this interview appeared in Magical Blend - a 'new age' type of
magazine.....in january 1994.  if you have a problem with reading
copyrighted material that doesnt have permission to be copied,
then i would recommend that it probably would be better if you 
didnt read this....although you would be missing a pretty good
interview with jerry....with a 'new age' flavor to it!

i tried to correct as many scanning mistakes that i could find....
but some may have slipped through....sorry!



AN INTERVIEW WITH JERRY GARCIA
BY DAVID JAY BROWN AND REBECCA  McCLEN NOVICK

REPRINTED WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM
MAGICAL BLEND      JANUARY 1994   ISSUE 41



When you've had a street named after you then you can congratulate
youself on a certain notoreity (although you will probably be dead)
but when you've had an ice-cream named after you, well, that's an
honor that dreams are made of.
After thirty years of playing with one of the most sucessful bands
in the history of rock 'n' roll, Jerry Garcia finds himself, at the age
of 51, at the zenith of his popularity.  His almost mythical status
got an extra boost when he journeyed to the Jaws of Death and back
after falling into a diabetic coma, and he has reached a point in his
career where if he were half asleep and out of tune, the audience would
still hang on every note with a reverent sigh.
An Old Testament prophet mixed with you favorite uncle and dash of
garden gnome, Jerry Garcia spoke to us at the Grateful Dead's homey
headquarters in San Rafael.  As the interview evolved it became clear
that now, with the ages of acid-tests, afros, and junk bonds behind him,
one of this man's favorite pastimes is contemplating the inner
shenanigans of the Universe.



How did you get started in music?

Jerry Garcia: My father was a professional musician,  my
mother was an amateur. I grew up in a musical  household
and took piano lessons as far back as I can  remember. There
was never a time in my life that music  wasn't a part of.
The first time I decided that music was something I  wanted
to do, apart from just being surrounded by it, was  when I
was about fifteen. I developed this deep craving to play the
electric guitar. I fell in love with rock 'n' roll.  I wanted to
make that sound so badly. So I got a pawn  shop electric
guitar and a little amplifier and I started  without the benefit 
of anybody else around me who  played the guitar, or any books.
My stepfather put it in an open tuning of some kind and
I taught myself how to play by ear. I did that for about a 
year until I ran into a kid at school who knew three chords 
on the guitar and also the correct way to tune it. That's 
when I started to play around at it, then I picked things up.  I
never took lessons or anything.

Who particularly inspired you?

Jerry Garcia: Actually no particular musician inspired  me,
apart from maybe Chuck Berry. But all of the music  from the
fifties inspired me. I didn't really start to get  serious about
music until I was eighteen and I heard my  first bluegrass
music. I heard Earl Scruggs play five-string  banjo and I
thought, that's something I have to be able to  do. I fell in
love with the sound and I started earnestly  trying to do
exactly what I was hearing. That became the  basis for
everything elseÑthat was my model.


How do you compare your early days to now?

Jerry Garcia: Well, in some ways it's better and in  some
ways it's not. The thing that was fun about those  days was
that nothing was expected of us. We didn't  have to play. We
weren't required to perform. People  came to acid-tests for
the acid-test, not for us.    
So there were times when we would play two or three tunes
or even a couple of notes and just stop.  We'd say, to hell
with it, we don't feel like playing! It  was great to have that
kind of freedom because before  that we were playing five
sets a night, fifty minutes on,  ten minutes off every hour.
We were doing that six  nights a week and then usually we'd
have another  afternoon gig and another nighttime gig on
Sunday. So.  we were playing a lot. Also, we weren't required
to  play anything even acceptable. We could play what ever
we wanted. As far as a way to break out from an  intensely
formal kind of experience it was just what we  needed,
because we were looking to break out.

And you're still able to maintain that free-form  style to a
certain extent even though now you're  more restricted by
scheduling and order?

Jerry Garcia: Well, also we're required to be competent, but
we' ve improved a lot. Now when we play, the worst playing
we do isn't too bad. So the lowest level  has come way up,
and statistically the odds have  improved in our favor.

What do you think it is about The Grateful Dead that has
allowed you such lasting popularity?

Jerry Garcia: I wish I knew.

