The Other One: The Long, Strange Trip of Bob Weir

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1

This is how it goes.

I bought this house in 1972.

I'd just signed my first

solo record contract.

So I decided,

"Okay, I'm gonna build

a little studio for myself

to play around in."

I've done a lot of work in here.

We made Blues for Allah in here.

Both of my kids were born in

our living room in front of our fireplace.

I've probably got around 100 guitars.

Gonna have to do.

This one, I bought in 1970.

350 bucks was all the money I could

think about at the time.

It's a 1959 Gibson 335.

Like, the Holy Grail of thin body guitars.

I played it for four or five years

with the Grateful Dead.

I'd prefer not to travel with it, but...

I can't seem to not do it.

This is a Grammy here.

Lifetime Achievement award.

And, uh... wow.

We managed to put over a million

people into Meadowlands Arena.

They, uh, awarded us for that.

This one is supposed

to have a record on it...

a big gold record and it's the Rock

and Roll Hall of Fame. That was in 1994.

Jerry just one day handed me this.

Said, "Here, you need this."

I play it every now and again.

Just for fun.

We had a very strong bond

and a shared sense of purpose.

Jerry was my older brother, basically.

Here's my Jerry bobblehead.

I guess it's you and me, bub.

Uh, Bob.

Yeah.

I've led kind of an unusual life.

I was young for the experience

of leaving home...

and going out and seeing the world.

But I was ready for it.

It was such an amazing adventure.

The music was an adventure.

The people I was doing it with

were an adventurous group.

I've seen stuff that no one's seen.

Spanish lady, come to me

She lays on me this rose

Rainbows spiral round and round

They tremble and explode

Left a smoking crater of my mind

I like to blow away

Heat come round and busted me

For smilin' on a cloudy day

Comin', comin', comin' around

Comin' around

Comin' around in a circle

Comin' around

Comin', comin', comin' around

Comin' around

Comin' around in a circle

Comin' around

Mine has been a long, strange trip.

Well, I was born in San Francisco in 1947.

I was adopted at birth.

My adoptive father was an engineer.

I'll just pull up here.

My mom was something of a socialite.

They couldn't have any kids.

And so they decided,

"Okay, well, let's adopt some."

This wall didn't used to be here.

They adopted my older brother

and then they adopted me.

And then a couple of years later,

to their surprise,

my mom became pregnant

and my sister came along.

Wow.

Well, there's nothing here.

Our old house is gone.

We had a very quiet,

peaceful household.

We had a beautiful home.

But our family was not really emotional.

Our father came from the East Coast.

It was more puritan and quiet.

Bob certainly was

the exception in the family.

I was pretty wild.

I guess it's just in my blood.

I'm pathologically anti-authoritarian.

I've never been actually

checked out on that, but...

I'm right.

He was the guy

who never met a school

that he could stay in

for more than two or three months.

Come to think of it,

I was kicked out of play school.

I dropped a hammer out of a treehouse

on a kid's head.

And I'm not entirely sure why I did it.

I think I just wanted

to see if it'd hit him.

Teachers knew that

he had a problem reading,

he had a problem learning how to write,

and they figured he was stupid.

In retrospect, my academic career

would never have gone very far,

'cause I'm dyslexic.

It's just not gonna happen.

Um...

You know, I read a lot.

But it takes so long

that I would never have been

able to study and make the grade.

The first time I ever met Weir, we were

both freshmen at Fountain Valley School

that specialized in bright

but unmanageable kids.

And I'd turned around

and there's this really dorky kid

with really thick horn rims

and his leg is going...

For some reason,

just immediately liked him.

My older brother, John,

taught me how to tune a radio

right at the height of rock and roll

hitting the airwaves.

The guys who caught my ear were

Chuck Berry,

the Everly Brothers,

Roy Orbison.

What they had going was cool.

I could hear that, I could feel it.

I could feel the excitement.

Then I got my first guitar,

which is a pivot point in my life.

At some point,

he got a new guitar

and stood there as proud

as anybody can be

and said,

"What more could a boy want?"

I'm not sure I'd ever discovered

I had any talent or anything like that.

It was just dogged persistence.

I had to have the music

and so I went after it.

There was a little music store

in Palo Alto, Dana Morgan Music.

This is the first time

I've been back here in decades.

I used to work in the back there

teaching lessons.

Now it's a bed store.

I'll tell you what,

we'll go around the back.

I think we might be able

to get through over here.

So back here somewhere was

the back door to Dana Morgan Music.

And this is where, uh...

It was right here where this wall is,

I guess, now.

This has been built out.

This is where, uh...

This is where on New Year's Eve of 1963

going into '64...

Uh...

You know, knocked on the door

and met Jerry.

Jerry was sort of a famous musician

around the Palo Alto area.

He was a banjo player primarily.

All the kids that I was hanging with

had great reverence for him.

I'd been backstage with him a time or two

when we were playing the open mic nights

at the Tangent, but...

never actually formally met him.

I was walking this way,

heard some banjo music coming

from this area over in here...

and figured it was Jerry.

Knocked on the door

to see if he was into hanging,

and he was,

'cause his students weren't showing up

because it was New Year's Eve

and he was unmindful of that.

I don't think he had thought that through.

So we got to talking

and then he asked me,

"Want to grab some instruments

from the front of the shop?"

And so we played all night.

He was also

a great guy to hang with.

He was a lot of fun,

and we hit it off.

We kept each other laughing

and all that kind of stuff.

Soon, we were a jug band

and not long thereafter

we were a rock and roll band.

We were out of Palo Alto

and into the city and... off to the world.

So, we started a band

called the Warlocks.

I remember

the first time I met Bob very well.

I'm standing there talking to Jerry

and I ask him,

"Well, where's the weed, man?"

And he says, "Oh, my guitar player's

coming with some weed right now."

You know, any minute now."

So we go outside and we get in the car

and there's Bob.

Apparently, he had just

scored from Neal Cassady.

We sat in the car and rolled up,

and we all got good and high, you know.

And it was killer weed.

You know, Bob had that

beautiful manner about him

that made everyone really

love him from the get-go.

He was sort of like the magic object

in the middle of the band.

If you look back there,

you can see a swimming pool.

To the right of that,

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