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Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:00:00] I’m Ericka Cruz Guevarra and welcome to The Bay, local news to keep you rooted. It was September 1972 at the Palace Theater, a roughly 2,500 seat rundown movie theater in Waterbury, Connecticut. And Chuck Schwartz was attending what would become his favorite Grateful Dead concert.
Chuck Schwartz [00:00:27] It was general admission, and we all got there at noon, and we were very close to the front when they were letting people in, and the tickets were like five bucks maybe. And I remember it clearly to this day.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:00:45] For Chuck and many other deadheads, the Grateful Dead, best known for being pioneers of the jam band and the soundtrack of San Francisco’s Summer of Love, were renegades. They were these sort of outlaws whose shows were unique because they were freewheeling and surprising every time.
Chuck Schwartz [00:01:10] We were on Phil Lesh’s side, the other side, and Bob Weir always played in the middle. To see it and be in the the middle of it was just, it just locked me in and it was just fantastic. It was hard to describe. And the world, of course, was a very different place then.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:01:37] San Francisco is gearing up for Deadhead Disneyland. The city is hosting shows for the Grateful Dead’s 60th anniversary, featuring a famous offshoot of the band, Dead and Company. Tickets are going for $635 for three-day general admission, and thousands of Deadheads are expected to attend the shows and related events. But not Chuck.
Chuck Schwartz [00:02:06] It just feels super commercialized and just not the spirit that I felt when I attended shows and got involved in the whole scene.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:02:19] Today we talk with Chuck’s daughter and San Francisco-based writer Carly Schwartz about the Grateful Dead’s 60th anniversary shows and why some deadheads are boycotting them. Carly, Do you identify as a dead head?
Carly Schwartz [00:02:39] I feel like I might be disingenuous to say I’m, you know, a religiously fanatic deadhead. I am a religious fanatic fan of the band Phish, and so it’s kind of a cousin of the whole scene.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:02:53] This is Carly Schwartz, a writer and author based in San Francisco. She recently wrote about the Grateful Dead for the San Francisco Standard.
Carly Schwartz [00:03:03] That was my entry point into Grateful Dead, obviously I heard it around the house.
Chuck Schwartz [00:03:07] The Grateful Dead got me my start in loving music.
Carly Schwartz [00:03:12] My father’s name is Chuck Schwartz. He lives in Connecticut now. And he basically raised me the way I say it is as the gospel according to Jerry. I mean, Jerry Garcia, who is I guess for all intents and purposes, he was considered the front man. He was the lead guitarist.
Chuck Schwartz [00:03:30] I guess I just had it on all the time when they were kids. And so I guess they just assimilated it by osmosis if nothing else.
Carly Schwartz [00:03:40] This was just such a big part of his life and therefore my life as his daughter. I have these memories of him mowing the lawn on a Sunday and just belting out some Jerry lyrics. And my mother, funnily enough, could not stand the Grateful Dead. To this day, she brags about how she never accompanied him to a show. And she called it “neer-ne-neer” music. She’s like, oh, there’s your dad and his “neer-ne-neer”. And my brother and I are just rolling our eyes. There’s dad blasting his Jerry again. But it really was this omnipresent force. I mean, in the car, when he’s gardening around the house, it was just, yeah, it was a soundtrack.
Carly Schwartz [00:04:34] As a kid I wanted to not be like my parents, so of course I found my way into the next generation Grateful Dead, which is Phish, and became equally fanatic about them. But yeah, I mean you can’t be as into Phish as I am without having deep respect for the Dead, what they do, the genre they basically invented. I think they’re the godfathers of just an incredible musical movement.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:05:01] Yeah, the jam Band.
Carly Schwartz [00:05:03] Exactly.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:05:04] Which I learned from your dad, actually, who I had the pleasure of speaking with on the phone. He was really breaking it down for me, because I have to admit, I’m not like, I didn’t grow up listening to Grateful Dead. It’s not something I’m totally familiar with.
