30 Years Ago August 9 1995

My sister called me at work at a nuclear power plant. I called the hotline immediately and heard the devastation in the message. Still gives me chills thinking about it. Left work and we all gradually descended upon one of our local pubs to drown ourselves 

Driving back from camping in the Bitterroots listening to the classic rock station.  "Casey Jones" was on and  I commented to my girlfriend how they never play live GD on the radio when the DJ said it was dedicated to "the late great Jerry Garcia." Gathered at a friend's house later that day and someone broke out a VHS of "Sunshine Daydream".  Had never seen that before and didn't see it again until it's official release many years later.

Got out of a long meeting to find my voicemail loaded with calls of the news. Went out with a buddy to Jack's Taps on Noe for barleywines and back to his house for JGB tapes. 30 years. Good grief.

Got a call at work from my long time tour buddy with the news.  He then says to me "now everyone will be a deadhead."  The visionary nature of that comment didn't hit at the time.  But, over the years that followed and the mainstream success of Fare Thee Well, DeadCo and the 60th celebration, it seems he could see the future.  I miss Jerry and Phil.   

Was working a lousy minimum wage job shipping orders for Yakima roof racks in Arcata.The radio was playing Touch Of Grey.  The DJ came on as it was ending with the sad news.  The shock was setting in when the shipping crew supervisor turned up the volume and yelled, "oh yeah, that fucker's dead!".  He loved Van Halen and was the variety of Humboldt-born native that had contempt for the local hippie populace, especially the Deadhead transplants.  I told him I was punching out to take my lunch, and walked up to the Arcata Plaza, and walked around the old statue of William McKinley that used to be there, past some of those recently transplanted wandering free spirits, who seemed oblivious to the news.  Went back to finish the shift, but didn't last too much longer at that  gig.

30 years of Grateful Dead.  I was 30 then and thought the party was over.  Here we are 30 years later still listening to and celebrating this music.

Thank you Jerry.  Lots of highs and lows in the 30 years you've been gone, both made better by the creative legacy you left for all to enjoy.

GARCIA’S DEATH

Yesterday, today and tomorrow
Jerry joined the angels
rounded out his earthly life
left us Dead Heads
sad, but grateful
for all the years
combined.
Lucky! Oh! We are so lucky
who grieve today,
for millions of Dead Heads
yet unborn will never be
in some smokey hall
or out at a country fair
while Jerry and the boys
are playing something
entirely new
and absolutely perfect.
Last week, I hallucinated
(had a premonition of)
a world without Jerry.
I worried, he was gone
without a trace
and only I remembered him.
Turning, I saw an old
Filmore poster on the wall,
Garcia’s youthful, clean-shaven
smiling face
and in my head I heard
his distinctive voice saying
“Don't worry about it, man.”
Late Sunday afternoon,
driving home through Forest Knolls
I thought fondly of Jerry.
Two sunrises, three sunsets later,
that’s where he died.
Since then, for me
everything is flashback deja vu.
I have already read all the newspapers
and seen all the television programs,
all the galaxies are reruns,
but destiny is just begun.
When the news went round the world
the people took the streets
and danced and sang by candlelight
all across the nation.
I was alone again in my mind’s room
and could not share their laughter
or their tears.
Now Jerry rides the cusps
between the times.
The times are changing
as they are encapsulated,
contained on disc and tape,
but even should the poles shift
and all magnets disappear,
erasing Jerry’s voice,
even then the songs will be sung
around campfires in the primordial forests
under eternity along the wild
wind swept beaches of nature
inside the castles and caves or bus
where we maintain our freeholds.
Remember Jerry on the stage,
his expressions as the music
played the stories of existence.
Never mind abusive uses
of dangerous substances,
or the impudent impotent reviews
of ignorant imbeciles,
none of that matters.
What matters are the curious
expansive trips further into, out of
spaces and bubbles of consciousness.
Jerry left us many signposts,
and the long strange trip continues
there is much work that remains to be done.
The Grateful Dead can never die
The Grateful Dead are life.

