Jerry Garcia was the lead guitarist, vocalist, and spokesman for the seminal '60s rock roll band the Grateful Dead. Throughout his career, he led the Dead through numerous changes, becoming one of the most famous figures in the history of rock roll. Simultaneously, Garcia pursued an eclectic array of side projects, ranging from the bluegrass group Old in the Way to his folky solo recordings.
Garcia stayed active as a member of the Grateful Dead and as a solo performer until his death in 1995.
Garcia learned to play guitar when he was 15 years old, originally playing folk and rock roll. In 1959, when he was 17 years old, he spent a brief time in the army.
When he left the military after a matter of months, he moved to Palo Alto, CA, where he met and became friends with , who would later become his lyricist. Garcia bought a banjo in 1962 and began playing in local bluegrass bands. Within a few years, he was a member of Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions, a popular local bluegrass and folk band whose membership also included and .
In 1965, this group evolved into , which would in turn become the Grateful Dead in 1966.
Over the course of the next five years, the Grateful Dead began building a reputation as a mesmerizing live act. During this time, Garcia guested with a number of bands, both in concert and in the studio; among the artists he appeared with are the New Riders of the Purple Sage (a band which he helped form), , and Crosby, Stills, Nash Young.
In 1970, the Grateful Dead began to shift their music back toward their folk, country, and bluegrass roots with the albums and . The following year, Garcia began a solo career with , which was released on Douglas Records. For the next few years, Garcia recorded solo albums frequently, often with keyboardist .
In 1973, he was one of the founding members of the bluegrass supergroup Old in the Way, which also featured , , and John Kahn.
Garcia's solo efforts slowed in the early '80s, as he battled heroin addiction and diabetes. After the Grateful Dead scored their first hit album in 1987 with In the Dark, Garcia pursued a number of solo projects, including several acoustic duet records with and a handful of live tours and albums with the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band.
For the first half of the '90s, Garcia concentrated on tours and albums, as the band confirmed their status as one of the most popular concert acts in America. However, the guitarist slowly sank back into heroin addiction. Late in the summer of 1995, he entered Serenity Knolls, a drug rehabilitation facility in Forest Knolls, CA.
While he was attempting to recover, Garcia died in his sleep of a heart attack on August 9, 1995. Several months after his death, the Grateful Dead announced their disbandment. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
The rock and roll industry has seen its share of bands and singers.What is remarkable about the is that the band has been performing since the 1960s and its following endured for several decades. At the head of this long-lived group was singer and guitarist, Jerry Garcia (1942-1995).
The band has become a benchmark in music history.
According to Rolling Stone, the Grateful Dead was ranked 29th among the 40 highest-paid entertainers in 1989, with an estimated annual income of $12.5 million. "[A]fter decades of touring with a consistency and success unmatched by any other band, the Grateful Dead have a relationship with the Deadheads - the fans who follow the band with a near-religious Fervor - that is unique in the history of rock and roll," Fred Goodman wrote in Rolling Stone in 1989.
"On the eve of the release of their 22nd album, Built to Last, the Grateful Dead stand as an American dynasty like no other."
Heading that dynasty, Garcia was as much a product as a shaper of his time. On August 1, 1942, in , Jerome John Garcia was born to a family of music lovers.
His father, Joe Garcia, was a ballroom jazz musician and bartender who came to California from Spain in the 1920s. His mother, Ruth Garcia, was a Swedish-Irish nurse whose family immigrated to San Francisco during the gold rush. In a 1991 interview with James Henke of Rolling Stone, Garcia talked about his father.
"He played woodwinds, clarinet mainly. He was a jazz musician. He had a big band - like a 40-piece orchestra-in the 1930s.
The whole deal, with strings, harpist, vocalist. I remember him playing me to sleep at night. I just barely remember the sound of it.
But I'm named after Jerome Kern, that's how seriously the bug bit my father."
When he was just five years old, Garcia lost his father in an accident. "He was fishing in one of those rivers in California, like the American River," Garcia recalled in the interview with Henke.
"We were on vacation, and I was there on the shore. I actually watched him go under. It was horrible.
I was just a little kid, and I didn't really understand what was going on, but then, of course, my life changed. It was one of those things that afflicted my childhood. I had all my bad luck back then, when I was young and could deal with it.
" The other childhood trauma was the loss of a finger on his right hand. "[T]hat happened when I was five too. My brother and I were chopping wood.
