Who’s Got My Extra: Bill Kreutzmann

Bill Kreutzmann, Fort Point, San Francisco, November 1965. Photo by Herbie Greene

For today’s edition of Jerry Garcia
extras, we have an extended jam from Grateful Dead drummer Bill
Kreutzmann, featuring unpublished stories of the first time Kreutz laid
eyes on Garcia, house cleaning on acid and scuba diving. Check your
regulator and get wet.

When I was 15 or 16, my father bought a five string banjo. He
didn’t get into it, so he put in an advertisement to sell the
thing and this guy comes to the door to buy it and it’s Garcia.
That was the first time we ever met. He was hanging out in Palo Alto
with the beatniks. He grew up in San Francisco where his mother owned a
bar. That world tends to make you grow up a lot faster than a
protective home life in Palo Alto. I left home when I was 16, I
couldn’t stand my parents fighting and all that. I wanted to play
music, so I left.

Later [Garcia] was playing in Palo Alto at a club called the Tangent on
University Avenue. I would go there by myself to see what was going on.
He had the jug band—Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug
Champions—and he was playing banjo in that. Bob Weir was playing
guitar and Pigpen was playing washtub bass and I think [Robert] Hunter
was playing something too, probably guitar. I sat there in the audience
and I said, Man, I would follow this guy anywhere. And then not very
long after that I got a phone call and it was him or Bobby and they
said, “Do you want to play drums? We’re switching to
electric.” I was a drummer in Palo Alto. I was always into rock
music, but it was a switch for those guys. It was after Dylan changed
and went electric. I just played with every band that I could get my
hands on, when you first start you say yes to everything.

Early on, before it became impossible, [Garcia] would help people that
were ODing on psychedelics. He would sit down and take the time to talk
to them. Then it became, Holy shit there is not enough hours in the day
to do that. That is probably where that reputation got started, him
being a guru or father figure or whatever. He was a really gentle neat
guy. He had the most loving eyes. He would look at you and you would
feel nothing but love.

When he and I would get high on acid way back in Palo Alto we would
usually end up cleaning house, just me and him. It was the end of the
trip and you’ve come way down, so you want to put it all back
together.

Me and Jerry got certified [for scuba diving] in ’87 together at
Jack’s Dive Locker [in Hawaii]. Before our tests or anything
we’re just diving and having fun, and another dive instructor
comes up to our group and asks Garcia for an autograph under the water.
The reason I moved over here [to Hawaii] is that him and I had a pact
that when the band stopped playing, when there was no more Grateful
Dead, we would both buy places over here. I just kept the promise. The
bands after he left, like the Other Ones, just weren’t the same.
Great players, but they never did the songs quite like he did them.

I was living in Mendicino when my girlfriend called and said he died
and I flipped. I went into shock. I knew he was trying to go clean at
the Betty Ford Center, and he came back and something happened. When
you do stuff like that to your body, all your organs get weak. His body
was ready to go, doggonit. He had kicked a few other times. and one
time he had kicked and we were playing a show at the Shoreline
Ampitheatre near Palo Alto, and he was really wired and it was like
razorblades on your backbone or something. He played so great. He
leaned over and said, “Billy, I’m so nervous.” And I
was like, “You are playing your fucking ass off, shut up.”
I was hoping he would stay like that, but unfortunately that drug pulls
too strong.

I think if he had gotten himself clean again, which it looked like he
was trying to do, he probably would have stopped playing in the
Grateful Dead because I don’t think he really liked the Grateful
Dead at the end there. That’s my honest feeling. I think he was
doing it for money, I didn’t feel he was doing it for the fun
anymore, I don’t think any of us were. I think the last five
years in that band were kind of wasted. You can’t capture the
magic in a box, even if there wasn’t drug problems with any of
the band members and everybody was perfect. The art kind of leaves. The
muse kind of pulls its energy out. My feeling was that he was always
going to play with another band.

Posted in Music | 06/06/2007

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