~ Roarshock

Tour friend woke me up & told me that the party was over. 
While there have been plenty of other parties since,

there is nothing like a GD shoe!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

An Elegy for Jerry
by Robert Hunter

Jerry, my friend,
you've done it again,
even in your silence
the familiar pressure
comes to bear, demanding
I pull words from the air
with only this morning
and part of the afternoon
to compose an ode worthy
of one so particular
about every turn of phrase,
demanding it hit home
in a thousand ways
before making it his own,
and this I can't do alone.
Now that the singer is gone,
where shall I go for the song? 
Without your melody and taste
to lend an attitude of grace
a lyric is an orphan thing,
a hive with neither honey's taste
nor power to truly sting. 
What choice have I but to dare and
call your muse who thought to rest
out of the thin blue air
that out of the field of shared time,
a line or two might chance to shine -- 
As ever when we called,
in hope if not in words,
the muse descends.
How should she desert us now?
Scars of battle on her brow,
bedraggled feathers on her wings,
and yet she sings, she sings! 
May she bear thee to thy rest,
the ancient bower of flowers
beyond the solitude of days,
the tyranny of hours--
the wreath of shining laurel lie
upon your shaggy head
bestowing power to play the lyre
to legions of the dead
If some part of that music
is heard in deepest dream,
or on some breeze of Summer
a snatch of golden theme,
we'll know you live inside us
with love that never parts
our good old Jack O'Diamonds
become the King of Hearts. 
I feel your silent laughter
at sentiments so bold
that dare to step across the line
to tell what must be told,
so I'll just say I love you,
which I never said before
and let it go at that old friend
the rest you may ignore.
 

Heading for the ferry to Martha's Vineyard for a vacation with wife and kids at mom's beach house. Same as above - GD came on the classic rock station followed by the news. Unfortunately, not surprised or shocked - just sad.

Some locals on the Vineyard, including Peter Simon the photographer, got a tribute together a day or two later.

Bob Dylan’s Eulogy For Jerry Garcia   

     "There’s no way to measure his greatness or magnitude as a person or player. I dont think eulogizing will do him justice. He was that great, much more than a suberb musician, with an uncanny ear and dexterity. He is the very spirit personified of what ever is muddy-river country into the spheres. He really has no equal.          "To me he wasn’t only a musician and friend, he was more like a big brother who taught and showed me more than he’ll ever know. There are a lot of spaces and advances between the Carter family, Buddy Holly and, say, Ornette Coleman, a lot of universes, but he filled them all without being a member of any school. His playing was muddy, awesome, sophisticated, hypnotic and subtle. There’s no way to convey the loss. It just digs really deep down.“  

My friend called me around 9AM with the news. i rode my bike over to his house. We watched the GD movie and drank home brew all day. I walked my bike home. When I got home I saw that my old roommate Don had dropped by. I took him to his first and last show in Portland. He left a Guinness on my porch for me with a note attached that said "Jerry will never die" on it. 

Living in Olympia, WA after doing the last west coast tour, working a string of terrible part-time jobs and trying to make rent on an apartment after couch-surfing/sleeping in a tent in a friend's backyard for much of the summer after tour ended, which I financed almost entirely from leftover student-loan money after dropping out of my first attempt at grad. school. I was 22 years old, and had seen 53 shows at that point, 52 of which were between 90-95, and I still managed to graduate with a BA in four years during that time somehow. Got a call from a friend on the east coast, around 9am west coast time I guess. Spent the rest of the day in a haze of despair, got absolutely hammered at a friend's house that evening, eventually landing at a downtown pub where my friend and I, in obvious despair, were approached by a young couple who tried to encourage us to celebrate Jerry's life by going to plant trees in Canada, to which I may have responded in a less than admirable manner. Punched a wall when I got home,  eventually woke up on the floor with my head next to a boombox playing the second set of Cincinnati 89 I think it was, the set with a smokin' China > Rider.

