Nov 15

Nov 15 My History With the Grateful Dead: (Learning to Fly)

**Artwork by the amazing Chris O’Leary (FB group Art Is Dead)**

It's a far gone lullaby, sung many years ago.
Mama, mama many worlds I've come since I first left home.

“How’s it going down there? Ready for a break?” the tattoo artist paused, hand hovering above me as I lay on my left side, trying to breathe evenly and get into a zen spot. We had been at it for many hours, as he inked the brightly colored terrapin on my arm, a gift to myself to commemorate my 50th birthday. I had designed the image after years of dreaming about how to honor and outwardly express the joy in the journey that I’ve been experienced with the Grateful Dead.

**Fresh off the table..tattoo by Israel Caine, Spidermonkey Tattoo, Olympia WA**

Like many of our tribe, I was a lost sailor, starting from about age 10, when my family life blew wide open from an absurdly long and excruciatingly painful divorce. In the midst of it all, we moved every one to two years, as my father went to medical school, and was then drafted in the Vietnam war, which left me vacillating between feeling either too exposed or too invisible, and finally, powerless and disconnected. It was basically a shit-show, and it was no way to grow up. I became one of those kids that always seems to have a book attached to their nose, even when walking down the street. Escaping into the magical world of books saved me. And then I discovered music.

Although I can still sing you pretty much all of the lyrics to The Partridge Family Album, Neil Young and CSNY were my early high school obsessions, along with some Zeppelin, and other seventies rock. In those days, you could generally find me sprawled out on my shag rug, poring over liner notes and photos, while listening to (actual) vinyl albums on my portable record player, a penny taped on the arm to weight it against inevitable skips. I taught myself to play guitar by listening to Neil Young’s Harvest and CSNY’s Deja Vu.

**Photo of Neil Young by Henry Diltz, 1975**

It’s Just a Box of Rain

The first time I ever heard of the Grateful Dead was during Christmas 1973, as a 12 year old, while visiting an older and much cooler family friend who let me loose on his vast record collection while we hid out from the adults. Flipping through his albums, I was transfixed by the cover of Europe ‘72. I just couldn’t reconcile the ominous sounding name of the band with this cartoonish colorful Mad Magazine-like illustration and the lively music, yet I couldn’t look away. The back cover of the album art: the globe, surrounded by not one but two pots of gold, connected by the grooviest rainbow, with the goofy, retro Robert Crumb-like "Keep on Truckin” shoe poking through the atmosphere, complete with metal taps and a hole worn from dancing, was as captivating as the front was mystifying.

The first Deadheads I can remember encountering, several years later, at my huge suburban high school in Westchester County, New York, seemed to have a little bubble around them. These were a tight bunch of kids who seemed enviably comfortable in their own skins. During lunch break, you could find them hanging out on the grass, eating what used to be called “health food” (avocado and alfalfa sprouts on whole wheat, with a waxy paper container of Dannon vanilla yogurt), playing music, and tossing a Frisbee. You could sometimes spy them heading to the adjacent woods for a stealthy puff off a joint or a Marlboro. As for me, I usually floated around between a couple of different social groups trying to keep a pleasant expression on my face while counting down the hours until I could escape. It’s hard to say what exactly was so terrible about school, but looking back, I would love to be able to give my 15 year-old self advice: Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.

I heard about an escape route in the form of our public alternative high school, and joined a rag-tag group of smart underachievers and lost souls for my senior year. It was here that I started to feel like there was room to breathe, and began to feel encouragement to explore my own voice. I met up with a diverse group of kids, including a core group of new friends that introduced me to the music, the culture, and the magic of The Grateful Dead. The bus was chugging towards me, and I had no idea what was coming.