The Grateful Dead song Bob Weir wanted to be remembered for
The Grateful Dead will be remembered for centuries to come, given their profound impact as a band, but how those memories will manifest is up for debate.
If you’re confused by a band like the Grateful Dead, you’re not alone. Even people close to the band once struggled with how you define such a wonderfully haphazard approach to music. It was hard to define the band, hippie music certainly, but the means by which that music reached out and touched people on a personal level varied.
The band’s publicist, Dennis McNally, would spend long evenings huddled over a piece of paper trying to think of how he could describe the band in a way that would appeal to the magazines and reviewers they wanted the attention of, but putting this large musical outfit into words was incredibly difficult. “It was always a challenge,” he said, “Because there’s so much distraction about them.”
Music and memories will always be intrinsically linked somewhat. When a musician passes away, people can embed their memory within their work based on the emotions that they laced throughout their discography. This is a bit more difficult with The Grateful Dead, who are a more individualistic listening experience. People might listen to them in groups, but the way the band jams and makes music off the cuff resonates with audience members in very individual ways.
There is no escaping that while their studio work is of a sound quality, it was their live performance which really appealed to audiences. They would use their music as some form of skeleton and then jam in order to put meat on the bones. Influence was taken from the rest of their band mates, from what was happening in the world at that moment, and the atmosphere in the room where they were playing. There was a secret power embedded within the live sound of the Grateful Dead.
“The Grateful Dead has some kind of intuitive thing – I don’t know what it is or how it works, but I recognise it phenomenologically,” said Jerry Garcia when discussing their live sound. “It’s been reported to me hugely from the audience, and we’ve compared notes about it among ourselves in the band. We’ve agreed that we’ll continue to keep trying to do this thing – whatever it is – and that one best attitude toward it is a sort of stewardship.”
Garcia was able to harness the power of the band by working with them as individuals. When Bob Weir spoke about working with Garcia and the Grateful Dead at large, he was grateful that the band members were viewed as individual musicians. It wasn’t about how they could contribute to the sound as a whole; rather, it was about how they could excel within their own style, which would then be attached to the band as a collective in whatever way it worked.
When you have a band who resonate in live moments rather than with individual songs, it was hard for Bob Weir to pick a track that he would like to be remembered for. Instead, he wanted to be remembered as someone who delivers the music en masse.
“Individually,” he said, “For people who want to remember me, to remember on the moment for a song that relates to that moment for them, because that’s all I’m here for.”
When discussing his own memory, however, Bob Weir said that he wanted the track ‘Cassidy’ played at his own memorial service. Released on his solo album Ace, but very much a product of the Grateful Dead, the song contains an arc which is very much representative of life and death as a whole. While individuals will take away individual songs from the band, this is the one that Weir resonates with the most. And it’s pretty easy to hear why.
