Ron "Pigpen" McKernan could already feel his influence in the band waning from early on. Even back when the Grateful Dead were still known as the Warlocks. Whereas Pig subsisted on raw power fueled by alcohol and blues music, the rest of the members of the band were functioning on a completely different level. They listened to music, talked literature, and explored the cosmos...while loaded to the gills on LSD. Pig did not partake. He found himself not just playing in a band, but navigating a world of merry pranksters, acid tests, and long, strange trips.
Sources:
A Long Strange Trip: The Inside Story of the Grateful Dead, by Dennis McNally
Garcia: An American Life, by Blair Jackson
Searching for the Sound, by Phil Lesh
Jerry Garcia & Sandy Rothman travel down south (Woodstock Records)
High Flying Bird – Jerry Garcia
Kepler's Books 60th Anniversary (Metro Silicon Valley)
Grateful Dead Guide: Pigpen Solo (Dead Essays)
Flashback: LSD Creator Albert Hofmann Drops Acid for the First Time (Rolling Stone)
'Apparently Useless': The Accidental Discovery of LSD (The Atlantic)
What a Trip (Stanford Magazine)
Ken Kesey & The Merry Pranksters (University of Virginia)
A brief history of psychedelic psychiatry (The Guardian)
Ken Kesey On Misconceptions Of Counterculture (NPR)
“We Were Alive and Life Was Us.” How Ken Kesey Created LSD Subculture (Lithub)
Ken Kesey's First LSD Trip Animated (Open Culture)
Therapeutic Use of LSD in Psychiatry: A Systematic Review of Randomized-Controlled Clinical Trials (Frontiers)
Did the CIA's Experiments With Psychedelic Drugs Unwittingly Cr
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Double Elvis s Club is the production of I Heart
Radio and Double Elvis Ron. Pigpen McKernan died at the
age of seven, and he lived a life that didn't
go exactly as planned. I can give you twenty seven
(00:24):
reasons why that statement is true. Six would be the
number of nights per week he led his band The
Warlocks on stage before his bandmates turned on, tuned in,
and dropped his old school blues vibe. Another three would
be the number of years it took Mary Prankster ken
Kesi to perfect his asset tests, creating a close community
(00:46):
of self declared freaks that soon counted pig Pen and
his bandmates among them. Six more would be the number
of months The Warlocks, re christened as The Grateful Dead,
would serve as house band for those asset tests, a
ritual that pig refused to take part in. Another five
would be the number of bandmates he'd have to tether
(01:06):
to reality as they threatened to leave the ground high
on one of their pre show LSD trips. And seven
would be the number of years he had left to
live when he realized that the band he led was
slowly marginalizing his contributions as the world around them took
a turn for the strange, all totally On this our
(01:29):
second episode of season five, Mary Prankster's acid rituals tethered
to reality. And Ron pig Pen mccernin um Jake Brennan
in This is the Seven Cloth m h February, Paulato, California.
(02:32):
The two door Student Baker Golden Hawk ripped through the
quiet evening the clock on the dash near two am.
The car gripped the pavement tightly, trucking along, pushing ninety
miles per hour, bending sharp corners, and the tires barely
stayed on the road. The driver held the wheel loosely
as the radio sang out it was the end of
a long night full of heavy conversation and too many
(02:55):
beers to count. The three passengers, too drunk to notice
or to to care, were chatting away, ignoring the increased
speed of the Student Baker, and besides, the driver seemed
to have it under control until he didn't. The car
approached a turn that would have been tough at half
the speed, and the Student Baker struggled to make the
tight corner, and then the world flipped upside down. All
(03:21):
four tires of the three thousand pound vehicle left the concrete.
The student baker rolled into a field below, rattling the
passengers around like tumbling dice about to be tossed onto
a crabs table, And like crabs, life and death had
just become a game of chance. Glass shattered, metal contorted,
and shrieked to the car's passengers. Jerry Garcia and Alan
(03:43):
trist were violently hurled from the car, so was driver
Lee Adams. Then there was nothing, just darkness. Jerry pushed
himself off the ground. His ears were ringing, his shoulder
throgged was intense pain, his head was pounding, his eyes blurry.
He looked down and, feeling the chill of the midwinter evening,
(04:05):
he noticed his shoes were missing. Where the hell was
he in? Where the hell were shoes? The last thing
he remembered was getting tossed through the windshield ship. That
was about all he remembered. He scanned the open field
around him, the lights of nearby Stanford Hospital illuminating the scene,
and then he saw it. The tragedy of that night
(04:25):
would stay with Jerry for the rest of his life.
