Reading Notes: Greenfield 1996

Reading Notes Greenfield 1996

Greenfield, Robert. 1996. Dark Star: An Oral Biography of
Jerry Garcia. New York: William Morrow and Company.

Tiff good color on childhood scene, the bars, the seamen,
etc.

Lompico, near Felton (Santa Cruz area) was the family cabin
where he chopped Jerry’s finger off.

Tiff says Dad drowned in Arcata in the ocean p. 6 but it
seems to have been on the Trinity River. “Jerry didn’t witness his
father’s death. … It was not as though he sat and watched.”[i]
Sara repeats the ocean part but implies he did see it. “Can you imagine
how terrifying it would be to watch your father drown? … Your father is out
fishing in his wading boots in the ocean and he gets swept away? … what a
terrible loss.”[ii]

#women Laird Grant describes Ruth’s attitude toward Jerry as
“loving indifference”. There was tension between Wally and Jerry.[iii]
#women

Laird says JG was playing saxophone and piano ca. middle
school.[iv]

#drugs LG says started smoking pot in 9^th grade.[v]
Popping pills in high school.[vi]
#drugs

Falling out with family near end of high school, living with
a gf down in Redwood City. Army was a way for him to get out of the house.

Laird: “when he was in the Army, he met the Kingston
Trio.”[vii]

Barbara says she and Jerry met April or May 1960, just a
matter of weeks after he left the Army.[viii]
#women

#musics in ca. 1960-1961 one of their friends “John the
Poet” had a great classical recording collection, and they listened to a
lot of Bach. “Endless Bach,” Trist said. Jerry and Trist and a few
others went to see three or four performance by the Vatican organist playing
Grace Cathedral.[ix]

Already 1961 JG was very literary – Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake
“was a powerful reference point for him”, per Barbara Meier.[x]
Art, “Jerry got the essential random nature of the art that James Joyce
and John Cage represented.” SF Art Institute, “he had connected with
action painting, abstract expressionism and the jazz underpinnings of it all.
The whole mix of Kerouac, Joyce, painting, poetry and jazz.”[xi]

“Jerry didn’t like [Joan Baez]. He was jealous of her
because her record had just come out.”[xii]

Sara Ruppenthal: “He lived for music. He’d be in a bad
mood if he couldn’t practice for several hours a day … he was very ambitious.
He wanted to do something big.”[xiii]

Jerry had a lot of loss. He talked to Sara about losing his
finger, losing his father, family troubles. Ran away from home end of high
school. Paul Speegle. Ruth and Jerry “didn’t have a very good
relationship,” Sara said.[xiv]

Sara: “he never did handle emotional difficulties
well.”[xv]

Jerry tried to learn the fiddle when Heather was a baby, per
Sara. (Heather became a violinist.)[xvi]

Sara: “Jerry had very few role models for what it was
to be a father or a husband. His grandmother Tillie had a husband at home. But
she also had her boyfriends coming in and out, and he thought that was
normal.”[xvii]

#personality: “Jerry did not do emotional honesty or
confrontation.”[xviii]

Kesey:  Garcia was as
well-read as anybody I’ve ever met. He understood Martin Buber’s I and Thou and that he was in a
relationship with his audience.”[xix]
#togotigi

Rakow: “I was in the land loan business. Because the
band was playing through home hi-fi gear supplied by this guy named Owsley,
Danny Rifkin and Rock Scully came to my office to borrow twelve thousand
dollars for new equipment.” So that’s how Rakow entered the scene.[xx]

Rock Scully on Olompali, Garcia tripping on the Tamal
Indians, the conquista and all that.[xxi]

#personality, charisma. Jon McIntire: “There was this
thing about Garcia … an aura of personal power … he just emanated
authority.”[xxii]

v-Carousel: Rakow says he made a deal for $7k a month
against 15% of the gross. His incompetent lawyer write it up as $7k plus 15%.[xxiii]

6/4/68 Rakow and Graham were at Zim’s doing the deal for the
Carousel.[xxiv]

MG repeatedly talks about the social/communal aspect of
things as against the individual (109-110, 111-112).