Carly Schwartz [00:05:19] Well, it’s his favorite subject matter. He was telling me the one thing he was bummed that he forgot to tell you was his theory on the jam band gene. If you are at a show and you hear someone go off on a crazy guitar jam, you’ve got the gene if after 25 minutes you’re like, oh man, that wasn’t really long enough, but it was pretty good. But if after 90 seconds you’re like, ugh, I hope this ends soon, I just want to get back to the songs and the lyrics, then you do not have the gene.
Chuck Schwartz [00:05:48] I think with a jam band there comes a point where the players have played together for such a long time that they kind of morph into a single organism or they just can anticipate what their fellow musicians are going to play and I think that’s when the magic occurs.
Carly Schwartz [00:06:20] I think they’re much more of a live band than a studio band. I guess the way I describe the music is kind of if rock music had improvisational jazz but done with rock instruments. Different every time. Sure, it’s different every time, I mean it really is like incomprehensible to someone who’s not into them, why anyone would like it, you know it’s nonsensical, it’s noise. But it’s so cool to hear these instruments together doing this magic.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:07:01] So Carly, there’s a bunch of stuff going on in San Francisco this weekend. Tell me about the 60th anniversary shows.
Carly Schwartz [00:07:07] Yeah, so in celebration of the band’s 60th anniversary, or what would be the 60th anniversary of the Grateful Dead, Dead and Company is playing three shows in Golden Gate Park. They are sold out. They have incredible headliners who are considered, you know, guitar gods in their own right. And around the city, a bunch of other stuff is happening. There’s a festival at one of the piers that’s put on by Phil Lesh’s son. There is a street naming after Jerry Garcia. Mickey Hart, the drummer, has an art exhibit somewhere in town, and then Jerry Day is also on Saturday. This is the annual celebration of Jerry Garcia, so I’m sure a lot of folks are coming out, even just for that in itself, is a huge celebration.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:07:53] So there’s a 60th anniversary show happening in San Francisco this weekend with Dead and Co, which to be clear is not the same as Grateful Dead, but is sort of an offshoot, right?
Carly Schwartz [00:08:04] Yeah, so the Grateful Dead was started by Jerry Garcia. He is this mythological figure. I mean, Rolling Stone has ranked him, I think, in the top 50 guitar players of all time. He sort of invented this “neer-ne-neer” music, if you will, that my mother scorned in my childhood. And yeah, and he’s a local guy. He grew up in the Excelsior. We celebrate Jerry Day in San Francisco every year. And when Jerry Garcia died in 1995, a lot of people, my father included, considered that to be the end of the Grateful Dead. The Grateful dead, as it was known, was over. However many, many incarnations have sprouted in the subsequent years. And then Dead and Co. is the newest incarnation which has John Mayer playing Jerry’s guitar parts but has Bob Weir really as the front man. He’s still playing the rhythm guitar parts but he sings a lot of Jerry’s original lyrics and obviously his songs as well. That’s pretty much the closest we have to The Grateful Dead today, given two remaining members are in that band, including Bob Weir.
Carly Schwartz [00:09:18] Dead in Company does this sort of bluesy, slower John Mayer fronted thing, which I personally, as a millennial who grew up with John Mayor and was a big teeny-bopper fan in my teens, I love. I think he’s one of the most talented living guitar players. I love his sort of, bluesy bent on it.
Carly Schwartz [00:09:43] It is absolutely not Jerry Garcia, and I think that’s kind of the point. If they had found a Jerry clone, it would have been, I think, more sad, and this is just breathing new life in an absolutely more mainstream sort of stadium theater way, but I’m not offended by that, and I’m stoked. I mean, it’s Bob Weir in Golden Gate Park. I gotta go pay my respects.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:10:08] It sounds like you were very excited about this show coming.