Jerry Garcia's life had been punctuated with tragedy from the
very beginning. He was born in ninety two, and after
an idyllic first three years, everything went sideways. He lost
the top two knuckles of his right middle finger at
(04:46):
four years old when his older brother accidentally chopped them
off with an axe. Jerry moved a log away from
the chopping block as a joke, right as his brother
brought the sharp end down. Then Jerry lost his father
at five. He sent really lost his mother when she
subsequently set him and his finger chopping brother to live
with her grandparents. That he was forced back from his
(05:07):
hometown when his mother remarried, relocated, and then brought her
sons back into her home, and the family bounced around
to a few more towns in the following years. He
had trouble in high school, brushes with the law, a
stint in the army that ended with more accounts of
a wall than colors, and a tasteful tie die. Jerry
was wayward jaded, and at just eighteen, he'd already seen
(05:29):
too much. He didn't know where he belonged, and the
only other constant beside trouble in Jerry's life was music.
His father, a clarinet player and bandleader and later his
grandmother always insured. His home was filled with an eclectic
variety of music big band, old Tommy, folk, country, gospel, bluegrass, classical.
(05:50):
He and his brother both dug rock and roll that
exploded in the nineteen fifties, and Jerry had been consistently
improving his skills on guitar since he first picked one
up at fifth teen. He'd also been moved by the
free wheeling nature of the Beat generation, especially Jack Caro
Wax on the Road, a novel that he absorbed so
deeply it became part of his identity. Once jerry short
(06:14):
stint in the army came to an end, he decided
to go on in an adventure. He's someone else, somewhere else,
just like sal Paradise. Jerry landed and Paul Alto lived
in his car for a while, got hip to the
scene and made some connections with local musicians. He then
secured a room at the Chateau, a kind of boarding
house for transy and bohemians, artist musicians and writers. He
(06:38):
was welcome there and for a time had managed to
avoid trouble or misadventures, avoided them until that evening in
nineteen sixty one, when he was thrown through the windshield
of a student aaker doing ninety on Junipero Sarah Boulevard.
Jerry snapped back to the present. The night was eerily silent.
Not fifty yards away from him was the shell of
(06:58):
the nineteen fifty six Golden Hawk he had just been
writing shotgun in The car was mangled, unrecognizable. It was
a mess, and the reality of the situation hit Jerry
like a ton of bricks. The third passenger, Jerry's close friend,
Paul Spiegel, didn't make it out of the car alive.
Paul was just sixteen years old. The event completely rearranged
(07:19):
Jerry's perspective in the world. It laid bare the fragility
of life in the most jarring way possible, smashing his
already fractured world into a thousand little pieces. He wasn't
sure how he would ever rearrange them. He took refuge
in music. For the next three years, Jerry performed in
eleven different bands around Paolato. He also became a father
(07:42):
to a daughter, which complicated things, and suddenly there was
another mouth to feed, and Jerry committed entirely to his music.
Needed to steady your paycheck than bluegrass gigs. He found
work as a music teacher at Dana Morgan's music store
in Paol Alto. It was at Dana Moore end Is
that Jerry first met a fourteen year old whose appearance
(08:03):
was constantly in such a state of disarray that everyone
called him Pigpen. Jerry thought it was funny that the
store hired an unclean kid to keep the place clean,
but Pig could give two ships about pushing a room around.
He'd rather spend his time mining advice from the new
music teacher with the fucking wild car crash story. Pig
was transfixed by Jerry's work on the front board. Pig
(08:25):
quickly became Jerry's disciple. It wasn't just a one way street.
While Jerry top Pig guitar. Pig taught Jerry the blues.
He played Jerry's collection of records, the deep cuts, those
ancient holy texts. Soon they were playing live together, parties,
small shows, even his bandmates and some local groups. One
of those groups, of course, was Mother mccree's Uptown jug
(08:47):
Champions started right there at Dana Morgan's on a faithful
New Year's Eve. After they found Bob Weir, Pig convinced
the group to go electric. They picked up Bill Kurtzman,
who also taught at the store and he played with
and the Zodiacs on drums, and as they were using
Dana Morgan Seniors Music Store as a practice place, they
diplomatically brought Dana Morgan Jr. On as a bassist. He
(09:11):
was nobody's first choice, but he could hold down the
low end well enough. As Jerry will put it years later,
the band now known as the Warlocks had one strong
suit Pig band. Pig had it the deep knowledge, the look,
the vibe. The only problem was the Pig was shy.
