A Tribute to Bob Weir w/ Danny Mager

at least once live that I can remember anyway. I think it was maybe nineteen seventy two or seventy three, and I guess it was about I don't know, seventeen or eighteen years old, and my older sister took me to see them at the Old Nassau Coliseum on Long Island. My recollection of the concert was this, the pervasive smell of marijuana, people dancing in the aisles like zombies, and the band played something like five songs over a four

hour period. Be that as it may, I can still acknowledge their greatness and the huge impact they've had on millions of people around the world. And perhaps no one has had more influence on the Grateful Dead than the band's co founder, lyricist, guitarist, and many sayed along with the late Jerry Garcia, soul of the band, Bob Weir. In addition to the death of Garcia, Weir's recent passing at the age of seventy eight has left a huge hole in the hearts of not only his fans, but

music lovers everywhere. Few people can say they lived legendary lives. Bob Weir is one who can certainly claim that distinction. So I brought in an expert to sort out Weir's real impact in legacy. He's a man who was proud to proclaim himself a deadhead. He is also an addiction counselor, the author of two best selling books on addiction and recovery. As well as being a regular contributor to psychology today, he has also attended nearly two hundred performances of the

Dead and their various incarnations. So who better to share some intelligent conversation on the life and legacy of Bobby Weir than my friend Danny Major. Danny, welcome back. Thank you so much for joining us.

The Grateful Dead took from touring. It was during their thirty years from when they first started in nineteen sixty five to Jerry Garcia's unfortunate early passing in nineteen ninety five, they toured virtually continuously, you know, taking a few months off here and there, but over the course of those thirty years they played aid over twenty three hundred concerts, which is, you know, in the neighborhood of an average of eighty a year, which is unheard of for any

band remotely near their stature and their level of success even at that time. So they because after about ten years together, nine years or so, they decided to take a year off, and that was in part were due to burnout. There was a tremendous amount of drug use and involvement at the time, and there was a generally

consensus that they needed to take some time off. But you know, and so The Grateful Dead didn't play for about nine months during nineteen seventy five, but the band members were involved in respective side projects during the time. So actually the first time I saw Bob Weir live was during that hiatus, prior to my seeing The Grateful Dead for the first time, which took place in June of nineteen seventy six at the Boston Music Hall when

they're touring fully resumed. But I saw Bob we Air a couple of times on Long Island and in the city. He was playing with a band called Kingfish at that time, and they were a wonderful ensemble cast and it wasn't called Bob we Are in Kingfish, it was just Kingfish, and he was a member of the band, obviously, you know,

renown and prominent. But another member of that band was Dave Torbert, who had been the bassist in the New Writers of the Purple Sage for a number of years also, and they were wonderful of one or two of their

songs made it into the ongoing Grateful Dead repertoire. But so I saw both Bob we Are and Jerry Garcia in the Jerry Garcia band prior to first seeing The Grateful Dead again June of nineteen seventy six, and between then and when Jerry Garcia passed, I saw them approximately one hundred and twenty times, so you know, and that's

over the course of nineteen years. The last time I saw them play two dates at Giant Stadium the summer of nineteen ninety five, within a couple of months of when Jerry Garcia passed, and the vast majority of shows were wonderful. Many of them were absolutely ecstatic, partly partly contributed to by a wide range of psychoactive substances that I might have been in conscious contact with at the time.

five shows at six nights. I was living in Santa Cruz in northern California, seventy five miles south of the Bay Area at that time, and I was able to go to all five of those shows, and each show was different. They never played the same show twice, and they very rarely played the same song the same way twice. There were always different individual stylistic improvisational differences. They were really quite remarkable and thoroughly unique in that way.

when they were when they were both teenagers. So they had this this lifelong relationship and then they they they re established contact when Bob Weir was in The Grateful Dead and basically looking for someone to write his own songs with because he and Hunter had had a falling out, but the way in which he played guitar was played rhythm guitar was really was really singular. I was blessed to see many Grateful Dead concerts where where I was up close in proximity to the stage and could see

what the musicians were doing in greater detail. And his approach to playing was one of often listening very actively and intently and adjusting how he played based on the interplay between Jerry Garcia's lead guitar and Phil Lesh's bass guitar playing. And so he was he was in the process of constantly making adjustments to fit with and enhance the flow of particular improvisational jams in the moment. And I mean he really played rhythm guitar in a way

it was different from everyone else. And you know, it's in terms of influences, you know, the Grateful Dead crust all all sorts of different genres from bluegrass to rock to jazz.