Carly Schwartz [00:10:11] Oh, yeah. I mean, when they announced, it didn’t even occur to me that this would be anything but something to celebrate, which is why I was shocked as I wrote in my Standard piece to hear my father’s response. I was thinking, oh my gosh, I’ll get my dad to come back to San Francisco, where I was born, and we’ll go to Golden Gate Park, where it all began, and see these shows together. And he was just like, abso-frickin’ Absolutely not.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:11:00] Tell me a little bit more about your dad’s reaction and what about it was so surprising to you.
Carly Schwartz [00:11:05] I think the ticket price was what generated the most sort of indignance. I mean, I’ve heard words used like it’s unconscionable.
Chuck Schwartz [00:11:15] As a deadhead, it just felt very commercialized and kind of like a money grab or something.
Carly Schwartz [00:11:23] I was, you know, a little eyebrow-raisey at the prices. Over $200 for a day, over $600 for three.
Chuck Schwartz [00:11:30] I didn’t feel they were treating the long-time fan base barely.
Carly Schwartz [00:11:37] With the risk of sounding hyperbolic. It was kind of heartbreaking to talk to these folks for my article who just love this band and have built their lives around forming community around this band and are priced out of being able to do this really special thing, which is the 60th anniversary and the place where it all began.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:11:56] I feel like concert tickets these days are just very expensive generally. I mean, I’m thinking Taylor Swift, I think Beyonce, just the biggest shows of our time seem just like so out of reach. But what was it about ticket prices for a Grateful Dead sort of cover band, offshoot that was so irritating in particular to Deadheads?
Carly Schwartz [00:12:21] Right. I mean, I think deadheads are used to a culture where this band was playing for free or for very accessible prices.
Chuck Schwartz [00:12:29] Their whole approach was that the band, the audience, was one big experience for everybody. And it just felt like they were integrated with their community. And this just doesn’t have that feel for me.
Carly Schwartz [00:12:47] You know, they did The Human Be-in in Golden Gate Park in the 60s for free. They did a free show in the early 70s. I ran the numbers as part of the Standard piece. And it was really fun tracking down old ticket stubs online. But I really didn’t see anything face value for more than, I think, $35 at the time, which translates to under $70 today, which even then, you know, is probably a hefty investment for some people, but orders of magnitude less than what you’re paying today. I think folks I spoke to were really turned off by this sort of corporate nature of it, this Ticketmaster, Live Nation ecosystem, you know, setting the prices from the get go to create this sort of scarcity.
Chuck Schwartz [00:13:30] It just feels super commercialized and just not the spirit that I felt when I attended shows and got involved in the whole scene.
Carly Schwartz [00:13:43] The numbers are showing this week on these resale sites that actually there is a supply of these tickets that are available for the face value or maybe even less.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:13:54] Your dad talked about the sort of spirit of the dead and how this sort of modern version of ticket sales etc doesn’t seem to honor the spirit of a dead in that way and that that was sort of one of the things that also really put him off is this I mean in his eyes it seems like the grateful dead sort of died with Jerry Garcia probably the most well-known member of the group.
Carly Schwartz [00:14:22] Oh yeah, I mean that’s, he’ll say over and over again there, you know, the Grateful Dead ended in 1995, but that doesn’t mean their songs don’t live on through these other bands.
Chuck Schwartz [00:14:32] It astounds me that the Grateful Dead are as popular as they are, what is it, it’s 30 years after Jerry died.
Carly Schwartz [00:14:44] I mean, I feel that, you know, if and when we’re human beings, everyone’s going to die. When Trey Anastasio, the lead of Phish, goes, I mean I’m sure I will feel similar. I get it. You know, it’s like…
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:14:55] It’s like losing a family member. It’s, like, losing a-
Carly Schwartz [00:14:56] It’s like losing a source of joy. It’s losing, you’ll never be able to see this band live again in a new way.
Ericka Cruz Guevarra [00:15:05] Given that connection that your dad has with the Grateful Dead that you’ve seen all your life, what do you make of his reaction to the anniversary concert having this weekend?