(09:32):
Performing wasn't really his thing. Jerry pushed Pig out of
his comfort zone to take lead vocals because that rough
growl of his was the best voice in the band,
and Pig didn't put on airs when he took the mic.
He wasn't scholarly like the rest. He lived what he's saying.
He gave the Warlocks gravitas, legitimacy, and Jerry's encouragement alone
didn't give Pick total confidence. Cheap wine and beer were
(09:55):
of clutch. After a few kind words from Jerry a
few SIPs of something high proof, pig Pen was uninhibited.
He held court at the center of the band on stage,
belting out slim harpos king b or Rufus. Thomas is
walking the dog like he'd been singing them his entire life.
All the fractured pieces of Jerry's world were reassembling themselves fast.
(10:17):
The band ditched Dana Morgan's son for Phil Lesh, a
better bass player. Eventually they ditched their name for a
better one too, and they played their asses off six
nights a week, five sets a night, and their popularity grew.
If you knew, you knew, the band with the street
savvy bluesman fronting a bunch of newly music nerds is
where it was at. Everyone knew it, especially those who
(10:38):
were turning on and tuning on. But the ones with
the keys to the magic bus would soon take the
band in the most important trip of its life. Ron
Pigpen McCarney didn't know it that will. He'd be getting
off at one of those next stops. What about you, Ken,
(11:22):
you want to go? The neighbor was staring into his eyes,
almost staring at him. But was this actually dangerous enough
to be a dare a government mandated test in that way?
So why the hell, they Ken, KESI feel so spooked.
The neighbor tapped his foot and Kesi remained silent, And
they'll pay you seventy five bucks. I know you need it.
(11:44):
He did need it. It was and Ken Kesi had
moved from Oregon to just outside the Stanford campus, settling
in a lively bohemian student section. Kesi was at the
school on an academic fellowship studying creative writing. Financially of
any kind was needed, but still he was hesitant, and
the neighbor continued his pitch. It's perfectly safe. They use
(12:07):
it on patients all the time, alcoholics, mostly. This thing
is going to be known as a miracle drug in
a few years. Kesi was worried about how it might
affect his Olympic training in his writing. He'd never even
been drunk before, but seventy five dollars to sit in
a room for a couple of hours too good to
pass up. Fucking Kesi study was in. The room was
(12:29):
bare except for a handful of hospital beds. Kesi sat
patiently on a mattress with something supposed to be happening.
He felt completely normal. A tape recorder sat in front
of him. He was supposed to speak into it and
record his experiences. The tape recorders school just spun, waiting
for Kesy to describe what he saw in the room.
(12:50):
Kezi studied the white walls of the room, but nothing,
and then nothing slowly turned into everything. The lights above
him filled the room with a warm glow. The glow
evolved into different colors. He wrote his eyes, but that
only made the colors multiply and then mutated into hexagons pentagons.
The walls of the room began to bend, The clock's
(13:12):
tick fell to an impossible rate, and the tape recorder
turned into a toad. Bats cascaded from the lights. He
heard music, and then he saw music. Kezi's mind rushed
in a thousand different directions as the curtain of the
world was pulled back. Ship was wild as part of
his participation in government funded testing. Ken Kezi had just
(13:32):
experienced his first trip by my surgic gas at Thole
of Mind a k a LSD. He returned the following Tuesday,
and then every Tuesday after that for nearly half a year.
During this time, ken Kezi would test, amongst other drugs, psilocybin, mescaline,
and emphatic means, but none of them compared to LSD.
(13:55):
That was the one. Kesi felt like he had found
a buried treasure. He was obsessed. He called his experience
beautiful and overwhelming. He wanted to take it with him,
share it with his friends, share it with anyone who
might need to see what he'd seen, to rattle their
brain out of the monotony of life and get a
vision beyond the mental and physical limitations of the mind
and the body to see the truth. Unfortunately, the doctors
(14:17):
running the experiments weren't in the business of sending home leftovers,
so Keisie got creative to score more doses. He got
a part time gig in a psych ward, a gig
that would inspire his classic novel One Flew Over the
Cuckoo's Nest. Through his new employment, he was able to
obtain plenty of LSD. It would begin building a community
of like minded adventurers, those ready to traverse the innermost
(14:39):
parts of their minds and the outermost parts of the universe.
