A “midwife of grace.” An “oracle and a prophet of God.” The “unofficial priest of a small but powerful movement that started to comb America for nearly three a long time.” To what minister of God would possibly such titles append? What nice awakening of non secular fervor did such a determine usher in? And in what church buildings can his message of affection and therapeutic be heard at this time?
Nicely, they have been all mentioned of Jerry Garcia. Sure, that Jerry Garcia.
The lead guitarist and vocalist of the Grateful Lifeless died 30 years in the past this week, abandoning legions of devoted and brokenhearted followers. He additionally left behind thousands and thousands extra who have been barely puzzled about simply what they need to make of him, the Lifeless and the counterculture through which they existed for 30 years earlier than Jerry’s dying—and which perdures at this time in various and refined methods.
Jerry Garcia was born in 1942 in San Francisco, Calif., to musically inclined dad and mom who managed a bar. He was raised Catholic, and later in life referenced the awe of being current at Mass as a younger man. In 1976, Garcia was interviewed by a Catholic priest, the Rev. Miles Riley of San Francisco, for the latter’s “I Believe” tv program. Requested about his spiritual beliefs, Garcia mentioned he had been raised as a “laissez faire Catholic.” His father died when Garcia was simply 5, and the household moved round within the following years. He was arrested in 1960 for stealing a automotive (okay, his mom’s) and served briefly within the U.S. Military to keep away from jail time.
The Grateful Lifeless (Garcia, Invoice Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan and Bob Weir, later joined by Mickey Hart and their major lyricist, Robert Hunter) initially fashioned in 1965 after some putative begins beneath completely different names. Garcia was a casual frontman from then on, although he all the time rejected the title.
The Lifeless spent the subsequent three a long time touring, turning into a considerably unintentional icon of the hippie counterculture of the late Sixties and the Platonic type of a jam band. Regardless of by no means actually breaking into mainstream pop music circles (the band had one Prime-40 single, “Contact of Gray,” and even that got here greater than 20 years after they fashioned), they have been universally recognized for his or her devoted and freewheeling fanbase. In the event you’re a sure age, you bear in mind the Volkswagen buses with a bumper sticker: “Who’re the Grateful Lifeless and why are they following me?”
To be a Deadhead was to be a real disciple of the band—they usually had some unlikely devotees, together with basketball legend Bill Walton, actors Invoice Murray and Whoopi Goldberg, “Simpsons” creator Matt Groening, author Stephen King and former president Invoice Clinton. Oh, and Woody Harrelson…however you’ll have guessed that already. Regardless of a musical repertoire that just about by no means explicitly mentions medicine (I can consider three songs tops that do), the band has additionally all the time been related to a psychedelic counterculture.
Garcia himself had no time for the plaudits or messianic language utilized to him—“No one ever heard you employ that microphone as a pulpit” and “your steadfast denial of dogma was as shut as you ever got here to having a creed,” Ken Kesey wrote to him after his dying—however three a long time later, he stays an iconic determine within the American counterculture, and Deadheads can nonetheless be discovered throughout (not simply at Phish concert events). If he was not a non secular determine, he definitely impressed a tradition imbued with religiosity.
“The Lifeless offered an unconventional alternative for a lifetime of consumerism and division based mostly on class and race,” wrote Michael O’Brien in a 2023 article for America. O’Brien was born after Garcia died, and but he nonetheless acknowledged the preponderance of rituals shared by Lifeless followers and the highly effective sense of neighborhood that had endured over a long time. “Everybody was ecstatic simply to be within the presence of like-minded folks whose values of acceptance and kindness have been palpable,” he wrote of a Lifeless & Firm (one of many successor bands to the unique lineup) live performance. “Whether or not beneath the affect of medication or not, everybody round that ballpark was excessive on life.”
The well-known mythologist and scholar of comparative faith Joseph Campbell associated a parallel expertise after seeing the Grateful Lifeless dwell in 1985:
The very first thing I considered was the Dionysian festivals, after all. This vitality and these terrific devices with electrical issues that zoom in… That is greater than music. It turns one thing on in right here (the center?). And what it activates is life vitality. That is Dionysus speaking by way of these children. Now I’ ve seen related manifestations, however nothing as harmless as what I noticed with this bunch. This was sheer innocence.
Additional, Campbell wrote, the live performance exhibited a “fervent lack of self within the bigger self of a homogeneous neighborhood. That is what it’s all about!” It reminded him of experiences at an Easter liturgy on the Russian Cathedral in New York, or Mass on the Basilica of Our Woman of Guadalupe in Mexico Metropolis, or a go to to the Hindu Jagannath Temple in India. “It doesn’t matter what the identify of the God is, or whether or not it’s a rock group or a clergy,” he wrote. “It’s one way or the other hitting that chord of realization of the unity of God in you all, that’s a terrific factor and it simply blows the remainder away.”
In a 2022 article printed within the Proceedings of the Grateful Lifeless Research Affiliation, Daniel Pinti famous the parallels between the Rev. Matthew Fox’s notion of the priest as a “midwife of grace” and Garcia’s personal life and sense of self. Fox (who officiated at each Garcia’s third marriage and his funeral) instructed Pinti that “in his conversations with Garcia he noticed him as one who in strolling his distinctive path functioned in simply that manner.” Even when Garcia by no means explicitly acknowledged it, Pinti wrote, he performed that function:
Unseen, unacknowledged, or unexperienced grace was one thing Garcia may midwife into the world and introduce others to. And, like several true priest, Garcia’s priesthood was rooted not in telling us what to do, however in exhibiting us how we are able to all do the identical.
A much less probably spiritual determine additionally weighed in on Jerry in recent times: In a 2020 column in his diocesan newspaper, Bishop Thomas J. Tobin of Windfall, R.I., used a lyric from “Ripple” to make a degree: “Let or not it’s recognized there’s a fountain that was not made by the fingers of males.”
“Though the Grateful Lifeless doesn’t often take care of spiritual themes, for a believer, the reference to a fountain ‘not made by the fingers of males’ clearly factors to God,” Bishop Tobin wrote.
In the event you’re nonetheless shaking your head in confusion concerning the above, the bishop isn’t alone—there’s an America staffer who has confessed to enjoying “Ripple” for a bunch meditation at a Kairos retreat in highschool. And why not? Angsty excessive schoolers want to listen to the next knowledge:
There’s a street, no easy freeway
Between the daybreak and the darkish of evening
And if you happen to go, nobody might comply with
That path is in your steps alone.
Jerry Garcia died on Aug. 9, 1995, of a coronary heart assault. He had turned 53 solely per week earlier. Within the three a long time since, different members of the Grateful Lifeless have toured in numerous iterations, and different jam bands have taken up among the mantle and attracted among the followers. However Garcia’s wildly maned visage stays one of the recognizable pictures of a complete style of music.
On the band’s last live performance collectively, at Chicago’s Soldier Discipline a month earlier than Garcia’s dying, the last song of their encore was “Field of Rain.” A few of its lyrics:
Stroll into splintered daylight
Inch your manner by way of useless goals to a different land
Perhaps you’’re drained and damaged
Your tongue is twisted with phrases half spoken
And ideas unclear
What would you like me to do
To do so that you can see you thru?
A field of rain will ease the ache
And love will see you thru.
•••
Our poetry choice for this week is “Designer Death,” by Deborah DeNicola. Readers can view all of America’s printed poems here.
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James T. Keane