Do you think you can define it?

Jerry Garcia:I don't know whether l want to, particularly.
Part of its magic is that we've always avoided  defining any
part of it, and the effect seems to be that  in not defining it,
it becomes everything. I prefer that  over anything that I
might think of.

Do you feel at all disillusioned at the rate of social 
evolution? In the sixties, many people thought that  massive
social change was just around the corner.

Jerry Garcia: I never was that optimistic. I never thought
that things were going to get magically better.  I thought
that we were experiencing a lucky vacation  from the rest of
consensual reality to try stuff out. We  were privileged in a
sense. I didn't have anything  invested in the idea that the
world was going to change.  Our world certainly changed. Our
part of it did what it  was supposed to do, and it's continuing
to do it,  continuing to evolve. It' s a process. I believe that
if you open the door to the process, it tells you how to do it
and it works. It's a life strategy that I think anyone can 
employ.

How do you feel about the fact that many people  have
interpreted your music as the inspiration for a  whole
lifestyleÑthe Deadhead culture?

Jerry Garcia: Well, alittle silly! You always feel your own
work is never quite what it should be. There's always a
dissonance between what you wish was happening and what
is actually happening. That's the nature of creativity, that
there's a certain level of disappointment in there.



So, on one level it's amusing that people make so much stuff out of
this and on another level, I believe it's their  right to do that,
because in a way the music belongs to  them. When we're done with
it, we don't care what  happens to it. If people choose to mythologize
it, it certainly doesn't hurt us.

How do you feel about your divine-like status in the eyes  of so many
of your fans?

Jerry Garcia: These things are all illusions. Fame is an illusion. I
know what I do and I know about how well I do it, and I know what I
wish I could do. Those things you  mentioned don't enter my life. I
don't buy into any of that  stuff. I can't imagine who would. Look at
David Koresh.  If you start believing any of that kind of stuff about 
yourself, where does it leave you?

So what is the relationship dynamic between you and  the audience
when you're on stage?

Jerry Garcia: When things are working right, you gain levels. It's
like bardos. The first level is simply your fundamental relationship
to your instrument. When that starts to get comfortable the next
level is your relationship  to the other musicians. When you're
hearing what you want  to and things seem to be working the way
you want them to,  then it includes the audience. When it gets to that
level, it's  seamless. It' s no longer an effort; it flows and it' s wide
open. Sometimes however, when I feel that's happening, the music is
really boring. It's too perfect. What I like most is to  be playing with
total access, where anything that I try to play  or want to make
happen, I can execute flawlesslyÑfor me  that's the high-water
mark. But perfection is always boring.

I've heard that musicians using computer synthesizers  are
complaining that the sound produced is so perfect that it's
uninteresting, and that manufacturers are now looking to program in
human error.

Jerry Garcia: Right. I think the audience enjoys it more when it's a
little more of a struggle.

What do you think is missing?

Jerry Garcia: Tension.

Tension between what and what?

Jerry Garcia: The tension between trying to create something and
creating something, between succeeding and failing. Tension is a
part of what makes  music workÑtension and release, or if you
prefer,  dissonance and resonance, or suspension and  completion.

Do you feel sometimes at your shows that you're  guiding people?

Jerry Garcia: I don't feel like I'm guiding anybody. I feel like I'm sort
of stumbling along and a lot  of people are watching me or stumbling
with me or  allowing me to stumble for them. I don't feel like,  here
we are, I'm the guide and come on you guys,  follow me. I do that, but
I don't feel that I'm  particularly better at it than anybody else.
For example, here's something that used to happen all the time. The
band would check into a hotel.  We'd get our room key and then we'd
go to the elevator. Well, a lot of times we didn't have a clue  where
the elevator was. So, what used to happen  was that everybody would
follow me, thinking that  I would know. I'd be walking around
thinking why  the fuck is everybody following me? So if nobody else
does it, I'll start somethingÑit's a knack.

A lot of people are looking for someone to follow.

Jerry Garcia: Yeah. I don't mind being that person, but it doesn't mean
that I'm good at it or that I  know where I'm going or anything else.
It doesn't  require competence, it only requires the gesture.