Albert Hoffman, a Swiss scientist, first synthesized LSD in but
it wasn't until five years later that he accidentally dosed
himself with a small amount, and things got funky funky
enough that just a few days later he conducted a
(15:00):
real experiment with ten times the amount and tripped the
funk out. Hoffman thought he was dying, but a quick
visit from a physician confirmed no physical abnormalities. When Hoffman
came down, he knew he had stumbled on something important.
Over the next two decades, the effects of LSD would
be studied in clinical research. Psychologists prescribed it to treat
(15:22):
a variety of ailments, anxiety, depression, and addiction. LSD was
no secret, it wasn't even illegal. Author Albus Huxley was
a very public supporter, as was Harvard professor Timothy Leary.
L s D helped treat Hollywood legend carry grants psychological
issues stemming from childhood trauma, and influenced the writings of
Jack Kerouac, Alan Ginsburg, and William S. Burrows. During the
(15:46):
same time, the world was also dead center. In the
middle of the Cold War, the distrust, paranoia, and concerned
about mass destruction had reached its peak. There were rumors
that communists had discovered a way to control of minds
of prisoners and operatives. The United States, which was already
racing Russia to the moon, couldn't afford to fall behind again,
(16:08):
so the CIA started an illegal human experimentation program called
mk Ultra, in which they identified LSD as potentially important
and useful, and began testing the drug in hospitals, prisons,
and psychiatric institutions. Notorious Boston gangster Whitey Bulger was a
participant while incarcerated at Alcatraz. He later claimed that because
(16:31):
of ensuing nightmares, he was only ever able to sleep
for a few hours at a time ever since nineteen
fifty seven, and the government also opened up testing the volunteers,
which included college students. College students like Ken Kesi. Once
Kesi finished the tests, he was as the saying goes
(16:51):
turned on. He turned on many of his Stanford classmates too,
and when Cuckoo's Nest blew up, Kesy spread the wealth.
Kezi his Emily, in a circle of precocious pals, now
referring to themselves as the Mary Pranksters, moved out to
La Honda, a quiet place in the woods about an
hour from downtown San Francisco. In La Honda, they could
(17:13):
stretch their legs and their minds, a place to search
for a peaceful, meaningful existence away from the fear and
paranoia of the so called real world. Keisi also bought
a school bus, which already had the basic necessities of travel,
and the Pranksters covered it in intricate pattern, shapes and symbols,
every color of the rainbow and bright neon, and named
(17:34):
it the Further Bus. They took the show on the road,
traveling the country, driving coast to coast with Kesi at
the wheel, spreading their message at conventions, presidential debates, public parks,
looking for anyone who's up for a new experience, but
mostly Keisi and the Pranksters continued to experiment in La Honda.
They put up flyers all around the peninsula, promoting parties
(17:54):
at their homes, and they wanted to find like minded individuals,
and their circle quickly grew. One of those flyers caught
the eye of Phil Lesh. Phil Jerry and Bob were
no strangers to LSD, but when they got to the
Pranksters party, it was safe to say they had never
seen anything like it. Thoughts flowed freely, people did what
(18:15):
they wanted, and no lines to cross, no limits, only
total freedom. Something important was happening out in the woods
they could feel it. They were all kindred spirits on
the same wavelength, but there was one uniting force that
was noticeably absent from the party music. We'll be right
back after this word. We were Ron pigpen mcernan could
(18:46):
feel his influence waning. He held onto the microphone in
a death grip, like if he didn't let go, then
he'd always be in control, Like if he tugged hard
enough on the mic, hebe He pulled the rest of
the band safely back down to the ground, him back
to reality, but he knew deep down that he was
already losing them. He lurched over the microphone, his stomach
(19:08):
poked out from behind his shirt buttons wine belly again,
he kept howling the blues raw power, and the rest
of the Warlocks were operating on a different kind of power,
and not just Bob Weir's country and folk influences. Though
the band was developing a more rounded set list that
went beyond Pig's personal passions. But off stage two, Jerry, Phil, Bob,
(19:30):
and Bill spent their days exploring the cosmos, listening to music,
and talking literature. While loaded to the gills on LSD,
Pig didn't partake so in n when pig Pen walked
into the Big Beat Club with Pizza joined by day,
in one of the Peninsula's first rock clubs by night,
(19:52):
he didn't have the same experiences that everyone else had.