#women, jealousy, per MG: “He was definitely a
possessive person when it came to me.”[xxv]

Garcia, McIntire said, “was the goose that laid the golden
egg.”[xxvi]
#burden

JG and MG lived at 271 Madrone for almost two years.[xxvii]
RH lived with them. Garcia sat around and watched Sesame Street with Sunshine![xxviii]
#houses

#NRPS Dawson “We played for Sonny Barger’s birthday
party in Folsom Prison.”[xxix]
NB Barger BD = October 8, released 11/3/77 after about 4 years? so post-JG
#Hells_Angels

Marmaduke: Garcia “was a picking junkie. If he was ever
going to be accused of being a junkie, accuse him of being a picking junkie
first. Before he got to be uncomfortable without some heroin in his blood, he
got to be uncomfortable without a guitar in his hand. That was his first
draw.”[xxx]
#why

Marmaduke: “the New Riders got their own record deal.
Clive Davis had his eye on Garcia the whole time. … He wanted him and the only
way that he [127] was going to get him was by getting the New Riders.”[xxxi]
#NRPS

Ruth’s death pp. 130-133. MG: “Jerry took her death
really hard. He was so saddened by it. I could tell there were issues with his
mom that had not been resolved. Then he came to that moment [132] when he knew
they could never be resolved. … After his mom died, Jerry sank into a rather
serious depression for a while … He had no joy for a long time. It lasted for
months.”[xxxii]
She goes on to say JG was resentful of Ruth remarrying, Wally was hard on him.
#death

MG again says he witnessed Joe drowning.[xxxiii]
#death

He told MG that “his childhood had [133] been so
painful that for him to seek any kind of therapy or go back over that stuff
would be so dreadful that he couldn’t even conceive of doing it. To bring all
that stuff up again would be so painful that he couldn’t make himself do it.”[xxxiv]
#personality

Stinson. Richard Loren: “David [Grisman] was at Ed’s
Superette and Jerry was in there buying cigarettes. … David and I started
visiting Jerry mornings up at the house on the hill. … Jerry would wake up,
have his coffee … We’d smoke big joints and listen to everything from the Swan
Silvertones to Stockhausen.”[xxxv]
#OAITW #adayinthelife #musics

Loren: JG got record deal from Joe
Smith at Warner’s for Garcia, bought
the house with it. “That was the album that was coming together in his
little studio which he had built outside of his home on the hill at Stinson
Beach.”[xxxvi]

Merl met Jerry, they played the Matrix. “I had an album
to do over at Fantasy Records. I said to Jerry, ‘You helped me develop these
tunes, you might as well come and do them’.”[xxxvii]
#record _company_stuff

Loren: “Even though no one would come out and say it,
the Merl and Jerry band become a little bit of a threat. … On the surface, it
was cool. But I think there was a little uneasiness amongst a lot of the band
members to accept it. They wanted Jerry all to themselves.”[xxxviii]
#GD_vs_solo

song: one of the standards Merl taught him was “The Man
I Love” by the Gershwin Brothers. They went and saw Kenny Burrell at El
Matador.[xxxix]
#musics

Jer and Merl Keystone, he’d hang out for hours in the back
room bullshitting. Loren: “He was so open that way. In the later days,
he’d isolate himself. Everyone would isolate themselves in little rooms and you
couldn’t get into them. … At the time, the GD weren’t yet big enough to smother
him. He was allowed to do these side projects, including playing music with any
number of groups. I think this was the best time of his life.”[xl]
#burden

Loren: Rakow was an outlaw and JG liked that.[xli]

McIntire: “Jerry didn’t like being the leader and he
didn’t like taking care of business.”[xlii]
#personality

DJG mentions JG’s cowardice around confrontation. “If
there was something that Jerry did not want to get involved in, he would just
be absolutely absentee. On a certain level, Jerry was very out front and
aggressive but then when it came to certain things he was very much a coward. I
called him the Cowardly Lion and I would say that to his face.”[xliii]
#personality

Garcia would get in your face if you argued against
something he wanted, says McIntire. “It was really devastating being
dumped on by Black Cloud or Blackjack Garcia. … He was extraordinarily
powerful.”[xliv]
#personality

[I switched gears to p. 158 and was transcribing OAITW and
other stuff directly into secondary files]

The Firing: pp. 159-160

#death Pigpen’s passing was heartbreaking for JG, per Rock.[xlv]

#drugs coke Rock says at first it was fun, then it was a
tool.[xlvi]

#drugs Laird: “The coke was to keep him running.”[xlvii]

#burden MG: “He had to take care of the band. ‘We’ve
got to play here, Jerry. We’ve got to go there’.”[xlviii]