Is there any planning involved in choosing songs in a certain
sequence to take people on a journey?

Jerry Garcia: Sometimes we plan, but more often than not we find
that when we do, we change our  plans. Sometimes we talk down a
skeleton of the  second set, to give ourselves some formÑbut it 
depends. The important thing is that it not be dull  and that the
experience of playing doesn't get  boring. Being stale is death. So we
do whatever we  can to keep it spontaneous and amusing for
ourselves.

You play more live shows than any other band I  know of. How do you
manage to keep that spontaneity? Is this a natural talent you've
always  had or is it something you've had to work to  achieve?

Jerry Garcia: Part of it is that we're just constitutionally unable to
repeat anything exactly. Everyone in the band is so pathologically
antiauthoritarian that the idea of doing something exactly the same
way is an anathemaÑit will never happen. So  that's our strong
suitÑthe fact that we aren't consistent. It used to be that
sometimes we'd reach  wonderful levels or else we played really
horribly, terribly badly. Now we've got to be competent at our
worst.

I'm curious about how psychedelics influenced  not only your music
but your whole philosopby of life.

Jerry Garcia: Psychedelics were probably the single most
significant experience in my life. Otherwise I think I would be going
along believing that  this visible reality here is all there is.
Psychedelics  didn't give me any answers. What I have is a lot of 
questions. One thing I' m certain of is that the mind  is an incredible
thing and there are levels of organizations of consciousness that are
way beyond what  people are fooling with in day-to-day reality.

When you project into the future how do you see your music
evolving?

Jerry Garcia: I have no idea. I was never able to  predict it in the
past; I certainly don't feel confident  to predict it now.

Did you ever imagine it would get this far?

Jerry Garcia: Oh God no! It exceeded my best expectations fifteen or
twenty years ago. We're  way past the best I could come up with.

How did you come up with the name The Grateful Dead?

Jerry Garcia: We called ourselves the Warlocks and we found out
that some other band already had that name so we were trying to
come up with a new one. I picked up a dictionary and literally the
first thing I saw when I looked down at the page was The  Grateful
Dead. It was a little creepy, but I thought it was a striking
combination of words.
Nobody in the band liked it; l didn't like it either,  but it got around
that that was one of the candidates  for our new name and everybody
else said, yeah that's great. It turned out to be tremendously lucky. 
It's just repellent enough to filter curious onlookers  and just
quirky enough that parents don't like it.

What's your concept of God, if you have one?

Jerry Garcia: I was raised a Catholic so it's very hard for me to get
out of that way of thinking,  Fundarnentally I'm a Christian in that I
believe that  to love your enemy is a good idea somehow. Also,  I feel
that I'm enclosed within a Christian framework so huge that I don't
believe it's possible to  escape it, it' s so much a part of the Western
point of view. So I admit it, and I also believe that real 
Christianity is okay. I just don't like the exclusivity  clause.
But as far as God goes, I think that there is a  higher order of
intelligence something along the  lines of whatever it is that makes
DNA work.  Whatever it is that keeps our bodies functioning and our
cells changing, the organizing principleÑwhatever it is that created
all these wonderful life-forms  that we're surrounded by in such
incredible detail.
There's definitely a huge, vast wisdom of some  kind at work here.
Whether it' s personalÑwhether  thereÕs a point of view in there, or
whether weÕre the  point of viewÑI think is up for discussion. I
don't  believe in a supernatural being.

What about your personal experience of what you may have
described as God?

Jerry Garcia: I've been spoken to by a higher order  of
intelligenceÑI thought it was God. It was a very  personal God in that
it had exactly the same sense of humor that I have. I interpret that
as being the next level of consciousness, but maybe there's a 
hierarchial set of consciousnesses. My experience is that there is
one smarter than me, that can talk to me,  and there' s also the
biological one that I spoke about.

I understand that you became very ill a few years ago and came very
close to death. I'm interested  in how that experience affected your
attitude about life.

Jerry Garcia: It's still working on me. I made a  decision somewhere
along the line to survive, but I  didn't have a near-death experience
in the classical  sense. I came out of it feeling fragile, but I'm not 
afraid of death.

Were you afraid of death before?