To pig the strobe lights were just bright as ship
and hurt his eyes into the others. They holts from
the darkness like a siren said, welcome visitors from near
and far. Peek further into this abyss, to send further
into this madness. White sheets covered the club's walls. Short
films were projected onto the blank canvas. To just off
(20:15):
center in the room sat a TP Images of Native
Americans were projected on its canvas from the inside, haunting ghosts.
Like the artist was present with an explanation for what
the piece was supposed to mean, but like every other
sensory experience in the room, ultimately its meaning was subjective.
Couches inhabited by saucerrid characters and colorful clothing and painted
(20:37):
faces lined the walls. Dancers twirled into the dull glow
of the projectors. Spinning was indifference. The music came from everywhere,
the walls, the floor, of the ceiling. It didn't just
vibrate the room. It melted the room, and the dancers
weren't dancing to the music. They weren't listening to the music.
They were feeling the music. On top of the music,
(20:57):
a voice bellowed through a megaphon and ploring the attendees
to get freaky release sanity. The more voices grunted through
the microphone out at the p A and the sounds
of someone moaning, then screaming, then laughing, and the source
of the sound seemed to be a man standing on
a very low stage at one end of the room,
flanked by speakers, tape recorders in an organ painted with
(21:19):
the brightest neon known demand. Ken Kisi began to recite music.
As the oppressive flashing lights continued and the crowd swayed together,
the entire room felt like it was breathing. Everyone there
was high as fuck, and the music droned on from
the opposite end of the room. Pig Pen thought it
(21:39):
was a little too weird, a little too far out,
and maybe you had to be dosed to truly appreciate it.
That it didn't matter. He still got up on that stage,
surrounded by all this freak flag insanity and led the
Warlocks through another set. The group was a mishmash of size,
of shape, styles and vibes, a perfect reflection of the
scene laid out in front of them, and they tried
(22:01):
to hold it together, and they really did. But after
tripping on LSD all day long, you couldn't just pretend
to ignore what you had seen and experienced. It was
hard to play straight, and you still weren't thinking straight.
The Warlocks had figured out how to perfectly time their
trips with their sets throughout nineteen five, while playing five
(22:21):
sets a night, six nights a week at the Inn Room,
a divorce bar twenty minutes south San Francisco designed specifically
for drinking away heartache and inhibition. While Pig hung tight
to his beloved Blues, the rest of the band was
vibing out to John Coltrane, and they were enamored with
how Train and his band took short, simple structures and
(22:42):
stretched them out into longer pieces, creating fascinating textures and improvisations.
They endeavored to translate that idea and that energy to
their music on the stage, and they did quickly find, however,
that acid in the Inn Room boozers were a terrible combination,
much to it pends relief. That meant they had to
come down well before they began to perform. While the
(23:06):
effects of the hallucinogens may have worn off by the
time they kicked into their first song, their author perspective
did not. Simple songs became sprawling, auditory expeditions, and were
at times and possibly loud, often clearing a great percentage
of the club's patrons out of the building. Pig Pen
vamped on, but he could see his band evolving right
(23:26):
before his eyes, his decidedly undilated pupils. The Blues weren't
being left by the wayside yet, but they were fast
becoming less important. Shortly after they amicably parted ways with
the Inn Room, the Warlocks discovered that they weren't the
only Warlocks. Another band already cut a record under that
(23:49):
same name. Meanwhile, a New York band called the Warlocks
would also ditch the name for something even more idiosyncratic,
The Velvet Underground. But the West Coast Warlocks needed to
come up with something a little more unique. On a
rainy afternoon, Phil invited the boys over to his place
for a brainstorm session. Jerry, who showed up late high
(24:11):
on d mt sat down on Phil's couch, opened a
nine edition of The Funking Wagonal's New Practical Standard Dictionary
Britannia World Language Edition, and let his finger fall on
the first page that presented itself. The Grateful Dead motif
for an old folk tale about a hero who happens
upon an anonymous corps who has not been given a
(24:33):
proper burial because it owed a debt. The hero takes
care of the corpses debt, not expecting to be rewarded
in return. Soon after, the hero finds himself in desperate
need of help and the spirit of the corpse comes
to his rescue. What goes around comes around, and dig
that the Warlocks now had their new name. In a
(24:57):
short time later, the Grateful Dead were made the red
it in house man for Ken Keisi and the Mary
Pranksters legendary asset tests. It would spend the next six
months helping delight the fuse of the counterculture that was
about to explode into the mainstream. Most of the Grateful
Dead's members took the tests themselves, spending many nights on
stage sliding in and out of time and space while
(25:18):
playing sets to the crowds gathered one member of the group, however,
opted out. Pigad was all set buzzing on booze. He
formed a habit early at thirteen years old and never
even considered getting on a wagon to fall off of.