And I would pick up the pieces of wood, take my hand away, pick up another piece, and boom! It was an accident." The shock, however, came when the bandages were removed and young Garcia realized his finger was truly gone.
"But after that, it was okay, because as a kid, if you have a few little things that make you different, it's a good score. So I got a lot of mileage out of having a missing finger when I was a kid."
After his father's death, he lived for a time with his grandparents and then returned to live with his mother, who took over her husband's bar.
Located next to the Sailor's Union of the Pacific, the bar was frequented by sailors who traveled around the world. "They went out and sailed to the and the , the Philippines and all that, and they would come and hang out in the bar all day long and talk to me when I was a kid. It was great fun for me," he told Henke.
One sailor, an old sea captain, he remembers distinctly: "he'd tell me these incredible stories. And that was one of the reasons I couldn't stay in school. School was a little too boring.
And these guys also gave me a glimpse into a larger universe that seemed so attractive and fun, and you know, crazy ."
Ironically, Garcia's first foray into music was boring as well. He took piano lessons for eight years and hated them.
"I took lessons on the piano forever - my mom made me," he said to Anthony DeCurtis of Rolling Stone in 1993. "None of it sank in. I never did learn how to sight-read for the piano - I bluffed my way through.
I was attracted to music very early on, but it never occurred to me it was something to do - in the sense that when I grow up I'm going to be a musician." And then Garcia's older brother started tuning in to early rock and roll and rhythm and blues. "When I was 15, I fell madly in love with rock and roll.
Chuck Berry was happening big, Elvis Presley - not so much Elvis Presley, but I really liked Gene Vincent, you know, the other rock guys, the guys that played guitar good: Eddie Cochran, Buddy Holly, Bo Diddley." At that time, the electric guitar was a new phenomenon and as soon as he heard it, Garcia was hooked. He asked his mother for one for his birthday and started on the road he still travels.
"I was just beside myself with joy. I started banging away on it without having the slightest idea of anything. I didn't know how to tune it up….
I never took any lessons. I don't even think there was anybody teaching around the Bay area. I mean electric guitar was like from Mars, you know.
You didn't see 'em even."
Lessons or no lessons, Garcia learned his way around the instrument and immersed himself in the radical music of the day. " wasn't cool, but I loved rock and roll," he explained to DeCurtis about his formative years.
"I used to have these fantasies about 'I want rock and roll to be like respectable music.' I wanted it to be like art…. I wanted to do something that fit in with the art institute, that kind of self-conscious art - 'art' as opposed to 'popular culture.
"' Independent and strong-willed, Garcia took to spending time with a rowdy group of San Francisco teenagers. At 17, he joined the U.S.
Army and was stationed in San Francisco. Garcia, with idle time on his hands, practiced acoustic guitar in the barracks, learned songs over the radio by ear, and copied finger positions from books.
After nine months, he left the army and took to living in his car, playing music, and absorbing the "scene" of San Francisco in the early 1960s.
At about that time, he went to the Art Institute in San Francisco to study painting. "I wasn't playing guitar so much - I'd picked up the five-string banjo in the army," he told Bill Barich of New Yorker in 1993. "I listened to records, slowed them down with a finger, and learned the tunings note by note.
By then I was getting pretty serious about music - especially about bluegrass." He and a friend toured numerous bluegrass festivals in the Midwest and absorbed the unique sound of the music. Although he made a little money giving lessons, he often lived in his car in a vacant lot in East Palo Alto, California.
He began to meet other young musicians, like folk guitarist Bob Weir and blues-harmonica player and organist Ron McKernan. They formed the Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions in 1964. Once the invaded the United States, Garcia's band re-formed as an electric blues band, the Warlocks, in 1965.
At the same time, radical events were taking place in San Francisco. Ken Kesey, who was taking part in government-sponsored tests, began throwing parties called the Acid Tests. It was at these energetic happenings that the Warlocks developed the sound that became known as psychedelic rock.
"What the really was was formlessness," Garcia explained to Rolling Stone's Goodman in 1989. "It's like the study of chaos. It may be that you have to destroy forms or ignore them in order to see other levels of organization.
For me, that's what the was - that's what it was a metaphor for. If you go into a situation with nothing planned, sometimes wonderful stuff happens. LSD was certainly an important part of that for me.
" Late in 1965 the band changed its name after Garcia picked "grateful dead" at random from a dictionary. Essentially ignoring the definition included, the band members chose to interpret the new phrase as signifying "cyclical change." In 1966 the band members moved into a house in San Francisco to live communally and performed at well-known music halls.
