Here Beside the Rising Tide: Jerry Garcia, the Grateful Dead, and an American Awakening by Jim Newton


Highest recommendation. This book is a wonderful addition to the previous best Garcia bio by Blair Jackson:
Garcia : An American Life

Jim Newton is not a deadhead, but an academic political historian. He teaches at UCLA after 25 years at the LA Times. He looks at Jerry’s life as the soul of the 60s-70s counterculture and his “lasting impact on American life.”

His research and interviews add new details that were not known 20 years ago. He uses his profound understanding of the times Jerry lived in to place Jerry and the Dead in the context of the counterculture and American politics.

Newton gives great examples of how Robert Hunter’s lyrics speak at multiple levels (using He’s Gone and Ship of Fools as in-depth examples). p. 295: “Hunter’s lyrics could feel topical and majestic at once, giving his best work immediacy and artistic elevation.”

At first, Bruce Springsteen and Jerry did not appreciate each other (they both came around). Newton explains that Jerry came from the folk and bluegrass tradition, while Bruce came from rock. p. 378: “Springsteen was a preacher delivering a nightly revival. Garcia was gentler; he pulled the audience with him, invited it to participate alongside his active discovery. Springsteen called in thunder; Garcia walked in the rain.”

Counterculture

p. 321-2 Robert Christgau [NYT critic, the dean of America’s rock critics] “saw the Grateful Dead’s inextricable place in the larger culture.”

Christgau in 1972 : “The Dead’s gestalt embodied the fundamental Americanness of the so-called counter culture, and so did its music. Picking from the melting pot of a collective heritage, they then improvised on the pieces. Down-home boys and galaxy tripper, they combined black blues and bluegrass mountain highs, climaxing with long space jams of the tightest, most commercial soul-dance hits. Their devotion to their craft was fierce. — they never stopped playing and the people never stop dancing.”

The antidote to Ronald Reagan:

P. 343 “those who were into the Grateful Dead did not imagine they were frontally challenging Reagan’s America [greed is good] by attending a concert or even by traveling with the band. They were instead moving outside that America and inhabiting a country of their own. … At a time when reality seemed sharp and capable of cruel caprice, the Dead dwelled in humility and was open to magic.”

Mythology:

Jerry hit if off with Joseph Campbell, the mythology and religious studies professor. Jerry invited him to a Dead show.

p. 387 what Joseph Campbell “saw at a Dead show was a celebration of life, an affirmation of community, an expression of faith. Of his visit to the Dead, Campbell said,

“it somehow involved everybody, there were kids there, there were old people there. In other parts of the building, you could see that there were people just dancing and dancing. And that’s what it is: the dance of life.

It seemed to me, and I’m meaning this very seriously, a prime religious experience that transcended all the bondage and definitions of who and what that are the curse of the world today.”

It was, Campbell said, an antidote to dread itself: “this, I would say, is the answer to the Atom bomb.” “

Epilogue

The book ends by musing on the meaning of one line from Ripple, which I found beautiful and touching and the essence of Jerry. The remainder is Jim Newton’s words from the last 2 pages:

“If I knew the way, I would take you home.” Robert Hunter wrote that in 1970 and Jerry Garcia sang it for years. The line, from “Ripple”, can be heard as a statement of futility — I would take you home if only I knew the way — or of generosity — I’m offering to take you home. But it also stands as a statement of acceptance, of community and love — I am here to help.

Garcia sang that with conviction, with the self-awareness to realize he did not know the way. He had no plan, no charted path. Instead, he let the currents of meaning flow through him. He gave up some piece of his ego, and he allowed the universe to work through him, to magical effect.

Perhaps that is where the counterculture comes to rest as well. At its most instructive, a culture that challenges authority and celebrates beauty does not tell us how to overthrow a government. It guides rather than directs. It offers another way.

It demonstrates that we have the freedom to explore the world, to give proof of the fact that humans need not attack each other to discover ourselves; that we need not hate or denigrate to be fulfilled; that we may act with compassion and care for one another; that we may feel and not merely reason; that we may be part of something larger; that we may be free and that music may help us get there. And that when we surrender ego, even a little bit, magic is at the door.

It doesn’t work for everyone, and it doesn’t always work even for those who come to accept it. It doesn’t have to. Like a Dead show, it works in moments. And it’s magnificent when it does.

Garcia did not know the way, and he was often lost. But he took us home.