The electronic pioneer that Jerry Garcia said had “tremendous balls”
The 1980s were a strange time for the Grateful Dead. After a full decade that included starting their own record label, losing a founding member in Ron ‘Pigpen’ McKernan, seeing drummer Mickey Hart leave and return, pushing out seven studio albums, and then cutting ties with members Keith and Donna Jean Godchaux, the 1980s seemed to be a more stable time, at least on the surface.
For one, there were no lineup changes that decade. Keyboardist Brent Mydland arrived in 1979 and would stay on until his death in 1990. But the constant health problems of Jerry Garcia became too frequent and serious to ignore – his diabetic coma in 1986 nearly brought the band to a premature end. In terms of philosophy and musical style, the Dead seemingly had no chance in the synthesiser-heavy 1980s music scene. Instead, the group focused on touring, with no studio albums released between 1980’s Go To Heaven and 1987’s In The Dark.
While the Dead might have been trying to find their way through the haze of the 1980s, Garcia himself was still appreciating the new music coming out of the new wave scene. Garcia was a fan of some of the genre’s more guitar-focused bands, including Cheap Trick and Dire Straits, but one keyboard wizard had Garcia fascinated: Tubeway Army frontman and ‘Cars’ singer Gary Numan.
“I like Gary Numan a lot,” Garcia told NME in 1981. “Sure do. No (I haven’t seen him in concert), but I would like to. I think his stuff is really interesting. I think he’s got a real thing. (So) I like people who have a real conviction about what they do. Convinced that they have something to say and a real way to say it.”
Numan’s push to use synthesisers in place of guitars and other traditional instruments put him at the forefront of the keyboard revolution that blossomed out of the 1980s. Purposefully robotic, Numan’s style was a direct contrast to the fluidity and spontaneity that the Grateful Dead preferred in their work. Nevertheless, Garcia was able to appreciate Numan’s work… from afar. When asked if would collaborate with Numab, Garcia demurred.
“Oh no! I’d be intimidated by him,” Garcia claimed. “Shit yeah…these guys all seem so much more together than I feel. I feel like someone who is constantly on the verge of losing it, of blowing it. I feel tremendously insecure. When I see people perform with such panache… I don’t see how they do it. It takes tremendous nerve, tremendous balls.”
Check out ‘Cars’ down below.
