The WELL: inkwell.vue.50: Blair Jackson

#46: Blair Jackson (blairjackson) Tue 9 Nov 99 09:46

Tue, 09 Nov 1999 09:46:00 PST

Jerry's quote was "I don't want to be a leader because I don't want to be a mis-leader." I think when he wanted to assert himself everyone deferred to him pretty much. I think he went through periods where he felt uo being The Guy, and others where he wanted to sit back and let everything happen around him without directing it.. My sense is the last couple of years he was very passive about GD affairs... [Read entire topic]

#45: Dave Waite (dwaite) Fri 5 Nov 99 13:49

Fri, 05 Nov 1999 13:49:00 PST

Blair.... Glad yoru still here. I'm about 2/3 through now... I read during the commute....

One thing that shows through is the it appears that Jerry was the reluctant band leader and reluctant project leader....Jerry is quoted as saying something like, 'I don't want to be the 'cop', but if everyone is going to defer that stuff to me, so be it.'

I'm not sure where I'm going with this... just hoping you might want to comment. [Read entire topic]

#44: Blair Jackson (blairjackson) Fri 5 Nov 99 13:32

Fri, 05 Nov 1999 13:32:00 PST

Having been in the thick of making it--choosing selections, working on the sequences, etc--I'm still too close to it be objective. I'm just starting to be able to listen to it uncritically, to let it wash over me as a "fan" would. There are things I love and things I like less, but in general I think it's a nice piece of work that takes the listener on quite a journey from '65-'95. I think if I was hearing it for the first time, I'd love it. The packaging is cool and I love the essays, particularly Eric Pooley's which I reread again last night. I think the Web site is really happening, too!

It's funny, but I think if David, Steve and I each made a five-disc set they would be probably radically different from each other in some ways, yet this boxset encompasses each of our visions of the Dead in a way. Let the second- guessing begin! [Read entire topic]

#43: David Gans (tnf) Wed 3 Nov 99 19:03

Wed, 03 Nov 1999 19:03:00 PST

Hey Blair, let's talk about the new Grateful Dead boxed set! We got our copies today -- the official release date is November 9.

There's a web page all about it, with sound samples, a new video for "Liberty," and a spectacular photo gallery, at <http://boxset.dead.net>

What do you think? [Read entire topic]

#42: Blair Jackson (blairjackson) Wed 20 Oct 99 09:52

Wed, 20 Oct 1999 09:52:00 PDT

Ed, one of the Dead's tour managers told me a story about Garcia doing an interview on the Washington University campus (can't remember if it was in '69 or '71). Jerry was wandering around trying to find the radio station and eventually stumbled upon it.

As for the question about Mountain Girl, I'm not exactly sure what you're looking for. As far as I know they were essentially living as husband and wife in Stinson. The SF pad was mainly for nights when Jerry played Keystone Korner or was working at Wally Heider's studio and didn't want to drive back all the way to Stinson. [Read entire topic]

#41: Ed Lammer (twitcher) Mon 18 Oct 99 15:43

Mon, 18 Oct 1999 15:43:00 PDT

I should note that you brought wide grins at our home when you made that crack on KPFA about the Dead's late '71 sweep across midwest college campuses like Washington University -- nailed!! This freshman was swept. [Read entire topic]

#40: Ed Lammer (twitcher) Mon 18 Oct 99 15:36

Mon, 18 Oct 1999 15:36:00 PDT

Blair - I found the material about JG's first marriage quite informative. But, despite a number of quotes from Mountain Girl, I'm missing the essence of their relationship and the domestic organization of their lives during the Stinson Beach phase, and when JG had his own pad in the city. Did MG talk with you about this? Was it not a topic of interest to you? Of course, I'm only half way thru your book. [Read entire topic]

#39: Blair Jackson (blairjackson) Thu 14 Oct 99 09:27

Thu, 14 Oct 1999 09:27:00 PDT

Cutting the book was the toughest job I ever had. I had a week to do it and I knew going in I was going to have to cut X number of manuscript pages, so I went through it systematically chapter by chapter with a quota in mind, knowing that if I cut less than the quota in one chapter I'd have to cut more in the next. What a way to work. There was a certain narrative/story flow I wanted to keep intact, so that was paramount. The tangents (many of them pretty cool, I thought) were the first to go. Then it became trimming the second and third voices in various stories, then parts of longer quotes. Ugh. A horrible process. Frankly, I'm surprised it still reads as well as it does, because at the time it seemed like a wholesale evisceration.

Carol, I can't really tell you why people keep revisiting the same subjects in biographies. My own standard is (and will be) do I have something significant to add to the existing literature on a subject. Personally, I think a lot of the bios that come out are unwarranted. I mean, is it really worth revisiting jack kerouac's whole life just so a writer can reshape facts to fit his hypothesis that he was gay? Doesn't sound too interesting to me. Could a better bio of Jerry be written? Yes. In fact, with another year and five hundred more pages, I could do it myself. There's pretty steep learning curve with any subject, but the Grateful Dead in particular is a tough subject to rein in because there's so much subjective stuff to deal with about drugs, morality, etc. I've said before that someone could come in and write a really, really ugly Grateful Dead book and every word of it would probably be true--there's so much darkness in the cracks of this story. But obviously that's not the one I was interested in telling. [Read entire topic]

#38: Carol Gould (carolg) Wed 13 Oct 99 11:58

Wed, 13 Oct 1999 11:58:00 PDT

Blair, there are some people in history who seem to command many biographical explorations over the years--for example, I was just at a lecture given by a guy who is writing yet another biogrophy of Freud, from, amazingly, a fairly original point of view. Other notable people are written about once or twice, and that's all you'll see of them in print. Jerry is obviously a perpetually interesting character, and in our time has generated many books, articles, etc. about him. Do you predict that 20 years from now people will still be writing about him? What do you feel are the characteristics of people who are subjects of numerous biographies? [Read entire topic]

#37: Gordon Taylor (warfrat) Wed 13 Oct 99 10:54

Wed, 13 Oct 1999 10:54:00 PDT

All of which reads like it's own book! [Read entire topic]