He came to see alcohol as an integral part of
the blues, and so it was an integral part of him.
(25:41):
The rest of the dead and never judged him for him,
so pig never passed judgment for the trips they took.
He did, however, need to serve as an anchor for
the band, as he did that night back at the
Big Beat Club, and after the band set, pig remained
in the corner of the club until the bottle of
SoC he was sitting from disappeared. Along with this inhibitions.
(26:01):
Pigs sunk into his chair, Exhausted. The trip was about
to get even stranger. Pigpen hammered the keys on his
(26:36):
Vox electric piano. Come the fuck on, guys. The group
was beginning to spin off in different directions. A few
more minutes and they'd be lost to the cosmos for
the rest of the evening. Pig Pen grit his teeth.
He punctuated the next few changes in the song with
sharp staccato hits, giving the groove a heavy blues vibe.
(26:56):
The band fell behind it for a few metres and
then started off in another tripped out direction, improvising something
that didn't resemble the blues at all. Pig tried to
pull them back again, but it didn't matter. Sensory overload
was right in front of them. The lights, the dancers,
the colors, the voices rambling on over the p A
about God knows what, and the acid, always the acid.
(27:18):
These guys are on Saturn christ. Pig even had to
chew out Housie Stanley A K Bear before the show
for taking too long to set up their gear. Bear
was deep in the thralls of paranoia, thinking ken Keys
he might be trying to control his mind. Pig and
told that. He told all of them over and over again,
take as much as you want, but hold it together
on stage. It wasn't about to be responsible for freaking
(27:41):
out an entire room of sauceried weirdos once the band
started tweaking. Yet here they were, and the goddamn pranksters
and the p A kept yelling out over the music incessantly,
and Pigs started growling on a rap over the song,
attempting to overpower the voices. It only resulted in some
bizarre our call and response that did nothing but make
(28:02):
the trip more intense. If he couldn't overpower the room,
then maybe he could tell the band to reality. He
caught Jerry's eye. Jerry was the one Pig really needed.
If pigpen was the engine of the dead, Jerry was
steering the car, and the pranksters didn't call him Captain
Trips for nothing. Pig and Jerry had a connection, a
(28:23):
way of communicating through the music. He just hoped Jerry
was still capable of accessing that wavelength in this current state.
Pig barked out a few more chords and mercifully caught
Jerry's attention. Once he had Jerry, it became easier. One
by one, Pig rilled them in, keeping them straight enough
and tight enough to at least finish the set. Sometime later,
(28:47):
after the band had finished playing and it started milling
about in the crowd, Pig was in his usual position,
set up in a corner with a bottle of Southern Comfort.
It wasn't hard to see what was happening, and not
just the next show. Everything the LSD the pranksters, the scene,
the obsession was experimenting with sound. Why couldn't they just
vamp on the one four five and keep it simple?
(29:09):
Pig took another long pull from the bottle. The Dead
were already not the same band they once were. Pigs
beloved blues had become marginalized, just incidental transition music from
one spaced out jam to the next, slim harpone never
had to deal with the ship. Pig tipped the bottle
up once again. How long this is possibly go on?
(29:30):
And there was no way this was sustainable. The test
how to end at some point, and maybe then Pig
would get to play his music again properly. But he'd
soon fine that things would never really be the same.
This wasn't a phase for the Dead. What they were
doing was laying the foundation for the group's philosophy, the
philosophy that would lead them to numerous decades of experimentation
and exploration of both music and illicit drunks. The band
(29:54):
wouldn't play just the blues, they wouldn't play just anything.
The Dead we're becoming a living, breathing organism that responded
to whatever environment they were in or whatever vibe they encountered.
Pig drained the rest of his Southern comfort and stared
at the empty bottle as the sweet whiskey course through
his body and gave him a warm embrace. Pig didn't
(30:15):
have a care in the world, which was always there
for Pig, always consistent and reliable. Alcohol didn't experiment, It
didn't improvise. It was like a piece of twelve bar blues.