strong elements of jazz within that. I just want to throw that in there.

and they all got off playing playing together. But you know, in terms of influences, Garcia occasionally talked about about some of his models, including John Coltrane and Miles Davis, and learning how that the space has been between the notes were often just as important as the notes that were

played themselves. And consistent with that, Bob Weir has often described his approach to playing wasn't modeled on other guitarists or rhythm guitarists, but much more like how McCoy Tyner's piano playing supported John Coltrane's brilliant, brilliant, free flowing sacks leads in the John Coltrane Quartet, and he used that as a model to support an underlie Garcia's lead playing in a way that was again just thoroughly unique in

terms of understanding, approach, and execution. The other thing that was, you know, I mean, Bob Weir was notable for a number of reasons, not the least of which that he was easily the most handsome member of the Grateful Dead, who though renowned for many reasons, not for their looks, not for not for personal esthetics, but Bob Weir had very much the rock star vibe and he played to

that frequently. You know, By the late seventies early eighties, Jerry Garcia had stopped interacting verbally with the with the audience with rare exception, not wanting the responsibility that he figured people might attribute, the influence that people might attribute to anything he would say, and he didn't want to take the chance of influencing someone in an unintended way.

So Weir was really the band spokesperson with the audience for the last for the last number of years, of the Grateful Dead, and he would go on Mike, you know, acknowledge technical problems. If in a general admission concert, the front became too crowded, he would lead the crowd in and exercise of taking a step back and another step back and so forth. Every once in a while he would tell an actual joke, typically very corny, but he would engage with the crowd. He often he dressed differently too.

I'm for a lot of the eighties and nineties polo shirts and very short, impressively short cut off jeans that became known as Bobby shorts because they were they were identifiable with him in that particular way. And what was what was really interesting also is that post Grateful Dead, you know, Jerry Garcia died and and you know, the world mourned, much of the world, i should say, mourned,

and dead heads mourned very deeply. You know, you thought you had mentioned that, you know in your introduction that you know you weren't you weren't a grateful dead head. But you know, as Garcia described it, great dead fans are like people who like licorice. Now not everyone likes licorice, but the people who like licorice really really you know.

And and uh so the way the way the surviving band members, you know, it took them, It took them a couple of years, but they began to put together projects, sometimes together, sometimes separately, to continue the legacy of Grateful Dead.

Not just Grateful Dead music, the songs which are which are powerful and will last, will last generations because the combination of the of the virtuoso playing with the brilliance, the poetic and timeless qualities of so many of the lyrics are you know, that's what made what made the music so powerful, This this incredible synchronicity between the words and and music. But but Bob we Are thirty years thirty years on, was playing probably more frequently in other

projects than he had with the Grateful Dead. It was as if his mission was to keep the music alive and to share it with as many people as absolutely possible. And you know, I recall his his initial solo projects, so to say, is his his solo band post Grateful Dead was called rat Dog, and initially rat Dog, the the repertoire song wise consisted much more of Bob Weir songs, so to say, We're Barlow songs than Hunter Garcia songs.

And at a certain point, like the early two thousands to the mid watts or so, when when he played he started playing more and more Hunter Garcia songs. And I saw several shows where he played more Hunter Garcia songs than songs that he had been directly involved in writing. And about the same time, you know, during during The Grateful Dead, Bob We're occasionally had a beard, relatively a short,

well trimmed beard for periods of time. But you know, somewhere around the mid waughts, he started to grow his beard. His hair started to turn a little gray, a touch of great gray right there, but he started to grow his beard quite a bit longer, you know. And Jerry Garcia, for most of The Grateful Dead's history, had a long,

very bushy beard. And so it was as if and and We're talked talked frequently and and and fervently about his continuing connection with Jerry Garcia even subsequent to his passing. And my sense from a psychological perspective is that, you know, one of the things that that Bob Weird did to keep in conscious contact with Jerry Garcia, to keep that relationship very much alive, was to play more of his music and to take on more of his characteristics, so

