I interviewed Bob Weir three times early in this century. He may be gone in the flesh, but like Jerry Garcia his influence will be felt for centuries. The quotes below are from interviews we did in 2000 and 2005, long after Jerry’s passing.
“There’s a mysticism about our music that is unique. It goes back to the roots of our music. There is a mysticism about the American musical heritage, the highly improvisational forms of music, whether they be blues, jazz, Appalachian music. There’s something more happening there. I think it’s something that comes with the heavy reliance on intuition because you really are going into the unknown. That’s the whole point of the adventure. So, it comes complete with its own mysticism, but the symbols of the mysticism are notes or lines or phrases rather than pentagrams or this or that. (2000)
“Jerry despised the cult of personality bullshit. He hated it so bad that he used to hide from that. And he used the drugs to do that. That pretty much killed him, that cult of personality bullshit. That guy was pretty much my closest friend. I watched this. I watched it happen, and he hated it so bad, so much that he just – he hid from it. So, I just ignore it. First off, it’s not focused on me as heavily as it was on Jerry, but Jerry was quite human, I’m here to tell ya.” (2000)
“I think the rest of them—the Grateful Dead band members—had all lived on their own before we formed that band, and I never had. I went directly from home to the road. So there was a layer of, I don’t know—I don’t want to call it innocence, but naiveté—that I had that those guys had begun working their way through. It was time for that naiveté to show up and get used. I was good for it.” (2000)
“It sounds like I’m pissing and moaning, but it’s awkward for me when I run into people who get all flustered and start shaking and stuff. I’m just a human being. And these people think they’re looking at something else they’re not seeing. They’re not even seeing what’s standing in front of them, which is just a human being. They’re seeing something else, and that’s gonna bother you a little bit.” (2000)
That timeless place in music is what I live for. I go to a completely hallucinogenic realm where I’m watching the notes in color, or I’m watching what everybody is playing in color.
It’s a completely psychedelic place only way deeper, way deeper than any place that – and sort of drug-induced psychedelic experience could ever be. I can see the audience, and they can see me, but they’re all part of it, too. For the most part, they go there with us.
“I had no idea when I started writing songs that you actually made money for the act of writing songs. You wrote songs because then you had ’em to play, and playing was where you made your living was my understanding of the equation. I was young and naïve.” (2000)
“More important than your ability to play is your ability to listen. And there’s no substitute for experience in that regard. It just takes a long time. There’s just no getting around it. Some people have a talent for listening, and they get there faster. It takes years. John Coltrane wasn’t a young man when he got to the point where he was hearing stuff in the music (that led him to play.)” (2005)
“As you get older, you come to realize performing is a more complicated affair. Just turning on some switch and performing is a matter of taking what’s available to you. If it’s music, it’s taking the instruments, the musicians that are available to you on that night and what they’re doing, and making sense of it. That’s performance. That’s true performance – and making sense of it for you and then articulating your counterpart.” (2005)
“Ambiance is hugely important. The audience is a part of what it is that we’re doing. Their feedback is very much a part of the evening’s event. You know, I’m not going to call it music, but it’s part of what goes on. They’re not exactly playing notes, but they’re ringing our bells. So, I guess actually in an ethereal sense there are notes that they’re playing.” (2005)
“(The seventh or eighth sense) is just a place that you go to – a hallucination realm. That’s not to say it’s not real. It’s very real as any place I live. It’s not just on stage that I go there. I go there when I listen to music anytime. It’s just another place. It’s a lot like the place you go when you dream.” (2005)
“The better you live, the more at peace you are with yourself and the world, the greater your intuition is going to be. It’s hand in hand, the same kind of thing. It’s difficult for me to describe.” (2005)
“I like the Utopian ideal of free music, but it can’t always be free. I don’t see how that’s going to work. At the same time, we did have a little something to do with it, but music is for people.” (2005)