You always knew how to find your way back to
the one. Alcohol was beautiful, simple, and just like the
music he loved. Pig Pen had been knocking it back
(30:37):
for seven years. In another seven the booze would bury
him in the acid tests. They would come to an
end soon enough, but first pig Pen and the grateful
dead would find their own personal hell in the city
of angels Um. Jake Brennan in This is the twenty
(30:58):
seven Club Club is hosted and produced by me Jake
Brennan for Double Elvis in partnership with I Heart Radio.
Zeth Lundie is the lead writer and co producer. This
(31:20):
episode was mixed by Joel Edinburgh. Additional music and score
elements by Ryan Spraaker and Henry Luneta. This episode was
written by Ted Omo. Story and copy ending by Pat Healy.
Sources for this episode are available at Double Elvis dot
com on the twenty seven Club series page, talk to
me on Social act disgrace Land pod, and hang out
(31:42):
with me live on a Twitch channel of disgrace Land Talks.
For more news on your favorite podcast, follow at Double
Elvis on Instagram. Rock rolla, What is
Double Elvis s Club is the production of I Heart
Radio and Double Elvis Ron. Pigpen McKernan died at the
age of seven, and he lived a life that didn't
go exactly as planned. I can give you twenty seven
(00:24):
reasons why that statement is true. Six would be the
number of nights per week he led his band The
Warlocks on stage before his bandmates turned on, tuned in,
and dropped his old school blues vibe. Another three would
be the number of years it took Mary Prankster ken
Kesi to perfect his asset tests, creating a close community
(00:46):
of self declared freaks that soon counted pig Pen and
his bandmates among them. Six more would be the number
of months The Warlocks, re christened as The Grateful Dead,
would serve as house band for those asset tests, a
ritual that pig refused to take part in. Another five
would be the number of bandmates he'd have to tether
(01:06):
to reality as they threatened to leave the ground high
on one of their pre show LSD trips. And seven
would be the number of years he had left to
live when he realized that the band he led was
slowly marginalizing his contributions as the world around them took
a turn for the strange, all totally On this our
(01:29):
second episode of season five, Mary Prankster's acid rituals tethered
to reality. And Ron pig Pen mccernin um Jake Brennan
in This is the Seven Cloth m h February, Paulato, California.
(02:32):
The two door Student Baker Golden Hawk ripped through the
quiet evening the clock on the dash near two am.
The car gripped the pavement tightly, trucking along, pushing ninety
miles per hour, bending sharp corners, and the tires barely
stayed on the road. The driver held the wheel loosely
as the radio sang out it was the end of
a long night full of heavy conversation and too many
(02:55):
beers to count. The three passengers, too drunk to notice
or to to care, were chatting away, ignoring the increased
speed of the Student Baker, and besides, the driver seemed
to have it under control until he didn't. The car
approached a turn that would have been tough at half
the speed, and the Student Baker struggled to make the
tight corner, and then the world flipped upside down. All
(03:21):
four tires of the three thousand pound vehicle left the concrete.
The student baker rolled into a field below, rattling the
passengers around like tumbling dice about to be tossed onto
a crabs table, And like crabs, life and death had
just become a game of chance. Glass shattered, metal contorted,
and shrieked to the car's passengers. Jerry Garcia and Alan
(03:43):
trist were violently hurled from the car, so was driver
Lee Adams. Then there was nothing, just darkness. Jerry pushed
himself off the ground. His ears were ringing, his shoulder
throgged was intense pain, his head was pounding, his eyes blurry.
He looked down and, feeling the chill of the midwinter evening,
(04:05):
he noticed his shoes were missing. Where the hell was
he in? Where the hell were shoes? The last thing
he remembered was getting tossed through the windshield ship. That
was about all he remembered. He scanned the open field
around him, the lights of nearby Stanford Hospital illuminating the scene,
and then he saw it. The tragedy of that night
(04:25):
would stay with Jerry for the rest of his life.
