Jerry Garcia

Jerome John "Jerry the Bulldog" Garcia (August 1, 1942- August 9, 1995) was an American musician, songwriter, and artist best known for being the lead guitarist and vocalist of the psychedelic band the Grateful Dead. Garcia was viewed by the media as the leader or "spokesman" of the group. Performing with the Grateful Dead for its entire three decade career (which spanned from 1965 to 1995), Garcia participated in a variety of side projects, including the Jerry Garcia Band, Old and in the Way, the Garcia/Grisman acoustic duo, and several solo albums. He also contributed to a number of albums by other artists over the years as a session musician and was very well known by many for his highly distinctive and original guitar playing style. Garcia was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Grateful Dead in 1994 and was ranked 13th in the Rolling Stone Magazine's list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.

Precipitated by an unhealthy weight, bad eating habits, and drug use, Garcia collapsed into a diabetic coma in 1986, waking up five days later. The coma had a profound effect on him. It forced him to to have to relearn how to play the guitar, as well as other more basic skills. Garcia endeavored to live on healthier terms until his sudden death in a rehabilitation facility in August of 1995.

Early Years:
Jerome John Garcia was born in San Francisco, California, on August 1, 1942, to Spanish-American Jose Ramon Garcia and Swedish/Irish-American Ruth Marie Clifford. His parents named him after the famous composer Jerome Kern. Garcia was their second and final child, preceded by Clifford "Tiff" Garcia, who was born in 1937.Garcia was influenced by music at an early age, taking piano lessons for much of his childhood. His father, Jose, was employed as a professional musician, and his mother Ruth, a hospital nurse, enjoyed playing the piano. Also, his father's extended family (he had emigrated from Spain in 1919) would often sing during reunions.

At the age of four, Garcia experienced the amputation of two-thirds of his right finger. Given the chore of steadying wood while his elder brother chopped, he inadvertently put his finger in the way of the falling ax, producing what would later be used as almost a signature of his art and music. Garcia had quite a few traumatic or tragic events occur during his youth. Less than a year after losing a segment of his finger, he witnessed the death of his father. While camping with his family near Arcata in 1947, his father brought him along for a hike when he went fly-fishing; his father soon slipped, plunged into the deep rapids of the Trinity River, and drowned, much to Garcia's shock and horror.

Having listened to music by Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, and Eddie Cochran during his youth, Garcia's one wish was to have an electric guitar. On his 15th birthday, his mother purchased him an accordion, which he pleaded with her to exchanged for a guitar. She eventually relented, buying a Danelectro with a small amplifier. During the following summer, Garcia took up an art program at the San Francisco Art Institute in order to further his burgeoning interest in the visual arts.

Around 1958, Garcia attended tenth grade at Balboa High School. During this period, he was introduced to marijuana. Garcia would later reminisce: "Me and a friend of mine went up into the hills with two joints, the San Francisco foothills, and smoked these joints and just got so high and laughed and roared and went skinny down the streets doing funny things and just having a helluva time."

Garcia frequented a Victorian-style house during the early sixties, then commonly known by its address 710 Ashbury Street. It was situated in the midst of the Haight-Ashbury district, most famous for being the center of the counterculture movement in San Francisco. He performed at 710 Ashbury during his early years, and would, within a few years, live with the rest of the Grateful Dead there. In 1962, Garcia met Phil Lesh, the eventual bassist of the Grateful Dead, during a party at 710 Ashbury. Lesh would later write in his autobiography that Garcia resembled the "composer Claude Debussy: dark, curly hair, goatee, Impressionist eyes."

Garcia later dropped out of Balboa High School in his junior year and enlisted in the United States Army. After completing Basic Training and Service School Training as an auto maintenance helper at Fort Ord, Garcia was stationed at Fort Winfield Scott in the Presidio of San Francisco. Garcia was still spending his hours at his leisure picking up the acoustic guitar. He was given a general discharge on December 14, 1960, after accruing two courts-marital and eight AWOLs. After his discharge, Garcia traveled to Palo Alto to experience the alternative scene then surrounding Stanford University. It was at this time that Garcia began to realize that he needed to begin playing the guitar in earnest- a move which meant giving up his love of drawing and painting. This decision was softened when Garcia recognized the impressive talent of his friend Paul Speegle.

Garcia soon met Robert Hunter in April of 1960. Hunter would go on to become a long-time lyrical collaborator with the Grateful Dead. Living out of his car next to Robert Hunter in a lot behind 710 Ashbury, Garcia and Hunter began to participate in the local art and musical scene, sometimes playing at Kepler's Books. Garcia performed his first concert with Hunter, each earning five dollars. Garcia and Hunter would also play in a band with David Nelson, a contributor to a few Grateful Dead albums, labeled the Wildwood Boys. In 1960, Garcia and his friend Paul Speegle were involved in a car accident. Garcia was thrown from the vehicle, resulting in a broken collarbone. Speegle, however, was fatally wounded by the crash. The accident served as an awakening for Garcia, who later elaborated: "That's where my life began. Before then I was always living at less than capacity. I was idling. That was the slingshot for the rest of my life. It was like a second chance. Then I got serious."

