Did Jerry Garcia try to sabotage Woodstock?
Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead weren’t a band with strict limitations. They went with the flow in a very real sense, having music they could fall back on but putting on shows that were iterations of feelings happening in the moment. If someone was sad, they played sad music; if someone was happy, they played happy music, and so on and so on.
There’s a reason why the Grateful Dead’s live albums sell so much better than their recorded efforts. When listening to a live album, you are getting a completely unique version of their songs. Those tracks were never played before that night and will never be played after that night. They are a moment in time inspired by the room, the people, and the band, captured and replayed by fans over and over again.
Lenny Kaye once spoke about how much he adores the band’s live recordings, specifically the album Live / Dead. “Live Dead explains why the Dead are one of the best-performing bands in America,” he said, “Why their music touches on ground that most other groups don’t even know exists.”
He also spoke about the importance of having a natural sense of flow is for a band like Grateful Dead. “Live Dead also exhibits the group’s quite considerable ability in tying together different song threads, letting them pass naturally into one another, almost as if they had been especially designed for such a move,” he said, “A jamming band has to rely on its sense of flow, on its talent in taking that small series of steps which will ultimately bring it to some entirely different place from where it started.”
When it came to jamming, the Grateful Dead were always good at riding whatever the atmosphere in a venue was like. However, as a band that relied on the feel of a room so much, is it unreasonable to suggest that sometimes they tried to manipulate spaces so that their music could be received in a way that was much more agreeable? This is what some people have speculated since the band played at Woodstock.
During Woodstock in 1969, it was reported that members of the Grateful Dead were going around the festival offering people high-strength acid. This isn’t exactly out of character for the band, as they were notorious for taking copious amounts of drugs when they went on tour; however, there could have been a hidden agenda with their generosity at Woodstock. Thanks to scheduling conflicts and weather problems, a number of sets were delayed, and some people were beginning to get fed up. It could well be that Garcia wanted as many people high as possible to make the mood right for their set.
It wouldn’t be the first time the band had done this, as they were also reported doing the same thing to a Playboy TV audience to ensure the vibe was right for their gig. Given that the band relies so much on atmosphere and the feel of an audience when performing, it would be in their interest to make the audience as happy as they possibly could before going on stage.