Jerry Garcia:l can't say that l was, actually. But it did  make me
want to focus more attention on the quality of life. So I feel like
now I have to get serious about being  healthful. If I'm going to be
alive I want to feel well. I never had to think about it too much
before, but finally  mortality started to catch up with me.

You say that you didn't have a near-death experience, but did
anything happen that gave you  any unusual insight?

Jerry Garcia: Well, I had some very weird experiences. My main
experience was one of furious activity and tremendous struggle in a
sort of futuristic, spaceship vehicle with insectoid presences. 
After I came out of my coma, I had this image of myself as these
little hunks of protoplasm that were  stuck together kind of like
stamps with perforations  between them that you could snap off.
They were  run through with neoprene tubing, and there were  these
insects that looked like cockroaches which  were like message units
that were kind of like my  bloodstream. That was my image of my
physical self and this particular feeling lasted a long time. It  was
really strange.

Did it affect what you think might happen after  death?

Jerry Garcia: No. It just gave me a greater admiration for the
incredible baroque possibilities of  mentation. The mind is so
incredibly weird. The  whole process of going into coma was very
interesting too. It was a slow onsetÑit took about a weekÑ  and
during this time I started feeling like the vegetable kingdom was
speaking to me.
It was communicating in comic dialect in iambic  pentameter. So
there were these Italian accents and  German accents and it got to
be this vast gabbling.  Potatoes and radishes and trees were all
speaking to  me. It was really strange. It finally just reached 
hysteria and that's when I passed out and woke up  in the hospital.

And when you came out of your coma, did you  come out of it in
stages?

Jerry Garcia: I was pretty scrambled. It was as though in my whole
library of information, all the  books had fallen off the shelves and
all the pages  had fallen out of the books. I would speak to people 
and know what I meant to say, but different words  would come out.
So I had to leam everything over  again. I had to learn how to walk,
play the guitar,  everything.

Did you always have faith that you would access  your memory
again? Did it scare you that you  might have lost it forever?

Jerry Garcia: I didn't care. When your memory's gone, you don't care
because you don't remember when you had one.

What do you think happens to consciousness after death?


Jerry Garcia: It probably dies with the body. Why would it exist
apart from the body?

People have had experiences of feeling like they're out of their body.

Jerry Garcia: That's true. But unfortunately the only ones who have
gone past that are still dead. I  don't know what consciousness is
apart from a  physical being. I once slipped out of my body 
accidentally. I was at home watching television and  I slid out
through the soles of my feet. All of a  sudden I was hovering up by
the ceiling looking  down at myself. So I know that I can disembody 
myself somehow from my physical self, but more than that I have no
way of knowing.

So I take it you don't believe in reincarnation, in the recycling of
consciousness?

Jerry Garcia: It may happen in a very large way.  It may be that part
of all the DNA-coding, the specific memory, returns. There' s
definitely information in my mind that did not come from this 
lifetime. Not only is there some, but there's tons of  it!  Enormous,
vast reservoirs.

What does the term "consciousness" mean to  you?

Jerry Garcia: I go along with the notion that the  universe wants
consciousness in it, that it's part of  the evolutionary motion of the
universe and that we represent the universe's consciousness. Why it
wants  it, I don't know, but it seems to want it. Here's the reason I
believe this. If the point of an  organism is survival, why go any
further than sharks  or simpleminded predators that survive
perfectly  beautifully? Why continue throwing out possibilities? So
my sense is that conceivably there is some  purpose or design. Why
monkeys with big heads?  Because that's the most convenient
consciousness  carrier, perhaps.

Have you ever felt like you've been in communication with beings of
a higher intelligence than  humans?

Jerry Garcia: I've had direct communication with  something which
is higher than me. I don't know  what it is, it may be another part of
my mind.  There's no way for me to filter it out because it's in  my
head. It's the thing that's able to take bits and  pieces of things and
give me large messages. To me,  they are messages as clear as
someone speaking in  my ear, they 're that well expressed and they
have all  the detail that goes along with it.
Sometimes it comes in the form of an actual voice and sometimes it
comes in the form of a  hugeness, a huge presence that uses all of
the  available sensory material to express an idea. And  when I get
the idea it' s like duh!  Oh, I get it !  And it's  accompanied by that
hollow mocking laughter.  You stupid fuck! You finally got it, huh?
Geez it's about time. For me, enlightenment works that way,  but itÕs
definitely a higher order of self-organization  that communicates
stuff. My psychedelic experiences were sequential.  They started at a 
place and they went through a series of progressive learning steps.
When they stopped happening it was like,  this is the end of the
messageÑnow you're just playing around. That was when 
psychedelics stopped having the relevance they originally had. It
lasted for about a year I'd say.