While attending another party at 710 Ashbury, Phil Lesh approached Garcia suggesting that they record some songs, with the intention of getting them played on the radio station KPFA. Using an old Wollensak tape recorded, they recorded "Matty Groves" and "The Long Black Veil", among several other tunes. Their efforts were not in vain, later landing a spot on the show, where a ninety-minute special was done specifically on Garcia. It was broadcast under the title "The Long Black Veil and Other Ballads: An Evening with Jerry Garcia." Garcia soon began playing and teaching acoustic guitar and banjo during this time. 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 Bob Weir, and on New Year's Eve in 1963, he introduced Weir and Garcia to each other.

Between 1962 and 1964, Garcia sang and performed mainly bluegrass, old-time and folk music. One of the bands Garcia was known to perform with was the Sleepy Hollow Hog Stompers, a bluegrass act. The group consisted of Jerry Garcia on guitar, banjo, vocals and harmonica, Marshall Leicester on banjo, guitar, and vocals, and Dick Arnold on fiddle and vocals. Soon thereafter, Garcia joined a local bluegrass and folk band called Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions, whose membership also included Ron "Pigpen" McKernan. Around this time, the psychedelic LSD was beginning to gain prominence. Garcia first began experimenting with LSD in 1964; later, when asked how it changed his life, he remarked: "Well, it changed everything... the effect was that it freed me because I suddenly realized that my little attempt as having a straight life and doing that was really a fiction and just wasn't going to work out. Luckily I wasn't far enough into it for it to be shattering or anything; it was like a realization that just made me feel immensely relieved."

In 1965, Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions evolved into the Warlocks, with the addition of Phil Lesh on bass guitar and Bill Kreutzmann on percussion. However, the band quickly learned that another group was already performing under their newly selected name, prompting another name change. After several suggestions, Garcia came up the the name by opening either an old Oxford or Britannica World Language Dictionary. He was then promptly greeted with the "Grateful Dead". The definition provided for "Grateful Dead" was "a dead person, or his angel, showing gratitude to someone who, as an act of charity, arranged their burial." The band's immediate reaction was disapproval. Garcia later explained the group's feelings towards the name: "I didn't like it, [Bill] Kreutzmann didn't like it and nobody really wanted to hear about it". Despite their dislike of the name, it quickly spread by word of mouth, and soon became their official title.

Career with the Grateful Dead:
Garcia served as lead guitarist, vocalist, and principal songwriter of the Grateful Dead for their entire career. Garcia composed such songs as "Dark Star", "Franklin's Tower", "Ripple", and "Scarlet Begonias", among many others. Robert Hunter, an ardent collaborator with the band, contributed lyrics to all but a few of Garcia's songs. Garcia was well-noted for his "soulful extended guitar improvisations", which would frequently feature interplay between himself and his fellow band members. His fame, as well as the band's, arguably rested on their ability to never play a song the same way twice. Oftentimes, Garcia would take cues from rhythm guitarist Bob Weir on when to solo, remarking that "there are some... kinds of ideas that would really throw me if I had to create a harmonic bridge between all the things going on rhythmically with two drums and Phil [Lesh's] innovative bass playing. Weir's ability to solve that sort of problem is extraordinary... harmonically, I take a lot of my solo cues from Bob."

When asked to describe his approach to soloing, Garcia commented: "It keeps on changing. I still basically revolve around the melody and the way it's broken up into phrases as I perceive them. With most solo's, I tend to play something that phrases the way the melody does; my phrases may be more dense or have different value, but they'll occur in the same places in the song." Garcia and the band toured almost constantly from their formation in 1965 until Garcia's death in 1995, a stint which gave credit to the name "endless tour". Periodically, there were breaks due to exhaustion or health problems, often due to the unstable health and drug use of Garcia. During their three decade span, the Grateful Dead played 2,314 shows.

Side projects:
In addition to the Grateful Dead, Garcia had numerous side projects, the most notable being the Jerry Garcia Band. Garcia also spent a lot of time in the recording studio helping out fellow musician friends in session work, often adding guitar, vocals, pedal steel, sometimes banjo and piano and even producing. He played on over 50 studio albums the styles of which were eclectic and varied, including bluegrass, rock, folk, blues, country, jazz, electronic music, gospel, funk, and reggae. Artists who sought Garcia's help included the likes of the Jefferson Airplane (most notably Surrealist Pillow), 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. He was also one of the first musicians to really cover in depth Motown music in the early-1970's and probably the most prolific coverer of Bob Dylan songs.

Having studied art at the San Francisco Art Institute, Garcia embarked on a second career in the visual arts. He offered for sale and auction to the public a number of illustrations, lithographs, and water colors. Some of those pieces became the basis of a line of men's neckties characterized by bright colors and abstract patterns. Even in 2005, ten years after Garcia's death, new styles and designs continue to be produced and sold.

Information courtesy of:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Garcia