to say. Now, that's not necessarily a conscious process, and it's a psychological phenomenon known as identification. Where we lose, we lose people that are important to us, and and the surviving individuals often begin to take on more of the qualities or the characteristics of the person who has passed or transitioned, and it helps to maintain a a

under the surface of conscious awareness connection with them. And that included so in in later years, you know, after after they they celebrated fifty years of since the Grateful Deads first started playing together with the Fairly Well concerts two at Santa Clara Stadium where the forty nine ers play, and three at Soldier Soldier Field in Chicago, and that and that included the the four main surviving members of the Grateful Dead Uh, Bob, We're Phil Lesh and the

two drummers, Bill Kreutzman and Mickey Hart, with supporting players Trey Anastasio of Fish one lead guitar, Bruce Hornsby on piano, UH, Jeff Chamente who played with with Bob were and Ratdog on one organ and UH and you know, and that was that was really wonderful. And then after that, you know, Phil phil Lesh had his own thing, fill in Friends, played with this incredible, ever expanding rotating cast, alternating casts of world class musicians playing primarily, but not exclusively, grateful

dead songs. And then then the question was, okay, well, what happens after the fair the Well Shows? And you know, it just turns out that that John Mayer happened to be guest hosting some relatively esoteric late, late, late night show, and Bob Weir was a guest of his, and and you know, not that many people knew it, but John Mayer had been a deadhead from the time that he was a teenager growing up in Connecticut, and and they

had to set up there. Perhaps it was pre planned, but they played a song or two together on on that show, and they clicked. There was a musical simpotico that you know, musician. I'm not a musician, but musicians easily recognized in one another. And through that initial initial contact, the genesis of Debt and Company was born. And so so later later that year, the Fairly Well Shows, I think the last one was was the day after fourth

of July July fifth, twenty fifteen. Dead and Company debuted in the fall of twenty twenty five with but with Bob Weir, the two drummers Bill Kreutzman and Mickey Hart, John Mayer on lead one lead guitar, you know, a role of tremendous responsibility and pressure. Jeff Tamenti playing both keyboard and piano, and the bass players Otel Burbridge, who played bass for the Almond Brothers for the last eighteen

years of their existence. At that time, Phil Lesh wasn't interested in doing any sort of really significan and touring. Played many shows, but basically had to select few home bases where he set up shop and would stay. But Dead and Company before before Bob Weir's passing, played for ten years, and they played, you know, they didn't play as many shows as The Great, as the Grateful Dead.

All of the surviving members you know they were they were in there in their late sixties even early seventies when it when they first started, but played played anywhere from from twenty to forty or forty five shows over those over those ten years, and in my experience seeing Dead in Company quite a few times from New York to California and in Las Vegas, where I've been living for the last sixteen years, including including quite a few shows at the Spear during Dead and Company's runs there.

Bob We're in interestingly took on more and more of the of the distance that Jerry Garcia had maintained verbally with the audience during the last number of years that he was alive, where he very very rarely interacted with the audience, in contrast to the interplay between him and the audience that he often initiated with the Grateful Dead. But Dead in Company, although it was different, it could

never be the same. And many people, you know, rendered their garments and gnashed their teeth because well, it wasn't Jerry Garcia, and it wasn't the Grateful Dead. But from the standpoint of someone who who for whom the music and the passion with which and the skill with which the music is played and the words are sung evoke tremendous joy and sense of community and continuity. Debt and Company have been a wonderful extension of the Grateful Dead legacy.

And they played, they played there as is off, and they played brilliantly, and too many people's surprise John Mayer proved to be a brilliant fit with them really really appreciating with gratitude and reverence the role that he was that he had taken on, and the appreciation with which the fans the fans acknowledged his participation. It's really really quite wonderful.