#women Brown says Deborah didn’t come in as the other woman,
so much as JG was moving on. “Jerry had already made up his own mind about
being his own guy in his own space.”[xlix]

Jerilyn remembers that MG was pregnant with Trixie when she
threw DK through the doors at Weir’s place.[l]
#women

Jerilyn: “Jerry was always such a whimp about dealing
with [relationship] things. … That was his thing with a lot of problems.  Throw money at it. Get Steve Parish or
somebody else to deal with it.”[li]
#women #personality

“shitty father”: Sue Swanson had to stand in for
JG for birth of two girls, once he was in NY another time in Paris.[lii]

MG says it was getting really bad, with him straying,
leaving, coming back, etc. around the time Trixie was born, ca. 9/74.

#drugs JG in 1988 to Greenfield: “For me, drugs are
just like the softest and most comfortable possible thing you can do. In a way,
it’s the thing of being removed from desire.”[liii]

Barlow had said in his book that UJB was about McIntire, but
McIntire denies that pp. 172-173. It’s about JJG, he says.

The Movie: Hal Kant saw that it was going to be a money pit.
They spent $150k on filming, and “the processing costs were just under
$200k”.[liv]
#movies

#movies Steve B JG loved movies. “We used to go to
movies when we were on the road. We’d go before sound checks. He’d get up early
and we’d go out to a movie at noon.”[lv]

#TheMovie Steve Brown: “the film broke our balls
financially.”[lvi]

SB gets into album economics: $500k from First National Bank
of Boston to start the record company. #record_company_stuff

Rack: “Jerry and I got loaded one day on the porch of
the music room, which was above his house in Stinson Beach. We looked out at
the ocean and Jerry said, ‘Hey man. Wanna do something far out? Let’s buy our
way to the sea.’ Meaning, ‘Let’s buy every single piece of property that comes
up for sale in Stinson Beach that gets us closer to the ocean so we’ll have a
path to the sea. … So I went to the First National Bank of Boston and told them
that we were going to get involved in other projects around which Garcia had
expertise. I asked for a two-million-dollar credit with no collateral.”
Set up a meeting three months thence in Boston –I think when GD were back there
in June ’76. JG and DK and RR go in with the chairman of the board so they can
give Garcia a briefing on the state of the global economy. [177] “They
gave us the money. Did we buy our way to the ocean? We cane damn close.”[lvii]

Rakow: “For years and years and years, the name of the
game was that I was the family barracuda. You don’t ever want to fuck with your
barracuda because the barracuda will do what barracudas do. He will fucking eat
you.”[lviii]

Steve Brown: “Rakow was down in L.A. on the rug at the
United Artists Records office saying ‘Really, the album is in the mail. It’s
coming now.’ And there was Mickey Hart up at his barn saying ‘Let’s put one
more drum track on this part here.’”[lix]

Rack went to UA: “I need a million dollars. I’ll give
you four more Grateful Dead albums, one Garcia album, and one Weir album.”
UA said they already had contacts for GD albums, why give him money, and he
said he’d declare bankruptcy, void the UA deal, and do a deal with WB. Garcia
was jumping up and down. “This is brilliant. You go and do it. I got your
back covered. There is no Grateful Dead without Jerry Garcia. I won’t let
anything happen to you.”[lx]

The rest of the band called Garcia out for it. “When
Ron Rakow left,” Steve B recalls, “Jerry was angry and depressed. I
think he felt he’d let down everybody else by having his guy rip us off. Here
was Jerry being slapped publicly as it were within the organization by Rakow in
front of everybody. I think he was humiliated by it.”[lxi]

Rack had gotten a check for $275k. He deposited it, paid a
secretary $10k, wrote a check to the Hell’s Angels for their movie, wrote a
check to Rolling Thunder for some land. “And I wrote a check for my
services for two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, which I cashed. I
had 30 seventy-five hundred dollar cashier checks and this big amplifier box
filled with Grateful Dead bills I was going to pay. I taped up the box and
wrote on it, in big marker pen, “Shove Up Ass, and I sent it” to the
GD.”[lxii]

Wolfgang lent them the last $40k to finish The Movie.[lxiii]
#movies

#drugs Marmaduke says he did H with JG in ’75.[lxiv]
#drugs

#drugs Loren H “got brought to us in 1976 … This brown
powder. … It was not really heroin. It was Persian opium.”[lxv]