What do you think a Grateful Dead show In Virtual Reality would be
like?

Jerry Garcia: Deadheads would want to be part of the band, I would
imagine.  I think it would be fun if they could be, because it would
make them see the  experience differently. But I think they would be
disappointed if they saw our  version of it.

Why do you think that?

Jerry Garcia: I don't know why. Remember, I don't know what the
Grateful  Dead are like. I've never seen them, so I don't know what it
is that the people  in the audience experience that they value so
highly.

You facilitate the potential for an experience. People have full-on
religious  experiences at your shows; they pass out, speak in
tongues, and are even  picked up by flying saucers. Are you aware of
the impact you have on  people's minds?

Jerry Garcia: Not like that. I' ve made an effort to not be aware of it
because it's perilously close to fascism. If I started to think about
controlling that power  or somehow trying to fiddle around with it
then it would become fascism.

Have you ever been tempted to dabble in the power?

Jerry Garcia: Oh yeah. For the first eighteen years or so, I had a lot
of doubts  about The Grateful Dead. I thought that maybe this is a bad
thing to be doing,  because I was aware of the power. So I did a lot of
things to sabotage it. I thought  fuck this! I won't be a part of this. I
dragged my feet as much as possible but  it still kept happening ! So
in that way I was able to filter myself out of it and think well, it's
not me. Phew!  What a relief!

Have you heard of the Spinners? They wear long dresses and do this 
whirling dervish dance at Dead shows.

Jerry Garcia: They're kind of like our Sufis. l think it's really neat
that there's  a place where they can be comfortable enough to do
something with such  abandon. It's nice to provide that. That's one of
the things I'm really proud of The Grateful Dead for, because it's kind
of like free turf.

It doesn't bother you that they use you as their religious focus?

Jerry Garcia: Well, I'll put up with it until they come to me with the
cross and  nails.

What are your priorities now? Are they very different from what
they were twenty years ago?

Jerry Garcia: Not very. Basically, l'm trying to stay out of trouble.
l'm trying  to play well. For me, playing music is a learning
experience and it's satisfying  to me to still be learning stuff. Also,
my objective is to have as much fun as I possibly can. That's a key
ingredient.

Some people believe that this is a pivotal time in history. Do you
feel there is a New Age, or to use Terence McKenna's term, an
"Archaic RevivalÓ  coming about?

Jerry Garcia: Sure, I'll go along with thatÑI love that stuff. I'm a
Terence  McKenna fan. I prefer to believe that we're winding up
rather than winding  down. And this idea of the year 2012 when
everything tops out, well, I would  love to be here for it. I'll buy into
that beliefÑI don't want to miss it! It's like  the millennium. At this
point it' s a matter of personal pride. We have to survive, the band
has to be able to play till at least the turn of the millennium.

What do you think that the future of the human race depends upon?

Jerry Garcia: Getting off this lame fucking trip, this egocentric
bullshit. There's entirely too many monkeys on this mudball and
that's going to be a real problem.  People have to get smart. I've
always thought that the thing to do is something really  chaotic and
crazy like head off into space. ThatÕs something that would keep
everyone  real busy and would also distribute more bodies out there.
Otherwise we end up staying here and killing  each other and
damaging the planet. I've gotten into scuba diving so I've developed
a great affection for the ocean. I just don't want to see it get worse
than it is. I'd like to think we could get smart enough sometime
soon to make things better than they are instead of worse.

Are you optimistic about the future of life (not necessarily human
life) on earth?

Jerry Garcia: I think the earth doesn't have any real problems in the
long run. I think we're just another disturbance. I don't think even
we can really fuck up the earth.

How did you get involved in helping to save the rainforest?

