The artist Bob Dylan called his musical brother: “Showed me more than he’ll ever know”
Not every artist arrives fully formed knowing what they are going to do with their life. More often than not, many of the biggest acts in the world are figuring it out as they go along, and you can hear from their first handful of projects that they were still dusting out the cobwebs trying to see what worked for their sound. While Bob Dylan had been more than happy to be the folk-rock hero for most of the 1960s, he admitted that he got a major lesson from working with Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead.
For many rock aficionados, though, Dylan had already been teaching people how the world actually worked. Amid all the folkies that came before him, Dylan shook people up in a way that no one could describe, almost like he was preaching from a pulpit when telling people how they were going to live their lives on ‘Blowin’ In the Wind’.
But by the end of the 1960s, Dylan needed a change of scenery. He knew that he hit on a nerve with tracks like ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, but he could have done without the adulation being thrown at him as a rock god. That wasn’t how he saw himself, and in the Grateful Dead, he found a confidante to help translate his music.
Because, really, Dylan and The Dead were like kindred spirits in a way. Despite having the reputation for being stoned hippies making music for other stoned hippies, Garcia was focused on the big picture every time he played, usually creating tapestries of sound that took influences from everything from bluegrass to jazz to rock and roll.
Dylan may not have dreamed of being that eclectic on the musical front, but he was the same brand of musical chameleon in his lyrics. While the folk period is where he will always be mythologised, hearing him get introspective on Blood on the Tracks or intentionally sloppy on Self-Portrait was his own way of keeping the audience guessing as to where he was getting his ideas from.
When reminiscing on his work with Garcia for the live collaboration album Dylan and the Dead, Mr Zimmerman remembered that he found a long-lost family member in the guitarist, telling Rolling Stone, “To me he wasn’t only a musician and friend. He was more like a big brother who taught and showed me more than he’ll ever know. There are a lot of spaces and advances between the Carter family, Buddy Holly and, say, Ornette Coleman. A lot of universes. But he filled them all without being a member of any school.”
And it’s not like Dylan wasn’t taking notes from his time with The Dead, either. If you look at the shows that he played later in his career with, hearing him change things up on nearly every song is half the reason why his time with Garcia. Playing the same way every night was bound to get boring, so hearing a completely different take on a tune every night was a way to experience it again for the first time.
Beyond just the influence, having Garcia as a musical older brother meant that Dylan could stretch out a bit more than even he was aware of. Whereas most artists can get confined into boxes by their fans, Garcia was the one who reminded us not to be afraid to get a little bit freaky on our instruments.
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