#drugs Loren “They guy could never say no. He had what
I would call an addictive personality. Whether it was sugar or cigarettes or
coffee or whatever, it was very difficult for him to say no.” [184].
“If he had a weakness, that was it. … For all his other incredible traits,
this was his weakness.”[lxvi]

#drugs Bear says JG started H in 75 or 76. “Someone
gave him what he was told was opium to smoke and it wasn’t. It was 95% pure
heroin base, so-called Persian. I don’t think he knew what it was that he was
getting. Garcia smoked the stuff thinking it was a very pure form of Persian
opium.”[lxvii]
“Within a week or so, he was addicted.”[lxviii]

#drugs Laird says he was snorting smack, tried shooting it a
little bit didn’t like it. “kicking that gong” is Laird’s phrase, and
he had shot H for a time.[lxix]

Bear: “Parish was very much someone born in the year of
the dragon. The kind of guy who liked wielding that power and being physically
imposing.”[lxx]

#women MG moved back down to Stinson, JG moved back in.
Trixie was three, so this is like late ’77 or early ’78. “Unfortunately,
the day before he knocked on the door, I had sold the house.”[lxxi]

#houses ca. early ’78 MG moved them to Inverness, a house
with a pool, during the Egypt period.

#personality charisma Sue Stephens: “I think his
molecules were more dense than most people’s”.[lxxii]

Egypt left GD $500k in debt. #money

after ca,. 1978 JG couldn’t go do the adventurous gigs he
wanted to do, because there was just so much stuff, plus the #drugs: “At
this point, Jerry was moving into a definite needfulness.”[lxxiii]

#drugs Egypt MG: “Jerry was starting to chip on
painkillers.” John had some because he broke his ankle, and they were
doing them together. “Jerry was starting to get sick. He was starting to
become a junkie.”[lxxiv]

Tom Davis met Jerry in 1971 [3/24/71?]
at the Sufi benefit, somehow just wandering right up onstage.[lxxv]

#women Manasha met JG 11/18/78, Mickey Mouse’s 50^th
bday.[lxxvi]
She slept in his room, no sex and he was hoping to score.

DJG “By 1979, the really hard #drugs had started to
come in.” “We were wasted spirit, soul and body.”[lxxvii]

After 1980 SNL gig, they went to the Blues Bar, and Davis
asks “Was it a competition to see who could do the most #drugs?”[lxxviii]

#houses from Inverness to Hepburn Heights ca. ’79 Nicki
Scully: “The kind of wall that Jerry built was nothing that required any
words. It was never articulated. He never yelled ‘Leave me alone’ at anybody.
There was just a palpable wall around him that grew larger and thicker and
deeper and more consistent, depending on the depth of the habit.”[lxxix]
#personality #drugs

Trist talked to JG about his habit. “Is it the exposure
to the public?” he asked? JG: “Yes, that’s part of it.”[lxxx]
But also being forced to be the leader. #burden #drugs

MG says the marriage in 12/31/81 was because JG was on the
hard stuff and could die at any time.[lxxxi]
#women

3/28/81 JG was reluctant, needed assurances about having
access to the #drugs.[lxxxii]

#drugs Rock “Doing any kind of opiate or any kind of
drug secretly is isolating … For Jerry, who was so outgoing, to end up that way
was just really depressing.”[lxxxiii]

Rock became go between for JG and GD – they didn’t engage
directly.[lxxxiv]

Steve Brown emphasizes that JG had been catered to for a
very long time. Didn’t shop for himself, cook for himself, score, whatever.

#food Steve Brown mentions Häagen
-Dazs and chili dogs.[lxxxv]
Rock affirms: “all he was eating was hot dogs and steaks and
Häagen-Dazs.”[lxxxvi]
Sue Stephens affirms that in ’86 “his freezer was full of
Häagen-Dazs.”[lxxxvii]

Nicki: “Jerry could also be a bear. He could be very
scary. He scared me a lot also. Because he was moody. … he had a bark. He
definitely had a bark.”[lxxxviii]
#chiaroscuro

Jon McIntire hadn’t seen JG for a couple of years, went up
to Hepburn Heights to visit. “He opened the door and said to me, ‘I’ve
been a stone fuckin’ junkie for the last two years. What you been doin’?’”[lxxxix]
#drugs

He was nodding, burning holes in things. He was swollen.
“We had to buy him new shoes because his ankles were so swollen,”
said Rock.[xc]