In addition, the Grateful Dead also performed free concerts at Golden Gate Park to contrast the business attitudes that were beginning to pervade rock and roll and threaten their anarchist, hippie lifestyle.
Their first album, The Grateful Dead, was released by Warner Brothers in 1967. The band's early experience with a large studio corporation and extensive touring was not a happy one.
"Their first four albums had not sold well, leaving them in debt to their label, Warner Brothers," Barich of New Yorker reported. "But they recouped with two straight hits in 1970, Workingman's Dead, and American Beauty, which were both primarily acoustic and were distinguished by the richness of the songs and the band's clean, crisp playing." The Grateful Dead used their success to leave the label, buy a small house, and begin handling their own business affairs.
Barich continued, "In 1972, they tipped off their fans to their new free-form operation by inserting an apparently harmless message in the liner notes of a live album recorded on tour in Europe. "DEAD FREAKS UNITE!' the message read.
"Who are you? Where are you? How are you?
Send us your name and address and we'll keep you informed.' With one gesture, the Dead eliminated the barriers between themselves and their audience, and established a direct flow of communication." At last count, Barich noted, there were 90,000 Deadheads - as their fans are known - on the U.
S. mailing list and 20,000 on the European one.
Members of the Grateful Dead, Garcia included, survived the turbulent 1960s, the wrath of critics and fans alike - when albums and concerts did not hold up to expectations - drug abuse, the death of some band members, and several decades of changing musical tastes.
Yet Garcia's band was still going strong in what he termed their "golden years," the 1990s.
Remarking on the appeal of the Grateful Dead to succeeding generations, Garcia commented to Henke in the 1991 Rolling Stone interview that "here we are, we're getting into our fifties, and where are these people who keep coming to our shows coming from? What do they find so fascinating about these middle-aged bastards playing basically the same thing we've always played?
I mean, what do seventeen-year-olds find fascinating about this? I can't believe it's just because they're interested in picking up on the 1960s, which they missed. Come on, hey, the 1960s were fun, but shit, it's fun being young, you know; nobody really misses out on that.
So what is it about the 1990s in America? There must be a dearth of fun out there in America. Or adventure.
Maybe that's it, maybe we're just one of the last adventures in America."
When speaking with Barich of New Yorker, Garcia offered another angle from which to understand the band's success: He thinks that the band affords its followers "a tear in reality' - a brief vacation from the mundane," Barich wrote. "The Dead design their shows and their music to be ambiguous and open-ended … they intend an evening to be both reactive and interactive.
A Deadhead gets to join in on an experiment that may or may not be going anywhere in particular, and such an opportunity is rare in American life." In addition to the limitless possibilities of their music, the Grateful Dead also offer a spiritual release for both band members and fans. Garcia explained to Henke in 1991: "I thought that maybe this idea of transforming principle has something to do with it.
Because when we are on stage, what we really want … [is] to be transformed from ordinary players into extraordinary ones, like forces of a larger consciousness. And the audience wants to be transformed from whatever ordinary reality they may be in to something a little wider, something that enlarges them. So maybe it's that notion of transformation, a seat-of-the-pants shamanism, that is something to do with why the Grateful Dead keep pulling them in.
Maybe that's what keeps the audience coming back and what keeps fascinating us, too."
Success came at a price, however. In July 1986, Garcia went into a diabetic coma for a day.
He has struggled with drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, and weight problems as well. In the early 1990s, the guitarist had trimmed down and began following a better diet and healthier lifestyle. He branched into the clothing business with a line of ties based on his drawings - even though Garcia never wore a tie.
Despite valiant efforts to improve his health, too much damage had already been done. On August 9, 1995 Garcia died of heart failure in Forest Knolls, California.
From the creative mind of a San Francisco child who hated school and homework grew one of the most influential bands in decades.
Despite his abhorrence of school, Garcia was a scholarly man and perhaps that has been an intrinsic part of his appeal. "I owe a lot of who I am and what I've been and what I've done to the beatniks of the 1950s and to the poetry and art and music that I've come in contact with," he said to Henke in 1991. "I feel like I'm part of a continuous line of a certain thing in American culture, of a root.
"
Current Biography 1990, H.W. Wilson Co.
, 1990.
Musician, October 1981.
New Yorker, October 11, 1993.
People, July 25, 1994.
Rolling Stone, November 30, 1989; October 31, 1991; January 21, 1993; September 2, 1993.
Nobody stopped thinking about those psychedelic experiences.