Jerry Garcia: Well, I remember we started hearing about these
things twenty-five to thirty years ago.  The clock kept ticking by and
nothing was really  happening. So we thought maybe we should call 
attention to this. Then there was the matter of  finding out who the
true players were, because there are a lot of bullshitters in the
environmental movement, there are a lot of frauds.
You have to really go into it to find out who's  really doing stuff and
also who has the right perspective. So for us it was about a two-
year process  of finding the players and then getting them to agree 
to work together so we could do something that would matter. I
think everybody wants to do stuff about these problems. We didn't
want to just call attention to how powerless everybody is, instead
we wanted to do some things that were really hands on,  using
direct action, and it's worked out quite well.

Can you tell us about any current projects that you're involved in?

Jerry Garcia: l'm involved in an interesting project with a little
symphony orchestra down the Peninsula called The Redwood
Symphony. I'm getting  about five or six musicians to write pieces
for me  and this orchestra. Danny Elfman is one, David  Byrne seems
to want to do one and so do my friends  John Kahn, Bob Bralove, and
David Grisman. The interesting part about it for me is that my
oldest daughter plays first violin with this orchestra. So  it'll be
kind of fun to be involved in a project where  she and I play together.

That sounds wonderful. What are some of the basic messages in your
music?

Jerry Garcia: We' ve always avoided putting any  kind of message in
there, but I find myself more comfortable with committing to
emotional truths as life goes on. I'm not an actor so I can't get on
stage and sing a song that doesn't have some emotional reality for
me. Sometimes it's only something about the sound of the Iyrics, it
may not be the sense of it at all, but there has to be something in
there that's real for me.

My writing partner, Robert Hunter, is really  good about writing into
my beliefsÑhe understands the way I think and he knows me well
enough  to know what I'll do and what I won't do. He knows that I'm
always going to be battling with my intelligence about whether I can
sing this Iyric or if I'm  going to feel like an idiot singing it. It has
to  resonate in some way.

How have you managed to remain so unaffected  by your fame?

Jerry Garcia: If you were me, you'd be modest too. Deadheads are
very kind. When they enter my  private life they almost always say, I
just want to  thank you for the music, I don't want to bother you. 
When I feel that I really don't want to know about  it, I just tell
them. I treat everybody who speaks to  me with respect. IÕve never
been hurt by anybody or threatened in any way so I have no cause to
be afraid of this kind of stuff. It just isn't part of my life most  of
the time.Besides, I'm kind of like a good-old-celebrity.  People think
they know me. It's not like, "Oh gosh!  look who it is!" It's more like,
"Hi, how ya doin'?"  I'm a comfortable celebrity. It's very hard to take 
the fame seriously and I don't think anybody wants me to. What's it
good for? The best thing about it is that you get to meet famous
people and you get to play with wonderful musicians.

If you hadn't been a musician what might you have been?

Jerry Garcia: I'd be an artist. I was an art student and that was
where I was going in my life before music sort of seduced me.

What inspired you to design a line of ties?

Jerry Garcia: I don't really have any control over them, they're just
extracted from my art work. I don't design ties, for God's sake!

How do you feel about the importance of humor?

Jerry Garcia: I think humor is incredibly important. It's fundamental.
You have to be able to laugh  at yourself and your place in the
universe.

What do you think happens when you lose your sense of humor?

Jerry Garcia: Well, at the very least you won't have much fun. Humor
characterizes consciousness. For me, life would be so empty without 
humor it would be unbearable, it would be like life without music.



This interview will appear in its entirety in the forthcoming book
Marvericks of the Mind II David Jay Brown is the author of the
science fiction novel Brainchild (Falcon Press, 1988), and is
coauthor (along with Rebecca McClen Novick)  of a collection of
interviews with many renowned thinkers, entitled Mavericks of the
Mind (The Crossing Press, 1993).  He holds an M.A. in psychology from
NYU and has worked  as a behavioral neuroscience researcher in
learning and  memory, a psychiatric counselor, and freelance writer.
He currently lives in Southern California, where he is completing  a
new science fiction novel. Rebecca McClen Novick is on  her way to
India to shoot a documentary about Tibetans.



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