Rock: “swollen and pasty and wouldn’t take a shower and
wouldn’t change his clothes.”[xci]

#drugs When Nelson talked to him about it, he told David
“It’s my medicine.”[xcii]

Laird: “On top of everything, he was so fat. His shit
was hanging. It was coming over the top of his socks. You could sit there and
see the fat bulging out over the top of his shoes. He looked like the Pillsbury
Dough Boy. His skin was pasty, pale white. He looked like he could hardly
move.”[xciii]

Nicki left HH end of January ’81.[xciv]

Rock got doctor to come, and he told Rock “This man is
about to die.”[xcv]

#drugs Rock: “Being in the limelight all the damn time,
[211] Jerry wanted to go away into his privacy, into his own private scene, his
own private lift, with his own private drug.”[xcvi]
NB this is a dark expression of togotigi. #burden

#personality: Sara Ruppenthal: “He always avoided
emotional pain and he had a lot to avoid. … he was a very wounded soul and
wanted to escape. You can see the pattern with his escaping women. Whoever he
was connected with in his primary relationship, he was always sneaking around
to take drugs or be with another woman.”[xcvii]
#women #burden

Sat Santokh Singh Khalsa: “he didn’t feel he was
worthy. He told me on several occasions that all the fame and adulation he had
embarrassed him.”[xcviii]
#burden

one time he opened the door to McIntire with his pants
rolled up, and “his legs were all open sores”.[xcix]

9/29/84, per Greenfield: “His skin was so pale that in
the lights, it seemed to glow a dull gray-green.”[c]

The Bust, Laird says “He had just gone and copped. It
was enough for an army, man. But that was his score for the week.”[ci]
#drugs

Len dell’Amico says JG could not deal with everyone at the
intervention. “His way of dealing with it was to go and behave in such a
way as to gest busted … Look at the circumstances of what happened. To park in
a no-parking zone in a big rich car? Why not just put out a sign and ask for
it?”[cii]
Passive-aggressive. Jon McIntire: “Essentially, he was saying, ‘Stop me
from doing what I’m doing.’”[ciii]
#drugs

Len Dell’amico says by ’86 Garcia was his old self again.[civ]

’86 coma, MG says they gave him 30 MG of Valium by IV, but
he was allergic to it. “They killed him. His heard stopped. He died. The
hospital didn’t want anyone to know this but he died. They had to resuscitate
him, put him [217] on a respirator … They shocked him back. They had to do it
twice to get him to come back and then they had to keep him on the respirator
for over 48 hours.”[cv]
His blood sugar had been 1,500, the second highest ever seen at Marin General.[cvi]

Jon McI says he was out longer than reported, more than the
36 hours (in a coma).[cvii]

#coma fever dream Nelson “He saw these bugs running in
tubes. He saw these big beetles rushing into tubes.”[cviii]

When he came out of the coma, he said “I’m not
Beethoven” – rather cryptic.[cix]

His daughters Heather and Annabelle met for the first time at
the hospital after the coma.

#women He had McI tell Nora she was “out” while he
was still in the hospital.[cx]

Nelson notes that ’86 was his second near-death, after ’61.
’92 would be the third, how Christ-like!

After about three weeks, so ca. late August, Merl could come
over and John too.[cxi]
Merl specifics pp. 224-225.

Len dell’Amico narrates 11/21/86, out with JG and Sue and
Annette, Los Lobos at New George’s.[cxii]

#women MG says Manasha re-entered picture ca. March 1987.
She says she drew his eye 1/87 at the SF Civic, when she was up front and cut
off her long locks.[cxiii]
Manasha confirms Hartford ’87 they saw each other again.

Sandy Rothman was homeless in ’87 when he moved into a spare
room at JG and MG’s place in San Rafael.[cxiv]
#JGAB

During his recovery family went on first vacation, to
Hawaii. He dove. ca. early 1987, but in the post-coma recovery period. #scuba[cxv]

11/16/80 sit-in JG went to play as an act of solidarity with
Dylan, because the Christian shows weren’t selling very well. Unclear if it was
JG or Bill Graham’s idea. Nicki recounts that Bill G offered it, JG wanted to
know if it was Bill or Bob who was asking, Bill said “Bob”, it wasn’t
true. Dylan gave JG kind of a nothing vibe.[cxvi]

Broadway, Sandy says, was a dream come true for Jerry – he
“was in in heaven”—but it worked him too hard. #JGAB

Keelin’s original due date was Christmas ’87, so Hartford
3/26/87 fits the bill. MG comments that Jerry had a real loving relationship
with Keelin.

