I met Jerry Garcia in 1968 when I
was a member of the Social Affairs Board at my college, Clark University in
Worcester, Massachusetts. The board was in charge of booking talent for
dances and concerts at Clark. The Grateful Dead was an under the radar
band at the time on the east coast, but I had heard of them and had purchased
and listened to the band's first album over and over again. Those of us
on the board who wanted the Dead to appear convinced a majroity of the members
of the board to vote to hire them and our efforts were successful. Those of
us who loved the band could not wait for the day of the show to arrive.
The day came, the band set up and it got through a sound check, but as they
started their first and only song of the evening, the electrical power in
Atwood Hall failed. I crawled under the stage with Joe, the custodian of
the facility and replaced a glass fuse the size of a flashlight in the ancient
fuse block. On came the lights, the band started again and again the
power blew. So ended the Dead's first appearance at Clark. I remember
talking to Jerry and discussing how much I loved the band's music. He was
very easy to be with and after a while we had exchanged background info with
each other, learning from each other that our birthdays were a week apart in
August and that we had a common love of The Marx Brothers, Kurt Vonnegut and a
number of other things. I vowed to myself that the dead would be back and
in April of 1969 they returned.
By this
time Atwood Hall had been completely re-wired to avoid any future calamities
with rock acts. The April 1969 show is available on-line, it is a prime
example of the band's musical talents at the time.
In February
of 1969 I was asked to road manage the Paul Pena band (Paul wrote the song Jet
Airliner made famous by Steve Miller) to Philadelphia to play at the Electric
Factory, a concert venue in the city. Pena was to open for the Mothers of
Invention for two nights and then for the Dead for two nights. I got the
group to Philadelphia and immediately left for New York where the Dead were
playing at the Fillmore East. I was able to connect with Garcia and
visited with him backstage. He remembered me and I told him I was going
to be in Philadelphia when they played there and he invited me to come early
and hang out with the band backstage.
It was at
the Electric Factory shows that I took the photographs that are being offered
in this auction. Also offered are various ticket stubs and back stage
passes from the Dead or The Jerry Garcia Band or Legion of Mary from various
shows in various cities around the US that I attended over the years. I
was fortunate enough to become a friend of Jerry's and although we only saw
each other when I was able to go to a show in a particular city at a given
time, we always spent time together and visited.
There were
several occasions when I found out where the band or Jerry (if he was out
playing without the Dead) was staying and I would call him. At these
times we spent time talking in his hotel room or back stage in the afternoon
hours before the rest of the band or crew showed up. As the years
went on I was invited back stage every time the band played in the city
where I was living at that particular time and Jerry and I always visited with
each other before each show.
The other
pictures, passes and tickets that will be offered in future auctions are from
other Dead shows or Jerry shows over the next twenty or more years including
the Central Park Bandshell in New York in June of 1969 and at Northwestern Illinois
University in 1977. There will also be other pictures form a couple of
other shows that I am still trying to date. All pictures that are being
offered in these auctions are the original pictures I took with either a simple
fixed lens camera or with my Nikon F-2 which I bought in 1976. Each
auction will include a group of the pictures that I had developed at the time
the pictures were initially taken from that particular show. The February
1969 Electric Factory shots and the ones from June 1969 from Central Park as
well as the Northwestern Illinois show have the Kodak® stamp that stores that
developed film placedon the back of the owner's pictures at that time.
Each stamp carries the month and year in which they were printed,
authenticating them as the original prints developed from the negatives.
