The Other One: The Long, Strange Trip of Bob Weir Page #2

---

there was a big lawn area.

We played a lawn party there one time.

A little after dark,

the neighbors started complaining,

and the party got shut down.

My folks were trying to get cozy

with my new career as a rock and roller.

I was a 16-year-old kid

when I started playing with Jerry.

And that's kind of where

the ride began for me.

You know,

I wanted to play music,

I wanted to have

a little adventure in my life.

And here it was, big as hell.

I took LSD every Saturday,

without fail, for about a year.

First time I took acid

was on Jerry's birthday,

August 1st, 1965.

I remember ending up

on a hilltop with Sue Swanson.

She did manage to coax out of me

if I'd had any insights.

I told her, "Yeah. You know, music.

That's what I'm here for. Music."

I guess I was officially done with school

when I ran off with the Pranksters.

It was the night

of my second Beatles concert.

I was high on acid at the time.

Out in the parking lot after the show,

there was the bus,

with all the Pranksters in full drag

hanging off it,

swinging off it like monkeys.

Yes, the Merry Band of Pranksters

are everywhere.

Everywhere.

I just, you know,

I followed my bliss right onto the bus.

I have the whole thing

all grooved out.

And there was Kesey.

Mr. Kesey, do you feel

that you have the right to do what

you want, whatever you want?

I feel a man has the right to be as big

as he feels it in him to be.

And then there was

this other guy on the bus

who seemed to be his grand vizier,

who just chattered and spoke...

quite often in rhymes.

Fourth dimension.

We are actually fourth dimensional beings

in a third dimensional body

inhabiting a second dimensional world.

That was Neal Cassady.

We are an Intrepid Trips production.

But the Intrepid Trips production,

at the moment, is the Acid Test.

Acid Test.

So Ken Kesey and

the Merry Pranksters come along

and they want to spread the word

about this amazing new drug, LSD.

And so they start having these parties

called the Acid Test.

The Acid Tests were permissive bedlam.

They were large rooms

in which numbers of stoned people

were singing, f***ing,

chirping, imitating animals.

Anything that you could possibly imagine

was going on at the Acid Test.

I think they charged a buck at the door.

There was LSD in the Kool-Aid

and everybody got a cup of Kool-Aid for

a buck and got to go into the party.

It was a big success.

It was a big, monster party,

but there wasn't any music.

We brought our equipment and took LSD,

and we plugged in and we played.

We all had Prankster names like,

Phil was Reddy Kilowatt.

Billy was Bill the Drummer.

Jerry's was Captain Trips.

I was the Kid.

It was impossibly fun.

When you take LSD,

your awareness is greatly expanded.

At the same time,

you're profoundly disoriented.

Yeah, you've got your hands

and you know how to play a few chords

and you know how to play rhythmically,

but when the guitar's

turned into some snake-like critter,

and you're watching notes in lines...

in color go by...

You know,

it's hard to relate to all this stuff.

"What is the deal here?"

And still you got a gig,

you got to play.

There were a few times when we'd take acid

and we'd walk out and try to play

and couldn't make sense of anything.

We'd just throw up our hands and flee.

But then we'd come back together

and we'd play like demons.

We'd take a song and at the end,

we'd just, rather than ending it,

let's just stretch it out.

Play with the rhythm,

play with the texture.

That's kind of how we learned

to extend and improvise.

"I'm gonna work

this chord change for a while.

I've heard the jazz guys do it,

and I'm gonna try my hand at it."

There was a lot of extrasensory

communication going on.

And, you know,

I don't want to call it "telepathy,"

'cause there was that, too,

but there was more than that.

You could see through other people's eyes,

you could hear through

other people's ears.

That was the kind of stuff

that we were exploring back then.

The pressure wasn't on us.

So when we did play,

we played with a certain kind of freedom

that you rarely get as a musician.

Not only did we not have to fulfill

expectations about us,

but we didn't have to fulfill expectations

about music either.

We played the topless places

after the Acid Test,

while we were still

sort of drifting around,

and we were already

starting to stretch out our tunes.

And the girls hated us 'cause they were

used to a two minute, 30-second tune,

and then another girl would come up.

And we'd go out,

we'd play for like 15 minutes

and they'd just run out of gas.

So they didn't dig it that much.

So we're playing really long

and this poor chick turns around,

her tits are flying,

sweat's flying off her tits going,

"Please, can't you play a little shorter?"

So we found out

the meaning of jam band right then.

But that was, you know, just early stuff.

And then Bobby took her home

probably after the show.

And that was the start of

what became, for all intents and purposes,

the Grateful Dead.

It's legendarily hard

to make a living being a musician anyway.

You know, my folks couldn't

see much future in it.

I'll never forget the time

his mom showed up at Jerry's

and she made us swear mighty oaths

that Bob went to school every day.

And if we did that,

she would let him stay in the band.

Well, you can imagine

how that turned out.

Bob would wake up for dinner,

and then go out and perform all night,

and then he'd come home for breakfast.

My mother kept saying,

"Can't you have a normal life?"

So when Bob turned 18,

our mother finally said,

"Enough! I can't deal with any more."

So she asked Bob to move out of the house.

Bob looked so young.

And back in the day,

he looked like a baby.

But there was something

about their looseness

in terms of life

and in terms of their music

that was picked up by the crowds.

There was that great time

when we put

the flatbed trucks together

in front of the Straight Theater.

We filled all of

Haight Street with people.

As far as you could see,

there was people.

It was like, it was coming...

It was so fast

and there was so much good energy

that you couldn't really

take any one part of it.

It was like this beautiful picture,

you know?

And that was just amazing times.

Then they actually started doing

free concerts in Golden Gate Park.

You know, when I left home,

I was, you know, following my bliss.

And my folks had no answer for that.

They couldn't say I was wrong

because they could see that I was

really doing what I wanted to do

and I was making something of it.

The whole experience, it bonded the band,

it made us tighter than brothers.

They say that blood is thicker than water.

What we had was thicker than blood.

Bob didn't maintain

much contact with his family.

So the band was his family.

The Grateful Dead

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes