Philzone.com - Feast of Diamonds: An August Conversation with David Gans

Worthy of One So Particular

'Jerry, even in your silence, the familiar pressure comes to bear, demanding that I pull words from the air'. Lyricist Robert Hunter felt that weight, and it was no wonder.

He was composing an ode "worthy of one so particular".

I felt a similar pressure driving up the dusty interstate to meet a man whose radio program I'd listened to like the Fireside Chats.

Who better, I thought, than David Gans, to comment on the state of the scene eleven years after Jerry's passing.

I came in knowing one thing about David. He seemed to be one of the only guys Jerry and Hunter and Phil and the boys would really sit down and open up to, and these guys seemed to ask all the right questions.

"Jerry was the greatest interview ever. He was a guy who interested in life. He was well read. And he paid attention".

Feeling like a moth-to-the-flame, I felt compelled to bombard him with questions about the men whom I'd held as heroes or something like it: Hunter, Garcia, Owsley Stanley, and most namely, Bill Graham.

"These guys had their stuff together enough to know what they wanted to do. They were able to stay in control of it. Many people from the 60s weren't able to have that staying power", Gans explained.

"That's true in any situation. There will always be people with brilliant ideas who can't follow through and make it last; others have the vision and the personal energy/power/will to lead others and make it work in the long term".

The band as a whole, and the community itself, was also part of that vision.

"For whatever reasons, the Dead lasted long. They came out of a scene in which everyone was open-minded. People were bringing lots of intellectual disciplines together, to make new things happen. They just were really good at it. And they stuck to it, in a way".

Gans added with a smile: "They would be the first to say: we were just part of a neighborhood music scene".

The eclectic quality of the music resonates for David. "Phil brought a bunch of music to those guys. Mickey brought stuff. Everybody came to it from a different kind of musical perspective and forged something together to take it all into account".

However, just because he's produced the Grateful Dead Hour since 1984 and written a stack of definitive books on the subject does not mean Gans is as forgiving as your average Deadhead.

"The whole Grateful Dead exalts itself in such a way that we tend to think of ourselves -- people say that Jerry was the greatest guitar player that every lived. That's a ridiculous contention. He would be the last guy to ever describe himself like that."

Hunter's elegiac words for Jerry echoed: 'I feel your silent laughter, at sentiments so bold'.

Playing the Deadhead Devil's Advocate, I recalled Dylan's homage to Jerry: 'He really had no equal... there's 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'.

David certainly agreed: "Jerry was a great musician and a tremendously broad-minded guy. That was the most amazing thing about him. The different stuff".

But the idea of being critical, or of being a discerning listener, is paramount to Gans.

"A friend of mine said the Dead were the most overrated band by their fans, and the most underrated by everyone else. People who really love them, they don't really have a perspective.

As they got older, the performances weren't as good. They weren't listening to each other. The mid 80s were really hard for a lot of us fans. We could tell they weren't locked in".

Having seen my first shows in the late 80s, I realized I was witness to some kind of renaissance as the band flourished again.

Gans remembered: "I know because I was there. There were a tremendous amount of drugs and it wasn't a healthy time. And the music was good in a way, but it was also -- Cocaine is an alienating force".

He made a distinction between some of the debauchery of the 80s, and the principles that the band were founded upon.

"You start making music on LSD, which makes you all think together, and then cocaine makes you all go in separate rooms".

Deadheads know it's never been about the drugs. It's always been about the music. How then, did drugs have such impact on the music itself?

"Something important about the group mind couldn't happen. And so through that period, it made it hard for the cohesiveness, or the group mind, to really happen".

Inside Each Other's Hearts

Perhaps the most cryptic story Gans shared was set at Berkeley Community Theatre in October of 84.

"They put these message boards -- sheets of butcher paper out in the lobby -- and felt pens... your messages for Bobby, your messages for Brent... the funniest one I remember was: Jerry, do you sleep with your beard over the blanket or under? That kind of level shit", David quipped.

"I was so sort of disturbed by how disjointed the music was that I wrote, Wake up! It was clear they weren't hanging together".

He distinguished between this lack of connection, and the heyday of the band: "You would hear a subtle hint about a song, and then they would sort of all slowly and perfectly get there together, or one at a time. Instead of, 'All Along the Watchtower' winds down and then Jerry plays 'Black Peter'".

Another watershed mark came in 1988 at Oxford, Maine. "That's just a really high moment from the summer tour. Not everything was all bad. But it was becoming more globalized. They didn't have to be inside each other's hearts as much to make it happen".

This notion of being inside each other's hearts made more sense in the context of Gans' Herculean task as a presenter of the Dead's volume of work, namely the age-old phenomenon of, "... it felt good at the time, but it didn't sound that good on tape".

"There is a difference between being a fan, and being a radio producer, and being a record producer, and a band member. These are levels of engagement, and levels of perfection.

That's why they trusted guys like me to make the decisions on what to put out. Because they were too close to it. And they realized that they couldn't be as objective -- or couldn't be as forgiving -- as they would have to be to put stuff out".

