The Other One: The Long, Strange Trip of Bob Weir Page #7

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If you're a kid and you wanna

spend a summer on the road,

that's one thing.

If you're gonna cast your lot there,

I hope you have the talent to do it.

If you're selling drugs,

I have limited sympathy.

And the rest of those folks...

if they're making it work,

my hat's off.

And throughout

the '70s and the '80s,

the Dead still played by

their own rules in creating

influential fusions of rock,

and blues, and country

on such classical albums as

Workingman's Dead and American Beauty.

To induct the Grateful Dead,

their sometime partner,

their fulltime fan, Bruce Hornsby.

- Yeah! Bruie! Yeah!

- Bru! Bru!

- Bruce!

- Bru!

You know, Rock and Roll Hall

of Fame, I don't know what to make of it.

I'm innocent.

You're hanging an innocent man.

You're hanging an innocent man!

It's nice to be a Hall of Famer

and all that,

but still, you know,

it wasn't a goal of mine or anything

like that when I started playing.

As the bumper stickers

have proclaimed for over 20 years,

there is really nothing like

a Grateful Dead concert.

And frankly, I don't understand

why they didn't get into this thing

last year.

Everybody but Jerry

went to that event.

Jerry wasn't in great shape

and he didn't like the idea

of the cult of personality.

Ladies and gentlemen,

here's to the Grateful Dead

and another 28 years.

Thanks a lot.

I think he associated the Rock

and Roll Hall of Fame Awards with that.

He was having some...

some issues with his health.

Somewhere in the early '90s,

he got back into the heroin.

I do remember vaguely

thinking to myself,

"Well, we've seen this before.

Well, maybe he'll snap out of it."

But something told me, "Nah,

we're in for another long row to hoe."

For a while, actually,

I was his bagman.

I carried his dope around for him,

'cause number one,

he knew that I wasn't gonna get into it.

And then secondly,

he knew that I was gonna be--

I wasn't gonna give him more

than he had told me to.

And he trusted me to do that,

so I was his bagman.

There were a couple of times

when the guys in the band

got together and said,

"Okay, we're gonna do

an intervention with Jerry.

We're gonna go and tell him

that he's got to clean up."

We figured out very quickly that

that wasn't gonna work.

We just sort of accepted him

for who he was

and what he amounted to

on a given day.

As his friend, as his bro,

I just tried to keep him happy.

If I could support him doing something

that I thought was a healthier,

a good kind of thing to do,

I'd support that.

We took a yoga instructor with us

on the road for a couple of years,

and Jerry took a couple of classes

with him, but we never saw that.

He wasn't about to do

that around any of us.

I think Bobby was probably

the most influential right there,

as in, helping Jerry

to find a healthier lifestyle,

because I think Bobby was

already really into that kind of thing.

He was doing yoga and eating right,

and spiritually sound, too.

And Bobby wanted Jerry

to be happy and healthy.

It was important to him

that that happened.

So he--

I know he tried really hard.

He was just so goddamn famous

that he couldn't go out on the streets.

What are you gonna do?

You gotta hide from it someway.

And drugs were a convenient way

to do that.

He wasn't God.

He wasn't there to pontificate.

He was just there to play

and chase the music,

and chase the adventure, and be a kid.

That's all he wanted to do.

I remember a conversation

with Garcia one time.

I said, "I'm not sure that Weir's

well equipped to handle celebrity."

And he said, "Nobody is."

"Nobody."

Jerry and I

used to take vacations together.

We'd get a couple houses in Kauai

and live it up.

In later years, Jerry took up diving

and informed me I was signed up

for scuba instruction.

I'll be forever in his debt

for doing that.

Jerry was a big guy

and deal was, when Jerry was

underwater, he was weightless.

This one time,

he goes up to this hole.

This big, broad,

flat fish face comes out.

This is not a fish,

this is a great big eel.

Fish comes a little further out

and Jerry goes like this,

and he starts stroking him under the chin.

We used a tank of air in, like,

half the time, just laughing.

We had a lot of fun underwater.

I had a dream.

In the dream,

I found a can of invisible paint.

So I painted myself

with the invisible paint.

And then Jerry came into the dream.

And Jerry was looking pretty swell.

He was in Castilian splendor,

he was tall.

His hair was all black

and kind of combed back,

and he had a velour cape on

with a silver clasp on it.

And he looked me square in the eye,

and I was saying,

"Hey, Jerry, check it out.

Invisible paint."

And he wasn't interested.

He was intent on something.

He was searching for something.

And then he was gone.

Jerry Garcia,

the Grateful Dead guitarist,

who kept the counter-culture of the 1960s

rocking and rolling right into the '90s,

died today in California.

He was 53.

Garcia was found dead

at a drug rehabilitation center,

reportedly of natural causes.

Fare you well, my honey

Fare you well, my only true one

The last time I saw him,

it was on the back of the stage

at Soldier's Field in Chicago.

And we were hugging after the show.

He was going one way

and I was going the other,

and you know,

he slapped me on the back

and said, "Always a hoot.

Always a hoot."

Those were his last words to me.

I owe Jerry an immense

debt of gratitude

for, you know, showing me

how to live with joy,

with mischief.

Take your heart,

take your faith...

and reflect back

some of the joy that he gave you.

He filled this world

full of clouds of joy.

Just take a little bit of that...

and reflect it back up to him.

Fare you well, fare you well

I love you more than words can tell

Listen to the river sing sweet songs

to rock my soul

Listen to the river sing sweet songs

to rock my soul

I think that when

Jerry died, Bobby probably, um, felt...

Bobby probably

felt a lot like Jerry's kids did.

Like, I think that Bobby probably

felt like he lost a brother.

Bob was very, very--

I mean, this was his closest friend.

This was, like, you know,

a father, a brother to him,

and he was devastated.

I hadn't really thought about

how he must have been feeling.

Still, it's tough.

After Jerry checked out,

I went back out on tour with RatDog

and I pretty much stayed there

for a while.

I think that was probably

my grieving process.

What am I gonna do? Stay home

and snivel, and kick furniture,

or feel bad about it,

and not play?

Jerry would have a fit.

Good music can make sad times better.

We've got our...

We've got our work

cut out for us this evening,

so we'll just get started.

You know, I gotta go out and play.

I've gotta go out

and make it better for people.

I'd stayed on the road for a while.

I had to do it for me,

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