Ended up going back home to upstate NY in early October and getting on with life.

We were visiting my parents with my 6 month old son. He was at the age for a front facing car seat, so we went to the local Caldors and grabbed one. As soon as I turned on the car to leave they announced it on the radio.

I was getting ready to work at the Bank of America on 15 Ocean Ave, a mere .3 miles from 87 Harrington Place

I thought about calling in sick but i managed to make it in.  I called up my MPLS deadhead brothers in shock regarding the news.

On Sunday, August 13th the moment I saw that Jerry Garcia mural in Golden Gate Park I broke into tears. I was right in front and remember touching Phil as he come through in the march drum procession towards the speaking stage.

Devastating.  Rest easy Jerry, you've given me more constant joy than probably any other human being on this planet.

ps - i excel at one-way relationships

pps - Always a HOOT!!!

>>>Unfortunately, not surprised or shocked - just sad.

Same here. He lived exactly how he wanted to. Not many people can lay credit to that.

Heard it on the radio on the way home from work. Rolled up a fatty, stepped out in the backyard, and gave Thanks for treading his own path, and the art he left behind.  With the exception of meeting up with jaz, never been to another dead concert since.

>>>>> Cincinnati 89

^^^^That was a hoot

Got a wake up call from the east cost but it didn't surprise me. 

After seeing 90% of anytime Jerry played in the bay area since 91, I didn't go to the last Shoreline run(which I regret now) but Jer looked rough in February so I shrugged it off and got on with my life

It wasn't until a week later when a tour buddy I've known since kindergarten called after attending Jerry's funeral  that I broke down and cried.

He done more for you than your daddy's ever done

>>>Unfortunately, not surprised or shocked - just sad.

Right?   As sad as it was, wasn't surprised either.

In the mid-90s, before Jerry died, I was working on an Earth First! campaign way out in the sticks of central Idaho trying to stop road building and logging in a de facto wilderness area.   Some of the activists were operating out of "satellite camps" hidden far deep in the woods and would get resupplied once a week by people backpacking in.  A cruel prank was to tell the Deadheads at the satellite camps that Jerry had died.  Totally believable given what we were all seeing on stage at that point.    

I was living in Joliet, Illinois, and trying to piece my life back together after getting sober a couple of years before. I had ended a relationship earlier in the summer, and decided not to attend the shows at Soldier Field that year because I just wasn't feeling it. When a buddy called and told me he had tickets for me if wanted them, I passed and said I'd catch them the next time around.

When I heard that Jerry had passed, I wasn't very surprised. I saw most of my shows in the 80s, and it was pretty clear that his weight, overall health, and dope use were major problems, so it wasn't a question of whether these things would take him out, but rather a question of when for the longest time.

As a side note, I'll add that my Dad had passed a few years earlier at the ripe old age of 51. Jerry made it two years more than that, but it's odd to me the two main male influences in my life would pass so young, and for the longest time, I thought for sure I would become a member of that club. The universe apparently has other plans for me though. I turn 65 next month.

I was electrical foreman on a school we were upgrading.  My wife called mid morning and asked me how I was holding up.  I had not heard yet. Turned on howard stearn. He and his bitch made light of it. The comment I most remember was "Good riddance. I never liked his music anyway."   Was a tough day at work. That night thousands of us gathered for a candle-light vigil near the Observatory in LA, I could not make the trek up to SF the next day, but I was there in spirit. And I never listened to hs again. 

Roarshock, that is really outstanding!

I was somewhere near Salinas, as the song goes, driving, and I turned on the radio for the Giants game and heard the news from Mike Krukow. 

A friend woke me up with the call. As others have said, it wasn't surprising news, and as always I was a bit glazed after first waking up and it didn't really hit me for a while.

Since at that time Grateful Dead & Jerry shows were a significant portion of business for Bill Graham Presents and an entire division was devoted full-time to just that, a company-wide meeting was called for that afternoon.

