The “only one” who ever understood Bob Dylan
It seems like every Bob Dylan fan has spent their entire life trying to pick him apart.
For all of the great tunes that Mr Zimmerman was able to write, that didn’t seem to be enough for most people, which led to him being pestered to no end as to what all of his tunes were about. Dylan may have wanted to be more of a normal guy than his spokesman persona, but he admitted that Jerry Garcia was one of the few who actually understood what that kind of pressure entailed.
When looking at how The Grateful Dead worked together, Garcia feels like the polar opposite of what Dylan was doing. Whereas the New York folkie was looking to make songs that told a story through words, Garcia, more often than not, let his music do the talking, taking the audience on a journey by stretching out his songs into long jams with the rest of the band.
That’s not to say that The Dead didn’t have at least some clout with their lyrics. Aside from being known as one of the biggest stoners in the world, lyricist Robert Hunter was known for putting together amazing psychedelic images in their early work, even toying with folksy approaches on songs like ‘Casey Jones’.
While every member of the band added to the band’s iconic sound, no one in the crowd seemed to care about anyone else other than that bearded guru behind the sunglasses. Since Garcia was known to downplay his ego, many Deadheads seemed to follow him around as if they knew him personally, relating to him more like a friend than a proper musician.
That connection between artist and audience created a strange kind of pressure for Garcia, much like the one Dylan had been dealing with for years. Fans weren’t just turning up to hear songs; they were looking for meaning, guidance and some deeper insight hidden within the music. For someone who preferred to let the music flow naturally, that level of scrutiny could be both flattering and exhausting.
It was one of the reasons Dylan felt such an immediate kinship with Garcia. Both men had found themselves elevated to near-mythical status by their followers, even though neither of them seemed particularly comfortable with the role. Beneath the legends and the endless interpretation of their work, they were still just musicians trying to navigate the strange expectations that came with fame.
That kind of authentic attitude even appealed to Dylan as well, making one of the oddest classic rock collaborations with Dylan and the Dead. Although the album is still a decent look at what both acts could do, much of the album feels more than a bit meandering, as if the two acts aren’t so much collaborating as much as they are standing awkwardly next to each other, waiting for something to spark.
Dylan was still on good terms with Garcia during his time on this Earth, eventually going to his funeral when he passed away in the late 1980s. For Dylan, this wasn’t just the loss of a friend…it meant coming to terms with one of the few people who knew what it was like to be in his position.
Coming back from the services, The Dead’s longtime promoter John Scher remembered Dylan telling him how much Garcia meant to him, saying, “Dylan leaned over to me and said, ‘You know what, John?’ I said, ‘What, Bob?’ He said, ‘The guy lying there, he’s the only one in the world and knows what it’s like to be me.’ Which was pretty profound”.
Considering how rabid both Dylan and Dead fans were, there’s a good chance that Dylan hit the nail on the head. Compared to other classic rock bands, the fanbase behind both acts were second only to acts like The Beatles, with many considering them more as musical deities than songwriters. These were all flesh and blood humans, though, and Dylan knew that any stress that came from his position was something Garcia gracefully soldiered through as well.
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