Five years after Garcia's death, Grateful
Dead family thrives
By JOHN JURGENSEN-- The Associated Press
canoe.com:80/CNEWSFeatures0008/08_garcia.html
The Grateful Dead
NOVATO, Calif. (AP) -- Sue Swanson was more than a fan of the Grateful
Dead. She was an old friend and employee, and Jerry Garcia's death five
years ago hit her like a death in the family.
"My daughter, Rose, called me with the news," says Swanson, who had
recently lost her mother, too. "I sat in my car and wept from my soul. My life
rug had been pulled out from under me."
The core of friends and staff members who made up the Grateful Dead
organization felt orphaned by Garcia's death on Aug. 9, 1995. The band
officially dissolved four months later.
But five years on, the Dead's legacy has proved healthy, not to mention
lucrative, for the still close-knit supporting cast members like Sue Swanson.
They remain part of the Dead's afterlife, active in merchandise sales, CD
releases and Internet projects.
"You don't have to be on the payroll to be part of the family," said Swanson,
but the Dead's staff members were always their ultimate fans. The devoted
following helped make the Dead one of the longest-lived and most successful
touring bands of all time, playing an average of 80 concerts a year and
earning millions despite the fact that they never had a No. 1 hit.
"No one ever quit the Dead. They never wanted to," said Dennis McNally, the
band's biographer and publicist since 1984.
Swanson's role, for example, evolved from first fan to bill and payroll handler
to -- after Garcia's death -- tech maven, responsible for everything from the
Dead's Web page to the health of office computers. She has helped
transform Grateful Dead Productions' merchandising department into the
band's new face.
The intense loyalty between band members and crew developed during the
years of touring, when the Dead deployed a legendary sound system that
could take more than 12 hours to assemble.
"Members of the crew were members of the band," said McNally. "Some
crew members had more input into decisions about things such as, do we go
to England or not, than some of the band members themselves. That may
have been because said members were a bit more rowdy and outspoken."
Executive decisions were made at board meetings attended only by band
members, but the entire staff joined in at band meetings. Formalities were as
scarce as crewcuts.
"Most decisions were made over a cup of coffee and a joint," McNally said.
That management style served the band well. By 1986, they were selling out
stadiums consistently, followed around the country by loyal fans known as
deadheads. The Dead soon became a fixture on Forbes magazine's annual
list of the 40 wealthiest entertainers, typically selling $50 million worth of
tickets a year.
In the late 1960s, the band had cut weekly $25 checks to everyone living
communally in their residence at 710 Ashbury, in San Francisco. When the
band's income skyrocketed, everybody benefited. The Dead was the first
band to extend benefits such as profit sharing and health coverage to
employees.
"We had people with what I'd call a limited education working on the crew
making six-figure salaries," says McNally, who estimates that at the height
of their popularity, the Dead employed up to 60 people. Now there are about
30.
When Garcia died at 53, his health destroyed by years of heroin use, the
company laid off some employees. Others went into semi-retirement. But
many were absorbed into merchandising, filling orders for legions of mournful
fans.
"What happens when a rock icon, any icon, dies?" said Swanson, who went
back to work the day after Garcia died. "Everybody wants a T-shirt with their
picture on it. It sounds mercenary, but it's not. It's what it was."
"The great gift for me personally was that I was so busy, I could take the
grieving in pieces when I had time."
Company headquarters is an old Coca-Cola bottling plant north of San
Francisco where, to the beat of Bob Marley echoing through the warehouse,
a handful of workers moves through a maze of metal shelving packed with
goods.
From sports bras to bath salts, dog bowls to the ubiquitous tie-dyes,
Grateful Dead Productions earned almost $15 million in merchandise sales in
1998. Much of it bears the Dead's most recognizable emblem: a circular skull
emblazoned with a lightning bolt. With music sales and concerts by various
band members, McNally estimates that Dead-related items bring in about
$70 million annually.
Fans have been fed a steady diet of CDs from the Dead's vast archive of live
concert recordings: 18 volumes and counting.
Tapes of virtually every Dead concert and recording are stored in the Vault,
which is kept at a cool 68 degrees and is rigged with oxygen-gobbling
Inergen gas in case of fires. David Lemieux, one of the archivists who took
over from the late Dick Latvala, picks and prepares live recordings for
commercial release.
"I could listen to this music 14 hours a day. In fact, I often do," says
Lemieux, 29, who attended his first concert at 16.
Without any suggestion of exaggeration, he says he would sacrifice his life
to preserve the tapes.
Grateful Dead Productions has been exploring ways to make the Vault's
contents electronically accessible; with unnamed Silicon Valley heavies, it
plans to start an outside company that would create a Web-based archive.
Fans have always been permitted to trade concert recordings on condition
that no money change hands, but the Dead plans to charge a download fee
for a digital, CD-quality recording.
"We're waiting for the technology to evolve," McNally said.
The plan, however, has caused an uncharacteristic falling out in the family.
Bassist Phil Lesh objects to what he sees as a buyout by outsiders. In a
recent letter to fans, he wrote, "I have come to the very sad conclusion that
the Grateful Dead is no longer a band but a corporation whose board
members no longer have a common vision."
As for the band's live music, it hasn't entirely stopped.
There's the Furthur Festival, started by band members in 1996. And beyond
their various solo ventures, some perform in the Other Ones, which rehearses
in a space adjacent to the Vault and is planning a tour this summer.
One of the Dead's two drummers, Bill Kreutzmann, retreated to Hawaii after
Garcia's death but showed up recently at the office and tried out
spontaneously for a spot in the band.
"I needed to come back because my heart was getting funny" and
emotional, Kreutzmann said during a rehearsal break. |