He had this kind of almost cherubic face, little boy's face, and at the end it's grizzled, you know, with the waving wild hair and the big handlebar mustache and bushy beard. And it just as it seemed, he seemed to evolve and and continue an age in a sense, as the band itself did, and through many incarnations and to to a final one of where he was when he died.

from time to time. But their their interest was in in contributing to quality of life, both both not just for themselves and for their audiences, but community writ small as well as as large, with the with the seeming underlying principle that contributing to people's experiences in a fundamentally positive, peace or oriented way would expand outwards, small pebbles making

large ripples. You know, the same way that when you toss a stone into a pond or or a lake, the ripples from the impact expand outward and they start very small, but at a certain point they may encompass the entire surface of the of the of the water. And UH. And they really, they really emphasized that this was this was an important part of their their ethos, uh, living holistically and being socially responsible. UH. And in connection with that, so, for instance, Bob We're worked as a

United Nations Development Program Goodwill ambassador. They supported voter registration through a nonprofit organization called Headcount, and in fact, at a number of Dead End Company shows in recent years, Bob We're's wife Natasha would stand on the side of the stage holding you know, and this was around a various election cycles, and above her head she would hold the sign that simply said vote, and she would hold it up above her head for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes

at a time, you know, stoically, firmly, you know, in a way that was absolutely just committed. And although it was just a sign, anyone who's ever held something above their head for five minutes that that takes some serious energy. That is that is hard work, and so to see that, you know, as a as an extension of this commitment to social causes that they believed in, was really phenomenal. Ye he was a co founding member of the Further Foundation,

which funds environmental, social and cultural causes. And part of how the Deadhead community evolved was that, you know, I mean, they played with tremendous passion and they played Their concerts are really long compared to usual concerts like the Grateful Dead, especially early on when they were you know, doing lots of drugs and it was a lot of LSD in particular, but they their concerts would last four or five hours

and longer like consistently. By the time I began to see them in nineteen seventy six, they were a little they were a little shorter. They were typically three a three and a half hours, but you know, dead in company for the entire length of their ten year history.

As you know, Bil Kreutzman left the band in early twenty twenty three and was replaced by another drummer, but Mickey Hart, who is in his late seventies and and Bob Weir who passed away just recently as we know, at seventy eight, they were still playing three hour plus concerts.

Now that's three hours of music. They would play two sets with about thirty to forty minute intermission in between them, but the music itself would encompass three hours consistently, you know, and played with you know, just played with incredible intensity and passion, and people gravitate towards that. That is, that

is infectious. And and you know, the way they their their philosophy about about people attending their concerts and allowing them to freely audio tape their their concerts, and so so any at any given concert, there'd be dozens to several hundred people recording those concerts, and then they distributed

them generally for free. There was this huge tape exchange community related to Live Grateful Dead concerts for you know, throughout the nineteen seventies, the nineteen eighties, and you know it perhaps into the into the nineteen nineties even And so that helped to spread to spread the music and the and the influence. And as the band themselves said,

you know, as they can they can tape it. As far as we're concerned, once we're finished playing, you know, we're done with it, they can they can do with it whatever they wanted, and it turned out to be this unintentionally brilliant a business model in terms of exposing more different people to the music, which now you know,

I mean it is multi generational. I know, I know adult now adult kids of friends of mine who I went to Grateful Dead concerts with, who are just as enthusiastic in terms of their interest in fandom as any as any deadhead.

but it's been said on social media. If so, if you see something behind that in terms of their you mentioned their ethols Zeitgeist.

Garcia song Touch of Gray. And I think that is that is emblematic of and a metaphor for the incredibly deep intuitive connection that they that they shared, that that began based on you know, their their their approach to playing, their philosophy towards the music, and the way they learned how to tell how to communicate nonverbally and almost telepathically in the mid and late sixties when they were, you know, doing so much LSD that you know, it's you know,

it is a different experience of the world such that you know, neuronal connections were made and wired in ways where where it really seems like there was something to the way in which they communicated nonverbally with one another and just knew where they were going and what they were going to do and be able to be on the same page in an incredibly sophisticated way, no matter the velocity of the improvisation.

You've got to be as close to a dead historian should say grateful dead, because they could confuse peop bullet. Let's meet a grateful debt history and as there can be. I really appreciate it. Folks, don't go anywhere. This is Being Frank. We're having a great time. I'm your host, Frank Lebono back with so much more right after these brief commercial messages. This is Hudson River Radio dot com.

