The 1970 album so “beautiful” Jerry Garcia struggled to listen to it
While the FBI might have other ideas, all Jerry Garcia was ever hoping to smuggle to the American masses was a little bit of beauty.
It sounds almost queasy to say, but it’s true. At one point in 1973, they even had one in every 350 Americans gathered in a single gargantuan field, and the only reason that this startling figure isn’t really discussed these days is that nothing unfurled beyond a feeling of unbridled freedom.
This was indicative of their outlook. The group welcomed the community and the high ideal of beauty with open arms. As Bob Dylan said in praise of the great group, “With most bands the audience participates like in a spectator sport. They just stand there and watch. They keep a distance. With the Dead, the audience is part of the band-they might as well be on the stage.”
Pete Townshend also weighed on the matter, explaining, “The big thing about the Dead I remember, was that they gave their road crew the same share that they got themselves, did you know that?” said Townshend, “Yeah, it was a true cooperative, so nobody got rich, nobody. They made a living but they didn’t get rich.”
So, while on the surface, tales of LSD and the odd searing solo might paint a harder picture, the truth is that they were simply soft-centred vagabonds hoping to spread a bit of beauty. Fundamentally, that’s what John Lennon was, too. He might have been a right awkward bastard as well, but for Garcia, it was the latter that shone through.
This became particularly apparent for the Dead leader when he encountered John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. “I like Lennon’s new album, the solo album. [Plastic Ono Band],” he said in 1971. “But you see, I’ve never met any of these guys, I don’t know them. I can only talk about their music, and I think Lennon’s music is really beautiful.”
While his image might have been increasingly met with a sense of cynicism since the split of The Beatles, Garcia saw through all that. “I really like listening to it in spite of its hard thing,” he said. “There’s a lot of beauty – incredible, delicate music.”
As a star in his own right, Garcia realised how hard that beauty must have been for Lennon to cling to, given the strains he was often under. That meant the 1970 album was a fraught thing for Garcia to revisit, but he told Frank Fedele that it was always worthwhile in the end.
“Lennon, I feel sorry for,” he explained.
“I’m sure he’s had some terrible trips laid on him just through the years as a Beatle,” he empathised. “Just think of what it must be like to be John Lennon. There must be a million people hitting on you with weird shit. He’s probably had so little time to get into his own head. Now he’s got to do some violence, breaking away. I can dig it. I can certainly dig it.”
Plastic Ono Band was the product of him breaking away. He had embarked upon Primal Scream therapy with Arthur Janov, was reconciling the rigours of his whole life, and attempting to distil the results into a release of great catharsis.
“The level of his pain was enormous,” Janov recalled. “He was almost completely nonfunctional. He couldn’t leave the house, he could hardly leave his room … This was someone the whole world adored, and it didn’t change a thing. At the center of all that fame and wealth and adulation was just a lonely little kid.”
That’s the crux of the record and why it was appreciated by a legion of musicians. Garcia always wanted to smuggle beauty into the world, but he understood that beauty doesn’t always arrive dressed in flowers and harmony. Sometimes it arrives battered and bruised. Plastic Ono Band is a difficult listen because Lennon leaves nowhere to hide, least of all for himself, but that’s also what makes it bloody brilliant.
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