When I was driving to Shoreline to meet up with others and head to SF for the meeting the thought hit me that there would be no more Jerry Garcia Band shows at the Warfield, and that's when it all suddenly washed over me. I had to pull to the side of the freeway for about five minutes to let it all out. I still don't think it's all out.

At the BGP offices I'd say about half the people were quietly relieved because GD shows had become such brutal events to put on and the other half were anywhere from sad to devastated. After the meeting, which was mostly just telling people that no one was losing their job and that there would probably be some type of memorial and to be ready for that, a few of us considered heading over to Golden Gate Park, where we heard people had been gathering, but ultimately decided to just go to a friends home nearby and lay low.

I've never really missed what the Grateful Dead had become by that point, but I still miss those JGB shows, and oh boy, how I miss the Great Gar.

This past weekend, hearing all the stories from those who attended the D$C shows last weekend and seeing all the photos fans and then Jay Blakesberg and Bob Minkin have posted, showing the happiness, the joy, the pure love surging from so many people of all ages, and especially from so many young people, it makes me very happy to know that this thing isn't going to fade away.

Whatever anyone may think of Dead & Company, and I don't fully disagree with much of it, that group re-stoked the slowly fading flame back into a raging inferno that engulfed new generations, and even if that group never plays another show, that true love, joy & devotion for Jerry and the Grateful Dead will never fade from all those young people who are now lifers just like us, and who will keep that flame burning for decades to come.

And that my friends, is far out.

Long live the Grateful Dead!!!!

LONG LIVE JERRY GARCIA!!!!!!!!

NYCDave ...There was a red light one building up from my Main St office at the time.  In my trauma, I printed out 100 copies of Hunter's Eulogy and passed them out for hours to every car with a Dead sticker stopped at that light.

Quinn ... I heard about John Lennon from Howard Cosell

Wife let me know. A friend let her know and neither wanted to tell me. It was a "I'm not telling him argument" they said.  At the last show I attended, which was in Portland OR I knew I would never see him again. Anything but a surprise. 

Girlfriend called me in tears. Then another friend called.Turned on the radio or TV - because that is what we did in those days.

We were stunned - wound up at Haight and GGP that evening.

KFOG did a beautiful tribute that day, all day - playing music about the vibe, reflecting upon the history of the day. I remember it it vividly...wow. (Rosa Lee???)

This happened to be the same day of the local David Gans KPFA GD Hour. "The unthinkable, and inevitable has happened" 

What a day, Forever burned into my memory.

>>>>>Turned on howard stearn. He and his bitch made light of it. The comment I most remember was "Good riddance. I never liked his music anyway."

^^^Had that on at work as well and was always a fan of Robin's until that point

Looking back it was their shtick and they were trying to make good radio

"it's just business capiche?"

Speaking of business where's the  book on how Jerry handled his finances from the beginning to the end? 

I was at the front desk of the natural medicine center I worked at. Deb (Downtown) Trist called to tell me Jerry had died. If you know Deb, you'll know how hard it was for her to share the news. I tried to keep it together, but I'm told I cried for a week. I told one of the people I worked with and he printed a tie-dye Stealie to put up on the bulletin board in the front office right off the waiting room. I tried, but I couldn't stop crying. The worst part at the time was that Greg was camping with his son near Crater Lake and I had no way to reach him (no cell phones in '95). I needed Greg so I called the Ranger Station at Union Creek and told them we had a family emergency and I needed to hear from him. You might remember that Greg grew up with his brother Laird and Jerry being best friends, so he had more than a casual interest. So, the Ranger found Greg and had him call me; we shared sadness after I told him and he came back the next morning.

I think there was a gathering for Eugene folks in Alton Baker Park that weekend.

Laird Grant was your Greg's brother???

Good grief Judit, your roots run very, very deep.

And it is good grief we're all feeling, because where would we be without Jerry?