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that kindly. If people read my stuff, they know exactly how I feel, et cetera. But you seem to feel there is a connection that you want to make between the two things. Please do that now.

and spiritually ultimately affects us physically and vice versa. But more and more research is finding that one of the most important factors to ongoing health and well being is connection with others. Connection and that being being part of a community of people, whether that community is smaller or larger, has has research based significant, meaningful, positive benefits to mental, emo emotional, spiritual, and in turn physical health and well

and well being. And so, you know, part of part of the way in which you know the current uh socio political events are so overwhelming and so so disheartening as well as rage inducing in you know in some cases, is that you know, it gets worse when we feel like we're alone and that there's relatively little we can do. But there is you know, the the idea of strength and numbers is not just a practical, instrumental principle, it

is a mental, emotional, and spiritual principle as well. And the experience of knowing that we are not alone, that there are other people going through the same experience, shared lived experience, is this incredible ly powerful therapeutic resource that has nothing to do with therapy per se, just in terms of what's helpful and healthy to to human beings.

And you know, I'm I'm, I'm really blessed in for a lot of reasons, but in particular I'm thinking of, you know, being blessed to be a member of two literally global communities at this point. It's the you know, the Grateful Dead community. And you know, one of the one of the positive things about social media, juxtaposed with all of the crap and and uh and and uh

intentionally engineered manipulations and efforts to monetize our attention. But the positive aspect of social media to me is the way in which it enables people to connect with with other people throughout all parts of their fives. Like you. You know, you and I have known each other since since the early eighties. And and we reconnected through Facebook.

in advancing society forward in healthy, positive ways. And and you know, Bob Weir was a big part of that, and he continued that work right up until his his passing. You know, he he co authored to books with his sister Wendy, Wendy wear Uh Panther Dreams and and and Baru Bay which they were basically fund their kids books and their fundraising efforts for environmental causes, rainforest causes, and and and and and so forth. So so when we engage together, we are doing in in in those ways,

we're doing something meaningful, We're doing something powerful. So even if it doesn't feel like much, every little bit counts, every little bit has meaning. It has value if it moves things in a healthy and positive direction. And the you know, the other global community that I'm part of is is a twelve step recovery community where I know people all over the country and literally all over the world.

And and also there's a there, there's a you know, the Venn diagram has an intersection between the Grateful Dead community and the recovery community, and that takes the form of the Warfrats, named after a Hunter Garcia song about an alcoholic down on his luck around the San Francisco Docs and the wish to get his life together and to change its trajectory, to transform it. And so there's this grateful deadheads in recovery community also. But I think,

you know, ultimately it's a function of balance. I think being being sad, being dishearted, heartened, being overwhelmed, being depressed, being frustrated, being angry, experiencing rage. These are all perfectly okay, normal and natural to the circumstance. The question is what

we do with them. And I would certainly just encourage and invite everyone to connect with the communities that fit for you, that align with your values, your principles, your interests, including socio politically and engage in even small forms of action because no matter how small, they still have meaning and value.

separate one from from the other. Uh. And part of part of that book is is is my own story. About a third of it is fairly autobiographical, but the rest of it is psycho educational and lays out a multi dimensional approach to recovery from both of those pernicious co occurring disorders. And the second book is Roots and Wings Mindful Parenting in Recovery, which by the way, has

just been republished. It's a revised edition, new on Amazon and other outlets, and it's about applying mindfulness practices to parenting, with special sections for parents who are in recovery themselves, although the vast majority of the content, probably eighty five to ninety percent, applies very directly to any parent, whether they're in addiction recovery or not. Parenting is difficult. It's complicated. It's one of the most challenging activities a human being

can get involved in. That and long term committed romantic part partnerships and podcasting.

and you can read more about my brain musics. Okay, I always leave you a couple of last little things and why not one directly from the Grateful Dead. It kind of sums it all up with a long, strange trip. It's been okay, keep on trucking, everybody. We've got some great original music from Johnny Markowski. You mentioned new writers of the Purple Sage. He drummed for them for a while. Johnny Markowski and the Jeb Jones Band. The great song to close our show, don't Cry for Me for our engineer,

mister Neil Richter the Mailman. I'm your host, Frank Lebono, and we hope to have you join us the next being Frank, We're the only way to be is Frank.