Once you've been to some of those places, you think, How can I get back there again but make it a little easier on myself? 
You do not merely want to be considered just the best of the best. You want to be considered the only ones who do what you do.
Of mixed , , and extraction, Garcia was . After a childhood spent in San Francisco's Excelsior district, he dropped After completing Basic Training and Service School Training as an auto maintenance helper, at California, Garcia was stationed at Fort Winfield in San Francisco's . Garcia was still spending his hours at his leisure, picking up the .
He was discharged on December 14, 1960, after accruing two courts martial and eight . After his discharge Garcia, , and a poet named teamed up to make music—later on, Hunter would become the mainly , and music. One of Garcia's students was Bob Matthews, who later engineered many of the Grateful Dead's albums.
Matthews went to high school (and was friends) with , and on New Year's Eve thereafter, Garcia joined a local and called , whose membership also included group evolved into the —which, with the addition of and , would in turn become the Grateful Dead later that Garcia's mature guitar-playing melded elements from the various kinds of music that had enthralled him. Echoes of "hillbilly" But the "roots music" behind hillbilly and bluegrass had its influence, too, and melodic riffs from fiddle can be distinguished. There was also early (like , and ), contemporary (such as style.
Don Rich was the sparkling country guitar player in 's "Buckaroos" band of the 1960s, but besides Rich's style, both Garcia's playing (on Grateful Dead records and others) and his standard electric guitar work, were influenced by another of Owens's Buckaroos of that time, pedal-steel player Tom Blumley.
of so-called "signatures" and, in his work through the years with the Grateful Dead, one of these was lead lines making much use of rhythmic triplets (examples include the songs "Good Morning Little School Girl," "New Speedway Boogie," "Brokedown Palace," "Deal," "Loser," " ," "That's It For The Other One," "U.S.
Blues," "Sugaree," and "Don't In 1967, Jerry Garcia lived at 710 Ashbury Street, San Francisco, in the heart of the district and played at the which inaugurated the .
From to , the Grateful Dead toured almost constantly, developing a fan base known as , renowned for their intensity of devotion. Some fans dedicated their lives to the band, following the Grateful Dead from concert to concert, making a living by selling handmade goods, arts, and crafts.
In addition to the Grateful Dead (who frequently toured for long periods), Garcia had numerous side projects, the most notable bands, including collaborations with noted bluegrass (the documentary film " " chronicles the deep, long-term friendship between Garcia and Grisman). Other groups of which Garcia was a member at one time or various groups and jam sessions, and he appeared on 's 1988 album, .
As well as thirty years on the road and in the studio with the Grateful Dead, Garcia also clocked up over twenty five years with his various solo projects, the styles of which were eclectic and varied.
Including bluegrass, rock, folk, blues, country, jazz, electronic music, gospel, funk, reggae and jam band. He was also one of the first musicians to really cover in depth motown music in the early 70's and probably the most prolific coverer of Bob Dylan songs.
after session musician by many - often adding guitar, vocals, pedal steel, sometimes banjo and piano and even producing.
As well as all his Grateful Dead and solo Band work, he also clocked up a lot of studio time with other recording artists and he played on over 50 studio albums by other artists including the likes of the Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship, Tom Fogerty, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, David Bromberg, Robert Hunter, Peter Rowan, Warren Zevon, Country Joe McDonald, Ken Nordine, Ornette Coleman, Bruce Hornsby, Bob Dylan and many more.
Throughout the early 1970s, Garcia, Grateful Dead bassist , drummer on their Round Records subsidiary) and L, an unfinished dance work.
to October 1971, when increased commitments with the Dead forced him to opt out of the group.
He appears as a band member on , and produced Home, Home On The Road, a 1974 live album by the band. He also contributed pedal steel guitar to the enduring hit "Teach Your Children" by
Despite considering himself a novice on the pedal steel and having all but given up the instrument by 1973, he routinely ranked high in player polls. After a long lapse, he played it once more with in 1987.
An avid reader and cinefile, Garcia was particularly fond of Kurt Vonnegut's and owned the novel's film rights for many years, struggling to adapt it with the likes of Having studied at the , Garcia made a second career out of painting.
A series of based on those paintings has been quite lucrative. The popularity of the ties might be attributed to their wild patterns and bright colors. Even in 2005, ten years after Garcia's death, new styles and designs continue to be sold at high-end men's stores.