It became clearer why that as the Dead disengaged from the releasing process, they entrusted the music to Gans. "You want to put their very very best foot forward", he stressed.

"What I play on the radio and what we put on a box set are two different levels of acceptability. If you are going to put it... in the discography, it's got to be as good as it can possibly be. It doesn't mean it has to be perfect... "

Jerry as a mortal man of flesh and bone was a theme that did not escape the conversation.

"He was kind of tired. Also remember, he was slowly dying. His arteries were clogged, his lungs were always bad. He had a hard time singing. So the stuff that we love, and the stuff that's enshrined in the historical record, are two totally different things".

How then, will the historical record be impacted, by the fact that all of the Dead's intellectual property just left the Bay Area on a truck to LA and Warner Brother's Rhino Records?

David reassured the fans: "They're all pretty decent guys... they became a record label because they loved music. James Austin, who is the main guy I worked with at Rhino, doesn't look like a Deadhead. He looks like a guy you'd see polish up a '56 Chevy.

He'll tell you: it was never the same after Pigpen died. Because he was seeing the Dead back then. There are a lot of guys in Rhino that are Deadheads... There's some depth there".

The handing over of the Vault's golden key shook me, as it did many Deadheads, but Gans saw a sliver of irony there:

"There's a sort of built-in contempt for corporate America which is somewhat incongruous given that the Dead were a corporation too. They ran their business. They always dealt with corporate America. They always worked with the record companies. They always worked really hard and wanted to do well".

Accidentally Like A Martyr

The desire for an album's success, or disappointment at its relative failure, provided one of the most poignant insights on not only Jerry Garcia, but the archeology of David Gans.

"Jerry was heartbroken about Cats under the Stars. When I was working on the Garcia box set... I was looking in the Deadbase and realized that when Cats came out, the Dead were incredibly busy... they played 100 dates in 1978.They went to Egypt.

Jerry never took the time off from the Grateful Dead to do the stuff he needed to do to promote. He didn't go on a tour with Garcia band. He didn't do what you needed to do to ensure that record's success.

He either didn't care, he didn't want to, or the Grateful Dead weren't comfortable with him taking time off to promote that record, or, just the idea of promoting a record: 'that's not what we do -- we play music'. You see he just sort of put his head down and played with the Grateful Dead and did what they did".

Maybe that's why Deadheads love Jerry Garcia Band and Garcia's side projects. I know the hair on the back my neck stood up when he mentioned the Garcia box set, and the previously unreleased jewel which seems to encapsulate Jerry as the reluctant leader, 'Accidentally like a Martyr'.

Gans finally beamed: "I found that track!"

"I got hired to produce that All Good Things box set. My job was to listen to every scrap of multi-track tape in Jerry Garcia's archive.

I spent a couple of months doing it. I listened to literally every reel from all of his studio tracks. I listened to every single one. I made notes, and I picked out all the bonus tracks to put on the CDs. I'm the guy that found that".

For some comic relief, I asked David if he did his dishes or paperwork during such a marathon project. Secretly, I hoped it was a scene out of Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

It was somewhere in between.

"It was on a reel that had been something else. They turned the reel over and scratched off what was in a previous session. It was a day Jerry was working stuff out.

I made CDs of the interesting parts, and I would take those home and listen to them some more. But then I had to make the decisions of what to put out".

We all should have such decisions. But Gans, with an unassuming quality common in the inner circle of the band, magnified here that idea of gestalt: the whole being greater than the sum of the parts.

"I firmly believe that that none of these decisions should ever be made by one guy."

"I called Blair Jackson. We're neighbors, and I've known him for almost 30 years... so it was real easy to work together. He and I and Steve Silberman got hired to do the So Many Roads box set".

Even in his humility, Gans knows how coveted his day job must be.

"I'll never forget one day we were listening, stoned out of our minds, and my wife comes home: me and Steve and Blair sitting around listening to tapes". Gans howled to his lovely wife Rita: "We're getting paid for this!"

I'd love to have been a fly on the wall in that basement. We all have our favorite jams. I wanted to know how things like Gans' beloved 'Beautiful Jam' from Portchester '71 made the cut.

"It was a really collaborative and thoroughly enjoyable process by three guys that are really good friends that really love each other and love the music. There was never any I'm right and your wrong shit".

A Concerted Sense of Quest

The idea of Listening permeated the conversation, whether talking about the Dead, his musical research, or picking up a guitar and hopping onstage.

"That's the most important thing about music: to listen."

"For musicians, especially improvisational musicians... a lot of jazz is people taking turns blowing. Grateful Dead music was people building musical structures live and in the moment.

You have to be really sensitive to what the other guys are doing and supportive of what they're doing... it's everybody together doing something that nobody ever did before. You do it by listening and being supportive. You can't be selfish. You have to be generous. You have to let the music tell you what to play. You have to be moving forward.

It might be Bob Weir line I'm not sure... they referred to it as a concerted sense of quest".

