The Other One: The Long, Strange Trip of Bob Weir Page #4

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One was "Truckin'," of course,

which was their first hit single.

Busted down on Bourbon Street

Set up like a bowlin' pin

Knocked down

It gets to wearin' thin

They just won't let you be

People had heard

of the Grateful Dead,

and maybe heard

some of our live recordings,

but that stuff was rough.

We weren't as developed

as recording artists.

When we actually got around to

making some proper studio records,

we started picking up fans in numbers.

Sometimes the light's

all shinin' on me

Other times I can barely see

It was a big step for us

because we got a sense of,

"This is what we're here to do."

What a long, strange trip it's been

We were being successful

making music,

and people are gonna pay us to do this.

And that was like Christmas for all of us.

Truckin'

I'm a-goin' home

Whoa, whoa, baby

Back where I belong

Back home

Down to patch my bones

Get back truckin' on

Oh, oh, oh

We weren't starving artists anymore.

We moved out of the saloon circuit

and started playing theaters.

We hit the road. We never looked back.

There was no point in looking back.

And also we got a gold record

and I got to bring that home

to my parents.

That made them feel

a whole lot better about, uh...

about my having run off

with the circus, basically.

We're gonna take a short break,

and we'll be back in just a few minutes,

so don't go nowhere.

It's real hard for me to put into

words what it is that I do with Garcia,

but I try to provide counterpoint

for what he does.

We had fairly defined roles.

I was the rhythm guitarist,

Jerry was lead guitarist.

I was there to supply chords and rhythm

for Jerry to play over the top of.

But the traditional role

of a rock and roll rhythm guitarist

is somewhat limited.

I got to where I was feeling kind of

hemmed in with what I was doing.

At the same time, I was listening

to a lot of jazz and stuff like that

and I was listening to the piano players.

Bill Evans, McCoy Tyner.

And I listened to the way they chorded.

Particularly McCoy Tyner, the way

he chorded underneath John Coltrane

and supplying John Coltrane

with all kinds of

harmonic counterpoint

to what he was doing.

That appealed to me greatly.

And so I started trying to learn to

do that on the guitar for Jerry.

Garcia completely wove his stuff

around the expectation

of what Weir would weave in.

If Jerry had the line with

the most energy, the most life to it,

we'd fall in behind him.

If I was that guy,

then they'd fall in behind me.

That was what the band was all about.

Supporting whoever is

moving the story furthest, fastest.

An awful lot of attention went to Jerry.

And yet to me,

it was more really the interplay

between Bob and the band.

That is what I found the most exciting.

We developed a sort of

an intertwined sense of intuition.

I could intuit where Jerry was going

with a line for instance, on stage.

And try to hustle up,

get the full drift of that

and then be there when he got there

with a little surprise for him.

With Weir, he's an extraordinarily

original player,

you know, in a world full of people

who sound like each other, you know?

I mean, really, he has really got a style

that's totally unique as far as I know.

I don't know anybody else that

plays the guitar the way he does.

That in itself is, I think,

really a score,

considering how derivative

almost all electric guitar playing is.

Bob arguably has the most unique

guitar style of anybody playing in music.

And I've loved it forever.

I spent a bunch of years

trying to emulate the kind of way

he would voice chords.

'Cause I just felt like it was so unusual.

He was super creative in this way

that nobody else was doing.

First time I ever played with Bob,

you know, we started playing

straight up 12-bar blues.

And I'm noticing that in one key of E,

he's played about

12 friggin' inversions of...

He don't play just, E, E, E.

He goes, E, E, E, E, E, E, E.

He knows so many inversions of a chord

that it blew my mind.

You know, number two's

as important as number one.

If you don't have an ego,

you can be the best

number two on the planet,

and that's kind of what Bob became.

It makes him special.

Where does it want to go from there?

Let me just listen

in my head for a minute.

In writing songs,

it's best if it all comes at once,

but that rarely happens.

Most often, I think,

what I probably end up doing is, uh...

is just fumbling around on the guitar

and just playing

and finding something I like

and then starting to string

things together from there.

That one I've been playing with

for a little while.

And I'm gonna find somewhere to take that.

Maybe even over the weekend.

There's no logic to it.

It comes through the window

when it wants to come through the window.

There are countless nights

that I'd rather have been sleeping,

but I was up writing.

The first real writing for keeps

that I ever did

was when the Grateful Dead,

when we were just

writing stuff all together

and I'd come up with a line here,

a phrase here.

Being younger,

I had difficulty being taken seriously.

I really had to be kind of forceful,

otherwise I was gonna get overlooked.

Lost now in the country miles

in his Cadillac

I can tell by the way you smile

You're rolling back

Come wash the nighttime clean

Come grow this scorched ground green

There are hardly any

more important musicians

than the Grateful Dead and Bob Weir.

Yeah, he's just a super down to earth,

genuine person,

who happens to be this total icon.

You and me, Cassidy

Quick beats in an icy heart

Catch-colt draws a coffin cart

There he goes, and now here she starts

Hear her cry

Flight of the seabirds

Scattered like lost words

Wheel to the storm and fly

Yesterday, he was sort of

breaking down "Cassidy" for us

and kind of just, sort of, unlocking

the magic of the parts as it happened.

And then as we started to play, like,

"Oh, it sounds, you know...

It's like, Without a Net, 1989."

We're like...

So we kind of, you know...

It was pretty electric.

Flight of the seabirds

Scattered like lost words

Wheel to the storm and fly

Did you think when you were starting

that it would ever evolve

into this mystique

that has come to surround the group

called the Grateful Dead?

- We didn't think when we were starting.

- No, we didn't think.

Right.

We started to get the drift that

our fans were a little bit different...

when we started seeing the same faces

in the front row every night on a tour.

It came home a little more when we started

seeing tents set up in the parking lot.

And realized, okay, we've got kind of

a little gypsy entourage here.

We had this following of people

who had dropped out of normal society

and just followed us around

and created their own little society.

That's kind of what I did.

I dropped out of normal society,

left home, left school

and ran off with this rock and roll band,

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