Bob Barsotti says JG lined up a tour with Edie and Hornsby
and Branford and a drummer and bassist. JG got all the managers to agree, but
Manasha thought it was about JG wanting to sleep with Edie, and she pressured
him to bail on it. Bob says that kind of thing, his creative ideas being
crushed, let him back down the bad path.[cxvii]
#burden

Sue Stephens: “The post-’87 success made it worse for
him. It was just too much. … the more he had, the more of a problem it became
with people wanting to get it from him and him having to deal with it.”[cxviii]
#money #burden

Bob Barsotti says Jerry “got caught in the cycle of
being the provider” for the Dead. “He could have done so much more,
but he go stuck.”[cxix]
#burden

Laird mentions JG fearing the power he had, Manson and all
that.[cxx]
It came up once earlier in the book, Hitler, but I didn’t note it. #burden

JG to Laird: “God, if I could play my
music and not have to deal with any of this, it would be the happiest day of my
life.“[cxxi]
#burden

The JG interview material with Greenfield was from 6/88,
Club Front. Greenfield perceived that JG was clean. #drugs

JGDG Gris says they did 40
sessions! Dawg: “he was overburdened with too many things. I think it was
the pressure of keeping all those people supported. I guess he was
trapped.”[cxxii] #burden

The GD, Barlow says, was “a cranky, hard, crusty old
dragon that knew how to survive”.[cxxiii]

Barlow GD vs solo togotigi “When they were running with
the pack, he was like everybody else in the band. As soon as he was off by
himself, then he was Jerry and he was really sorry. He was really
stricken.”[cxxiv]

Intervention for Justin K. 1990. JG says “These things
always feel like a lynching to me. If a good friend wants to come to my house
and die on drugs, that’s okay.” When it came time for JG to speak at the
intervention, he said “Do you really need to hear anything else except
that I love you? Just remember that.”[cxxv]
With tears in his eyes. Wow. BK was in rehab at the time. #drugs

1990 MG was done with it. Says JG had 2 or 3 girlfriends at
this time.[cxxvi]
#women

Justin K notes the cliques and camps – the coke guys over
here, the drinkers over here, the heroin users over there. When JG was using,
he’d hide in his private room, otherwise he’d be out and about.[cxxvii]

#drugs – could the Denver intervention have been 12/90
rather than 6/91? Randy Baker started working with JG summer ’91 for his drug
problem. Methadone clinic. When they did The Thrill is Gone video, JG was doing
the methadone clinic.[cxxviii]

When using, eye contact would stop, he’d be antsy and edgy
and hostile. Eileen says “he would become another person. He would stick
more by himself”.[cxxix]
#drugs

Gris says ’89 first time JG came
over to his studio.[cxxx]
#JGDG

#food: steak sandwiches. Laird says he drank Tang every
morning. Hot dogs, French fries, ice cream, wino sandwiches.[cxxxi]

last five years: withdrawal, isolation, Parish and Sue
Stephens keeping the gate, even old friends couldn’t see him. Vince Dibiase:
“sidestepping was an art, and he was a master at it.”[cxxxii]

Bob Barsotti- he never wanted to say no to anyone, so he
just avoided seeing people, to avoid being asked.[cxxxiii]
#personality

Denver show Barbara Meier was contacted, but JG didn’t want
to see her because he was strung out. This must have been 12/90, because later
she discusses May 91.[cxxxiv]
#women

GD wasn’t giving JG enough
creative outlet, too formulaic after a time, MG says – the art gave him another
outlet.[cxxxv]
#art

Summer ’92 Vince D took over the
art.[cxxxvi]
#art

Summer ’92 collapse. Tuesday morning, JG came downstairs new
place in Nicasio, lips were black, he was pale, his shins were black. His
tongue was white. He was slipping into and out of a coma, Yen-Wei did
acupuncture and brought him back. Randy says it was right-side congestive heart
failure, caused by emphysema.[cxxxvii]

Acupuncture 3x weekly through end ’92.[cxxxviii]

#women 12/30/92 Barbara was in Bay Area – Jerry said he was
going out for cigs and just literally didn’t come home – went to Hunter’s. BM
recounts: “He just left. He didn’t say anything to her.”[cxxxix]
Manasha confirms “Jerry said he was going out to do some work and he just
never came back.”[cxl]
11/92 or earlier 12/92 she had given him an ultimatum, and he chose drugs.

#women Jerry charged Vince D with delivering the Dear John
Letter to Manasha.[cxli]

January 93 three weeks in Hawaii. Bob Hunter and Jerry wrote
six songs. “Gaspar de Lago” is Jerry’s alter-ego’s name? per Barbara,
p. 283. JG was clean, asked BM to marry him. #women

#women Rented a furnished condo in Tiburon, there ca. 1/93
for a year.[cxlii]
Barbara went away for four days to deal with stuff in Boulder, and JG
completely lost his shit, and also ran into DK.[cxliii]

#women Gloria: JG “was always hopelessly in love with
whatever woman he was with at the time.”[cxliv]

#women Barbara says JG “had a very jealous and possessive
streak”.[cxlv]

early 93 he had a project with Heather and the Redwood City
Symphony.[cxlvi]

He started using again, Barbara thought it was nicotine
withdrawals. “He was being a bastard and I thought it was just because he
was quitting smoking. I thought he was just being a bear. Oh, he was vile. He
was cold and he was withholding.”[cxlvii]

BM says music was the only realm of his life in which JG
took responsibility.[cxlviii]
#why

March 93 tour “he was cold and withdrawn. He was being
a real bastard and it was awful”[cxlix]

She said she knew he was using, and he threw her out,
basically.[cl]

Ireland July 1993. ca. October
1993, he was supposed to go to Japan, but he bailed at the last minute. They
were due back a day and a half before the JGB tour started 10/31/93.[cli]

January 94 JGDG gigs tension
between JG and DG crews. JG was pissed, steaming. He couldn’t hear anything on
stage. Dexter Johnson says “it didn’t seem like a fun place to be”.[clii]

5/19/94 he collapsed between sets,
per Bob Barsotti. He was supposed to go to Ireland with DK ca. the next day.

Vince: “He couldn’t shut it off. I think the use of
drugs helped him shut it off. Because the creativity was there round the clock.
It just kept on coming through him. It was almost a curse. And a
blessing.”[cliii]
#drugs

Barsotti: “We had to cut back on Jerry Garcia Band
shows because he wasn’t capable of doing it anymore. We had to keep canceling
shows and stopping tours because physically he wasn’t able to do it. That was
why he used to play twenty times a year at the Warfield. The only place he
could get it together physically to play with the Jerry Garcia Band was by
getting in his car and driving for a half an hour to the Warfield. If he could
do that, then he could play. But if it was any more than that, even like San
Jose or Santa Cruz, he couldn’t deal with it. He didn’t want to do it.”[cliv]

Late years, he met Bobby Kennedy Jr. and did some t-shirt
art for the Hudson Riverkeeper Project. ca. early 1995.[clv]

1995, per Gloria: “Jerry was bored, frustrated and
unhappy and he didn’t want to try”.[clvi]

Bob B tells of the 2/95 JGB cancellations. “I don’t
think his hand ever really came all the way back after that. The first few
shows he did with the Garcia Band, it was kind of embarrassing. He couldn’t
play the notes. He was simplifying every solo way way down to the bare
bones.”[clvii]

Vince: “the last five years of his life, he didn’t
really hang out with anybody. He didn’t like being bothered or going out. He
was very reclusive.”[clviii]

Before spring tour in ’95, his blood sugar level was 500,
per Vince.[clix]

Per Sue, he said that GD playing big places “had no
dignity for him anymore”.[clx]

Bob Barsotti, on the shit scene summer ’95, JG was aware.
“But Jerry was a leader who refused to be a leader and that was a
problem.”[clxi]

Chesley Milliken: “Going out with the Grateful Dead
wasn’t a lot of fun to Jerry anymore. He admitted that to me.”[clxii]

Bob Barsotti: “We had a big Jerry Garcia Band tour
scheduled for November ’95. … Then, as we got about halfway through the summer
tour, Steve Parish said, ‘No, you got to cancel the dates. He can’t do it.’
That was when Steve finally said we couldn’t be taking him away anywhere.”[clxiii]

Milliken says he copped as soon as he got back from Betty
Ford. Randy agrees, but it was to deal with his physical pain from his various
maladies, not because he needed the H per se.[clxiv]
#drugs

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