The Grateful Dead were formulaic only in certain aspects, like the structuring of their setlists in later years. However, I'd never heard such an incisive observation of their modality as I did from Gans:

"You have to play something that harmonizes, or is counterpoint, and you have to intuit when it's going to end. You have to build up this tension, and then open up into something else. And that requires sensitivity and kindness. Everybody respects what everyone else is doing."

Stating a musical idea, and the idea of listening, once again brought Gans back to the Dead of the 1970s.

"You hear that stuff all through early '70s dead... Phil will play a tiny bit of the 'Dark Star' riff. It's a signal and everyone knows. They don't just lurch into it. They progress in an orderly manner to the next thing".

I smiled at the thought of the Dead's interstellar tangents as an 'orderly manner'. Gans reveled: "Those are things you want to have happen. You live for those moments."

Never Quite Catch the Tune

One fan moment I had to indulge was Jerry's subtle instrumental of 'Handsome Cabin Boy' for St. Patty's Day at Landover's Cap Centre in 1993. When my friend and I caught the old Irish sea chantey version on the Grateful Dead Hour that next week, it confirmed to us that indeed, someone else had heard that secret riff embedded in Space. Even the hallowed Deadbase incorrectly lists it as 'Two Soldiers'!

"I gotta tell you", David offered, "It's so cool to know that you were out there paying attention... I didn't make it a big deal about it on the radio show. I was just trying to present all the magic I knew about the Grateful Dead, and to know that there was people out there listening to it, and getting it, is a very rewarding thing".

He came from a similar school. "My friends came from a time when music was the most important thing. The culture was centered around music.

"Jackson Browne came out with an album, or the Beatles, and you listened to it forty times in a row because you wanted to know every corner of it and feel everything that was in it and every message and every level of meaning".

For such a music junkie, pouring over and selecting the music of your favorite band sounds too good to be true. But again, Gans is not your typical Deadhead.

"By the time that thing started happening, I was already living my life. I was always more interested in my own work, my own creativity. It's weird to say, because it became my day job, but it wasn't my life, like it was for some people. I was a music journalist. I was always writing my own music. I was always playing my own music".

And play music he does, quite well, and with a level of impact that's even Robert Hunter-like. While rapping at his bandmate's daytime gig, Gans was invited up onstage. After hearing so much about 1970s Dead, I rendered near shock that with the catalog at his fingertips he chose 'Lazy River Road' [see the video - 3M].

"It's just the sweetest damn song. Over the years I've got more and more into doing my own tunes and less and less into the tunes of the Dead in terms of being a 'cover-head'. I've been playing music and writing songs since before I heard the Grateful Dead... but they're in my musical DNA. The more I sound like myself, the less I rely on the Dead or anyone else's tunes.

I find that the Dead songs that stay with me are just a handful. 'Lazy River Road' is one. I've made it my own song. My arrangement isn't that different from the Dead, but it feels so good to play it. I never want to be imitating someone else. It's a great American song. It's not a hippie song or a psychedelic song".

With all the riding of coattails, and the cashing-in that seems to pervade the music world, what struck me most about David Gans was his sloughing off of the moniker 'that Grateful Dead radio guy', and his capacity to create and move forward.

Maybe that's why he was reticent to characterize the 11th anniversary of Jerry's death as either a celebration, or the hurt gets worse, and the heart gets harder.

"I don't know exactly how I feel about all that stuff. I think its more I honor Jerry and I attend to the anniversaries because it matters to the audience but it's not - I don't want to offend the deadheads... being the icon and stuff was not fun for him.

It's a loss, but life goes on, and everything is okay. And Phil's playing and Bob's playing, and Mickey and Billy".

Gans is playing too. He calls his Honky Tonk Hippies the best band he's ever had, but don't expect GD nostalgia. The continuation of his 'musical adventures' were inspired by bands like Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen and Willie Nelson, and includes a standup bass and pedal steel. Kicking off their mini-tour in Larkspur, CA, the Honky Tonk Hippies pulled off a mellifluous version of Bob Dylan's 'I'll be your Baby Tonight', with David finding his voice.

And if I know Gans, he'll remain one of the true stewards of our scene, serving the music, still sifting through the diamonds with his jeweler's loupe, and painstakingly uncovering our most radiant facets.... ..

Garcia's thoughts on Owsley 'Bear' Stanley, whom David scored an extremely rare interview with in 1991, shed light on Gans' meticulous research in A Signpost to New Space: "We try to display as much quality as possible in the hopes of being able to refine pieces of what we do", Garcia explained. "And that's the thing that Owsley does like no other being that I know can do or devote his attention to, and this is that thing of purification".

That idea of displaying quality, and refining pieces to the end of purity, was the garland of sacred trust bestowed on Gans by the band.

After all, Jerry prepared much of this beautiful feast that we so ravenously devoured, but it was guys like Gans who presented it, or served it, to the fans.

And they say service is a most divine vocation, and a supreme art.