Somewhere for sure, but I'm betting for most of us nowhere as good without that connection, and how good is that?

Oh, we lucky few.

I first read about Laird Grant in Hank Harrison's "The Dead Book ~ A Social History of the Grateful Dead."

This book came out in 1973 and includes this photo below. 

I 
 

A lot of good stories here and nice bonus tidbits.  

89 cinci was one of my go to's back in the day 

The summer of ’95 was a great one for me—and I knew it at the time. Just a break before heading back to school and work. I’d caught a good chunk of the East Coast tour, and it was obvious Jer was on his last legs. If you don’t know how rough it got, just listen to the Wharf Rat from Giants Stadium.  Still, there were moments—little sparks—that kept the magic alive. That supplication tease in Albany was just a tiny taste of the past. If I could go back to that summer, I would in a heartbeat.

I skipped Deer Creek. I was fried, and something told me it would be a mess. No regrets there. But the day before the final show, I turned to my buddy and half-joked about driving the 5-6 hours to catch the boys one more time. And that's exactly what we did.  The show was all over the place—but again, those little moments were unforgettable. That So Many Roads still haunts me.

Right after that, I packed up and went to British Columbia for a month of mountaineering—no phones, no news, no outside world. Just ice, snow, and silence. It was a special trip I’ve never repeated, but full of stories that still echo today.

When I got back in mid to late August, I wandered into a small coffee shop with some friends. We were just easing back into normal life. A buddy who knew I was into the Dead showed me the headlines on a local paper. I brushed it off—figured it was just another tabloid rumor. But then the barista clarified that it had really happened. 

It hit me, like it hit you.  I just stepped outside, swirling in my thoughts.  While everyone else had already mourned, I was two weeks late. The moment had passed, the vigils had ended, people had started to move on. It felt surreal, like I’d missed something important. And to this day, there’s a small part of me that regrets not being able to mourn with everyone else, to celebrate his life when it was still raw.

But in reflection—I wouldn’t change a thing.

Sadly, I was possibly one of the first people to hear the news publicly.

I was camping at Buckeye Hot Springs in Bridgeport, CA (off 395) and up before sunrise, listening to a far away radio station out of Southern CA. (I had probably been listening to Art Bell late night AM when I fell asleep.)

Sometime right around dawn, the early morning DJ announced that his sister, who worked at Serenity Knolls Treatment Center, just called him with some breaking news. What?

I couldn't believe it, and at daybreak I got in my truck and hustled to a public phone down the road to call Jerry's personal assistant (Vince DiBiase) in Marin, who was also a friend of mine.

He hadn't heard the news yet and cut me off to call Cameron Sears and the Lesh family to confirm.

We immediately packed up our camping gear and beelined it back to the Bay area, a 5 hr drive. Other radio stations did not make the announcement for hours.

Around noon I was running the lunch shift, I had a local college station on, heard the announcement.  Joan Baez was in the studio recording a segment for NPR's World Cafe.  She comes out & sings Amazing Grace, where she ad-libbed condolences from herself & her family.

  Getting 10 more years of GD/JGB music after the July '86 collapse is always worth celebrating.  Had some of the best times of my life in those 10 years seeing shows, almost all sober after a coke & sleeping pills run in '84 & 85.      From The Wrap.Com...

His blood sugar was the second highest the doctors at Marin General had ever seen. His kidneys had shut down. He was running a 105-degree fever from a systemic infection. He was in a coma.  Only the patient’s wife was permitted inside. “His heart stopped,” she would later say. ”He died. The hospital didn’t want anyone to know this, but he died. They had to resuscitate him.”  "My main experience" Garcia would later reveal, “was one of furious activity and tremendous struggle in a sort of futuristic spaceship vehicle with insectoid presences … big beetles rushing into tubes.”