Jerry Garcia had one brother Clifford 'Tiff' Garcia; during his life, he married three times, and had four daughters: his first wife, Sara Ruppenthal Garcia, with whom he had a daughter, Heather; Garcia, with whom he had daughters Anabelle and Theresa; and Deborah Koons Garcia. Also, Jerry Garcia had a relationship with Manasha Matheson and had a fourth daughter with her, Keelin Garcia.
During the heyday, in the mid 1960s, Jerry was a prominent member of the community.
Garcia was charismatic and was frequently featured on local radio and was the focus of many newspaper and magazine articles. Of course, he turned up as an icon on posters, too. Young people were impressed with Jerry not only because of his talent and his tendency to good cheer and general goodwill, but because of his obvious intelligence, his libertarian sort of attitude, and his willingness to speak his mind.
Though he was widely regarded as a kind of guru figure in the San Francisco psychedelic scene, Jerry couldn’t take the role seriously himself. It was no secret that drugs, especially psychedelics, were condoned in his social circle and among the "Deadheads" who devotedly attended Grateful Dead concerts everywhere. Garcia’s propensity to use addictive drugs was evident to those who knew him by the mid 1970s.
Jerry Garcia died on , , of a exacerbated by . Garcia, who of his adult life, was staying at the Serenity Knolls drug rehabilitation center in Forest Knolls, California at the time. On his passing, he was honored by as being "an American icon.
" Memorial services were held in on , . Along with the band members, his family and friends, thousands of fans were present, many singing and playing in drum circles. Weir in a dream.
named Garcia the 13th greatest guitarist of all time.
after the guitarist and consists of "cherry ice cream with cherries and fudge flakes." It quickly became the most popular flavor.
For a month after Garcia's death, the ice cream was made with as a way of mourning.
Garcia was inducted into the in 1994.
resolution to name the amphitheater in McLaren Park "The Jerry Garcia Amphitheater.
" The amphitheater is located in the , where Garcia grew up. The first show to happen at the Jerry Garcia Amphitheater was Jerry Day 2005 on August 7, 2005. Tiff Garcia was the first person to welcome everybody to the "Jerry Garcia Amphitheater.
" Jerry Day is an annual celebration of Jerry in his childhood neighborhood. The dedication ceremony (Jerry Day 2) on October 29, 2005 was officiated by mayor .
member released his first solo-album, called "Searching for Jerry Garcia" in honor of the late member.
Upon the release, Proof said: "He played every kind of music -- he had jazz albums, classical albums, he went against the grain," Proof said. "He didn't care about the record sales ..
. I mean, his shows outsold his record sales. That almost don't make sense to me.
"
One of Garcia's legacies is the Jam band scene the Dead spawned. , and dozens of other groups not only play in the Dionysian spirit of the Dead, but keep the Deadhead spirit alive through shows that are, at their best, as much about community as they are about music.
, , , , , , , , Mark Karan, , Kenny Brooks, , and Jackie LaBranch.
Two of Garcia's longtime bandmates and friends, and did not attend. Phil Lesh stated that "my son went away to college and we had all kinds of family things going that week."
sandals and upscale men's ties.
It also has been used in naming a milkshake Ben jerry's is marketing. The milkshake is named 'Cherry Garcia', with Jerry garcia's name duly licensed and revealed on the package.
Garcia was brought up in the movie "Half Baked".
Jim Breuer's character, Brian, bought Garcia's ashes in a bag. In a later scene Jerry appeared out of the ashes to save the day, and said "Peace" a typical word used during Garcia's era.
Surrealistic Pillow, one of the classic and most iconic albums of all time.
At the time of it's release Garcia was barely known outside San Francisco as the Grateful Dead were still a young and growing band. It enchanced Garcia's reputation as a musician and otherwise.
wondered how to perform his own songs live, he looks at how the the Dead/Garcia did it.
Dylan gave the following glowing tribute when he heard of Jerry's death: "There's no way to measure his greatness or magnitude as a person or as a player. I don't think eulogizing will do him justice. He was that great - much more than a superb musician with an uncanny ear and dexterity.
He is the very spirit personified of whatever is muddy river country at its core and screams up into the spheres. He really had no equal. To me he wasn't only a musician and friend, he was more like a big brother who taught and showed me more than he'll ever know.
There are a lot of spaces and advances between the Carter Family, Buddy Holly and, say, Ornette Coleman, a lot of universes, but he filled them all without being a member of any school. His playing was moody, awesome, sophisticated, hypnotic and subtle. There's no way to convey the loss.
It just digs down really deep." - Bob Dylan on Garcia. [Theatre 1839, July 29 30, 1977 
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