keep playing.” At the time I had no idea who Aldous Huxley was but years later I found out and I even found out what the speech was about. I wasn’t able to understand at 16 but I went back and read it of course and I was able to understand it. I had no idea about Brave New World or anything that Huxley had written and when I got hip to those I said, “Wow I wish I had read a little earlier I might have tried to talk to the guy.”
Back to Jerry. Can you talk a a bit about his impact on your life and music?
His impact was just monumental and it was monumentally good. He was basically the best music teacher I ever had. He had really great taste in music. He’d teach you about full bar, full measure—that means, “Don’t rush, play right in the pocket.” He’d run all that down. But also his purity, his essence of being a true musician. He got up there every day and was playing guitar and that rubbed off like crazy. He also turned me on to really good music.
Would he continue to surprise you, musically, throughout your time together?
Yeah like at soundchecks and stuff he’d just casually he’d come with a new some song to play some old song that had been around for years.
Speaking of music that has been around for years. I remember reading Rolling Stone article shortly after Jam Cruise in which you mentioned that you had started listening to the Europe 72 box set. What did you take away from that?
Mostly I just decided that I really liked the parts that had “The Other One” in there. The playing around that is fantastic.
In terms of peak years from the band, what periods stand out for you?
When Europe 72 first came out there was only recording from all those concerts and I don’t know how they even deduced which songs to select. So when it finally came out as a box set it was refreshing as heck to know that we really played some great music there. ‘78 is neat when we went to Egypt because you have all the Egyptian influence and we actually recorded in front of the Great Pyramid, it was amazing. I also think 89 was one of those years: 86 and 89 somewhere in there were some really big years too. You know there are probably more years than I am capable of remembering. (laughs)
You also played with Jerry in some of his projects outside the Grateful Dead. What are your memories there?
It was really refreshing because we didn’t have to do Grateful Dead tunes. We hardly did any as a matter of fact, just some of his original tunes. It was just a different band and it’s fun to play in different bands because you get contrasts with different musicians. It was great playing with Merl [Saunders] and John Kahn those musicians were wonderful. I did that for a while, it was fun.
Wednesday will be Jerry’s 70th birthday. How do you think he would celebrate?
He wouldn’t want to have big party as you might imagine. He probably would be with some real close friends, taking about old times. He’d probably have a guitar in his hand and play some bluegrass. He wouldn’t make a big thing out of birthdays. He’d let other people have fun around him and then he’d grab on to it. That’s how he was.
On Friday night while you’re at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with 7 Walkers, Bob Weir is hosting a special event at his TRI Studios. Your son Justin is involved with that. Can you talk about his relationship with Jerry and what it’s been like for you watching his career develop?
He was really close with Jerry. When he was making albums that weren’t necessarily Grateful Dead, Justin was helping him. Jerry did a video with Justin for “The Thrill Is Gone” in black in white. He shot it in San Francisco on Broadway Street and made a great video. Jerry would allow him to do things like that, so they were really close. Jerry liked Justin’s cinematography and he just liked him being into film. They’d always be talking about film.
I love having my son doing something really creative. I’m glad he’s working at TRI, that’s a lot of fun for me.
Final question. You have two big 7 Walkers gigs on the horizon. On Jerry’s birthday you’ll be in New York City and then on Friday night you’ll appear at the Rock Hall. Can you talk about those shows?
The band right now physically is in Manhattan we’re just having a lot of fun playing. We’re out there doing what we do and we do some Dead songs and Papa Mali sings them just wonderfully. We do “Wharf Rat” and I love the way he sings.
The second gig at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, that’s a tribute to Jerry, that whole event. Even though they’ve set up this theme of the Grateful Dead on the top floor, for me it’s about Jerry really. They have three of his best guitars there on display and it’s fun to go there and see that stuff. But you know I don’t try to plan these things out. I get to the gig and I let the emotion of the night and what’s going on, that’ll be how the gig is. So I can’t tell yet. I know it’ll be great but I can’t give any color to it yet.