 His eyes opened to see the breathless crowd at his bedside. “Why are you looking at me?” he whispered to his speechless wife, Mountain Girl. “I’m not Beethoven. I’m not dead. "He was grateful to be alive,” said David Nelson, his band mate in the New Riders of the Purple Sage. “For him, it was the second time. The first was the car accident in Palo Alto.”  25 years before. His best friend, Paul Speegle, the driver, was killed instantly; Jerry, his passenger, had miraculously survived with only a broken collarbone.  “I was a changed person,” he said. “It was cosmic …  It was where my life began. Before then I was always living at less than capacity. I was idling. That was the slingshot for the rest of my life.”  Several years later, he founded the Grateful Dead. 

With his miraculous 1986 recovery from the diabetic coma, he was a Lazarus. “The doctors said they’d never seen anybody as sick who wasn’t dead,” he recalled. “I really felt that the fans put life into me.” He had to learn to walk, talk, and play guitar again.  Responding to the worship of his fans, he just shook his head, “I’ll put up with it until they come at me with the cross and nails.” But he couldn’t avoid beatification even from his own people. “I loved him more than I loved anything,” said his manager, Richard Loren. “I loved him because he was such an almost perfect person. He was unpretentious. He was compassionate. He was humble. In a way, he was a Buddha.”

>>> Getting 10 more years of GD/JGB music after the July '86 collapse is always worth celebrating.

This!!!

Met my wife dancing in the hall at the December "comeback" shows.  I can hardly begin to imagine how different my life would be if Jerry hadn't recovered. 

>>> I packed up and went to British Columbia for a month of mountaineering...

I'd like to hear about this.  Start a thread?

Buckeye is a killer soak

I was gold panning on the Shasta River north of Yreka, removed a large rock, and cleaned out the gravel below it.  Had my best gold pan ever, with ~3.5 grams of gold, some chunky, some with quartz, along with a few red garnets.  But something didn't feel right, so hiked up to the road that evening to the car, heard that Jerry had passed on right wing AM radio.  They didn't mention the Dead, just that Jer was a good biz man with his tie biz.  I was playing in a band that did a bunch of Dead tunes at the time, so hiked back down, packed everything up, and drove the 6 hours home.  There were piles of messages on my phone machine, the next day there was a very large vigil in front of the County Courthouse honoring Jerry.

Here's the gold found that day (worth ~ $380 today);  

>>>>> "His heart stopped,” she would later say. ”He died. The hospital didn’t want anyone to know this, but he died. They had to resuscitate him.”  "My main experience" Garcia would later reveal, “was one of furious activity and tremendous struggle in a sort of futuristic spaceship vehicle with insectoid presences … big beetles rushing into tubes.”

Off topic, but relevant, this is incredibly interesting as dmt is purportedly released in significant quantities into our brain upon death. This scenario, one with spaceships and alien figures, is one that repeats itself in varying degrees in aya ceremonies. Not uncommon at all,  but it takes the ability to surrender fully to ego death with no fear, and these types of visions are only seen in the deepest part of the journey through very strong concentration abilities, drawing the person into the highest point of the ceremony, the spirit visions.  

I was awakened by a phone call and immediately knew that my life as I knew it would never be the same. I was right and I was wrong. Jerry may be gone but his memory and music will live on forever. The Music Never Stopped. 

honestly, its not a day i like to remember 

Phil's liver transplant from Cody was just three years away.  Even if Jerry had lived, the circus was headed towards a hiatus.

We didn't know that at the time, just the raw reality that Jerry was gone.

I was in bed living in The Philippines and saw a picture of Jerry on the NBC feed that only showed pictures but no commentary. Then my phone rang and I was afraid to answer it as I had a feeling what was coming. Especially after seeing my final shows at RFK in 1995 which were not stellar and Jerry looked terrible. Once I got the news I got up(it was like 2 a.m.) and watched Downhill From Here. 

This is a great listen from the day after with David Gans and Steve Silberman.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G_-SGcDewGo

Joe thank you for that story I love it 

Also what Tim said 

As someone who has worked as a death doula that makes complete sense to me