The dream that told Bob Weir where to scatter Jerry Garcia’s ashes: “Going down the river”
You can often tell the quality of a band by the breath of their influences. In truth, few bands throughout rock and roll history have had as broad a range of influences as the Grateful Dead. As you might expect from a band that initially formed through a mutual love of LSD and acid tests, the Dead were not content with playing simplistic, uninspiring rock tunes. Instead, the Jerry Garcia-led band dedicated themselves to a unique quest of musical exploration, which saw them draw upon everything from folk to psychedelia.
Rising to prominence within the counterculture era of the 1960s, the Grateful Dead were constantly surrounded by groundbreaking artists like Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and even the poet Allen Ginsberg. Most often, however, Garcia and the Dead took inspiration from their own subconscious rather than any of their counterculture contemporaries. Whichever way you spin it, LSD was essential to the music and philosophy of the Grateful Dead.
Acid had an impact on countless artists during the 1960s, ranging from pop giants like The Beatles to more underground figures – at the time – like Syd Barrett. The Dead always took the influence of LSD one step further, however, incorporating the mind-bending power of the drug in virtually every aspect of their existence. The amount of acid consumed by figures like Jerry Garcia or Bob Weir during the heyday of the Dead was more than enough to change their brains indefinitely. Even in death, acid and subconscious thoughts were still impacting Jerry Garcia.
Garcia sadly died in 1995 as the result of a heart attack, exacerbated by his heavy drug use and the effects of life in a rock and roll band. Inevitably, his death had a huge impact on those who were close to the songwriter, particularly his former bandmate Bob Weir.
The pair first met on New Year’s Eve, 1963, and quickly decided to start a band together, which would eventually become the Grateful Dead. Although they did not always see eye-to-eye, the strong bond between them was a major component of the Dead’s success.
Both musicians knew the importance of listening to your subconscious from very early on, and the pair would regularly use LSD to bring those buried thoughts into the forefront of their minds. It seems fitting, therefore, that Weir continued this tradition following the death of his friend and bandmate. Speaking to Rolling Stone in 2016, Weir reflected on the power of the subconscious, sharing, “Be as in touch with your dreams as you can be. My old pal Jerry had a place he used to talk about, a place of peace.”
Continuing, the musician said, “[Garcia] described it as ‘going down to the river.’” So, when the songwriter passed away in 1995, Weir’s head was dominated by visions of this idyllic river scene described by Garcia. “After they cremated him,” Weir remembered, “people were wondering what to do with his ashes because there was nothing in his will about that. I had a dream in which it was revealed that he wanted to go ‘down to the river’ and that river was the Ganges. So that’s where we took him. I take my dreams quite seriously.”
So, as a result of a dream had by his former bandmate, the final remains of Jerry Garcia were scattered in the picturesque surroundings of the Ganges River in India, somewhere he had never visited during his lifetime. Fittingly, though, some of Garcia’s ashes were saved, to be scattered underneath the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, so he can forever be a part of the city that he helped to define.
