The big problem Jerry Garcia had with the word “counterculture”
Some artists simply cannot outrun the zeitgeist and the era they are associated with. While this would ordinarily be a source of much jubilation—indicating their output was so significant it defines the essence of a certain moment—some feel hamstrung by the fact they are always discussed retrospectively and not in present terms. This was a point the late Grateful Dead leader Jerry Garcia outlined.
Many artists have their moment in the sun, and then the world moves on. These musicians either stand tall in the history books as symbols of what made that period culturally impactful or, on the more unfortunate side, are remembered as distillations of why the world moved past them, leaving them behind to languish in a derided juncture. This is a fate the glam metal bands of the 1980s know all too well, as do the mass of forgotten Britpop groups that emerged in the wake of Oasis and Blur’s rise.
Then, there are those who continue pushing against the constant evolution of the zeitgeist, honing their craft and delving ever deeper into the unique, celebrated space they have carved for themselves. This is precisely what the Grateful Dead accomplished. Even today, years after Garcia’s death in 1995, the surviving band members remain committed to their craft, spreading their gospel to new fans and long-term Deadheads in Dead & Company.
Despite releasing a mass of material across their career, the Grateful Dead is widely deemed the definitive countercultural outfit. Led by the great Garcia and featuring the likes of Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann, and the late Ron ‘Pigpen’ McKernan, the band’s psychedelic fusion of rock, jazz, and Americana made them stand out from the mass of notable acts their era produced with a heavy concentration on extensive live jams and a storied propensity for LSD use.
Formed in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1965, they were at the heart of the countercultural movement when it took off in the city and would go on to soundtrack this era for most of those who experienced it, as well as rub shoulders with its key instigators, including Allen Ginsberg, Hare Krishna founder Bhaktivedanta Swami, and Janis Joplin. Given this immediate proximity to such figures and their tremendous impact, it was only natural to hail them as one of the definitive countercultural bands after life had moved on from this period.
However, in a 1983 MTV interview, Garcia revealed his big problem with the concept of the countercultural period. Unsurprisingly, his take was laced with some of that complex worldview that he made known throughout his time in the limelight, and it was deeply philosophical. Importantly, he maintained that his band—who were still very active at that point—were in no way a “relic from the ’60s”.
He said: “I don’t like that counterculture idea. It’s not as though there were a culture to be counter to, you know what I mean? There’s the range of the American experience. Down at the shallow end or something, there’s… There are these margins and somewhere in the margin I think is where the Grateful Dead and the Deadheads and whatever it is that we are part of. ‘Cause I feel, yeah, I feel that we’re part of something, but I don’t feel that it’s this banner that we’re carrying along this banner, that’s this relic from the ’60s. It doesn’t feel that way at all. It isn’t like that.”
Garcia expressed that his band had moved through the 1960s and 1970s, so-called discernible periods of time, but had “never felt attached to that stuff going on around us”.
Their direction had always been the same, regardless of the period they found themselves in. Everything the Grateful Dead did was based on having complete faith in the transcendental shared experience that their creative milieu stoked, not by being fixated on the transient tastes or sensibilities of a place in time. It is this pure singularity that qualifies them as one of the most celebrated outfits out there, countercultural or not.
