Dark Star by Robert Greenfield Page B

your life in your hands.” He was hanging some with Pigpen just to see but he was not going to go on Pigpen’s trip because that was a little bit too weird. Pigpen was drinking Ripple. Pigpen was able to buy when he was sixteen because he looked that old. That was what ruined his liver by the time he was twenty-five.
    Clifford “Tiff” Garcia: I was surprised when Jerry first told me he was playing with this electric band. It was like he had really gotten down on the ladder after he got married. They had a baby and he was saying, “I have to make gigs. So this is what I have to do.” And I thought, “Jeez, this banjo player all of a sudden is lowering himself to play in a rock ’n’ roll band?” I was thinking, “Jerry, what’s happened to you?” And he said, “I gotta make a buck. You know?” I could understand it. They were hurting. You do what you have to do to survive.
    David Nelson: That place on Gilman Street only lasted about six months and then we had to move out. Rick Shubb scored another house that was just amazing. Right around the corner, there was this place called Waverly on Forest and Waverly. None of us checked it out because we thought, “Oh, we’d never get a place like that. That’d be just too good.” It was this old big Victorian that had round turrets on the corners and this porch with actual pillars and lots and lots of rooms. Jerry and Sara were living there. Me, Hunter, Dave Parker, an occasional ne’er-do-well in the other room or somebody in the attic. But that was the main hard core. I really loved that place. It had a big garden area in back with a huge avocado tree and it had an elevator but the elevator wasn’t working. The place was that big. That was where Jerry was living and where the band was centered.
    Peter Albin: I knew that they had gotten together a rock band in the ensuing months and were playing some pizza parlor down at Menlo Park but I never saw them at that point. I saw them at Pierre’s on Broadway in San Francisco. They played behind a stripteaser. It was the funniest fucking show I ever saw. Here were my old friends playing rock ’n’ roll music and “In The Midnight Hour.” Pigpen was playing behind this girl with these tassels. This was an old-fashioned type of stripteaser. It was before totally nude dancing. I was sitting behind three sailors and they were going, “Hey, take it off!” This girl was down to these little things and there were these air holes in the floor. That was real entertaining. The tassels would go up whenever someone pressed a button. Air would shoot up, the tassels would flap, and you’d see the boobies. Can you imagine the Grateful Dead playing behind a stripteaser? But after a while, the sailors’ eyes turned away from the girl and began watching Garcia and the band. The girl was boring. She was just dancing. Her tits were flopping. So what? The band was playing some interesting music. This guy with the one finger missing was doing some incredible shit. Even the sailors appreciated it. Of course, the people I was with, my brother and his friends, they thought it was fantastic.
    Justin Kreutzmann: In the ’65 to ’66 period, they just basically wanted to be the Rolling Stones. That was what my dad said. They just wanted to make blues records like the Rolling Stones. He said they used to back up strippers and there was one bar where they had this little drainage ditch in front of the bar. A little dip right there. If the set was really good, the bartender would pour alcohol into it and he’d light it on fire. This whole ring of fire would burn down the bar. What if you were reaching for your glass and you didn’t notice that? Aaahh!
    David Nelson: I went up to their Tuesday night audition at the Fillmore. The other bands that were auditioning that same night were the Great Society and the Loading Zone. I remember I took