Jerry Garcia's life had been punctuated with tragedy from the
very beginning. He was born in ninety two, and after
an idyllic first three years, everything went sideways. He lost
the top two knuckles of his right middle finger at
(04:46):
four years old when his older brother accidentally chopped them
off with an axe. Jerry moved a log away from
the chopping block as a joke, right as his brother
brought the sharp end down. Then Jerry lost his father
at five. He sent really lost his mother when she
subsequently set him and his finger chopping brother to live
with her grandparents. That he was forced back from his
(05:07):
hometown when his mother remarried, relocated, and then brought her
sons back into her home, and the family bounced around
to a few more towns in the following years. He
had trouble in high school, brushes with the law, a
stint in the army that ended with more accounts of
a wall than colors, and a tasteful tie die. Jerry
was wayward jaded, and at just eighteen, he'd already seen
(05:29):
too much. He didn't know where he belonged, and the
only other constant beside trouble in Jerry's life was music.
His father, a clarinet player and bandleader and later his
grandmother always insured. His home was filled with an eclectic
variety of music big band, old Tommy, folk, country, gospel, bluegrass, classical.
(05:50):
He and his brother both dug rock and roll that
exploded in the nineteen fifties, and Jerry had been consistently
improving his skills on guitar since he first picked one
up at fifth teen. He'd also been moved by the
free wheeling nature of the Beat generation, especially Jack Caro
Wax on the Road, a novel that he absorbed so
deeply it became part of his identity. Once jerry short
(06:14):
stint in the army came to an end, he decided
to go on in an adventure. He's someone else, somewhere else,
just like sal Paradise. Jerry landed and Paul Alto lived
in his car for a while, got hip to the
scene and made some connections with local musicians. He then
secured a room at the Chateau, a kind of boarding
house for transy and bohemians, artist musicians and writers. He
(06:38):
was welcome there and for a time had managed to
avoid trouble or misadventures, avoided them until that evening in
nineteen sixty one, when he was thrown through the windshield
of a student aaker doing ninety on Junipero Sarah Boulevard.
Jerry snapped back to the present. The night was eerily silent.
Not fifty yards away from him was the shell of
(06:58):
the nineteen fifty six Golden Hawk he had just been
writing shotgun in The car was mangled, unrecognizable. It was
a mess, and the reality of the situation hit Jerry
like a ton of bricks. The third passenger, Jerry's close friend,
Paul Spiegel, didn't make it out of the car alive.
Paul was just sixteen years old. The event completely rearranged
(07:19):
Jerry's perspective in the world. It laid bare the fragility
of life in the most jarring way possible, smashing his
already fractured world into a thousand little pieces. He wasn't
sure how he would ever rearrange them. He took refuge
in music. For the next three years, Jerry performed in
eleven different bands around Paolato. He also became a father
(07:42):
to a daughter, which complicated things, and suddenly there was
another mouth to feed, and Jerry committed entirely to his music.
Needed to steady your paycheck than bluegrass gigs. He found
work as a music teacher at Dana Morgan's music store
in Paol Alto. It was at Dana Moore end Is
that Jerry first met a fourteen year old whose appearance
(08:03):
was constantly in such a state of disarray that everyone
called him Pigpen. Jerry thought it was funny that the
store hired an unclean kid to keep the place clean,
but Pig could give two ships about pushing a room around.
He'd rather spend his time mining advice from the new
music teacher with the fucking wild car crash story. Pig
was transfixed by Jerry's work on the front board. Pig
(08:25):
quickly became Jerry's disciple. It wasn't just a one way street.
While Jerry top Pig guitar. Pig taught Jerry the blues.
He played Jerry's collection of records, the deep cuts, those
ancient holy texts. Soon they were playing live together, parties,
small shows, even his bandmates and some local groups. One
of those groups, of course, was Mother mccree's Uptown jug
(08:47):
Champions started right there at Dana Morgan's on a faithful
New Year's Eve. After they found Bob Weir, Pig convinced
the group to go electric. They picked up Bill Kurtzman,
who also taught at the store and he played with
and the Zodiacs on drums, and as they were using
Dana Morgan Seniors Music Store as a practice place, they
diplomatically brought Dana Morgan Jr. On as a bassist. He
(09:11):
was nobody's first choice, but he could hold down the
low end well enough. As Jerry will put it years later,
the band now known as the Warlocks had one strong
suit Pig band. Pig had it the deep knowledge, the look,
the vibe. The only problem was the Pig was shy.
(09:32):
Performing wasn't really his thing. Jerry pushed Pig out of
his comfort zone to take lead vocals because that rough
growl of his was the best voice in the band,
and Pig didn't put on airs when he took the mic.
He wasn't scholarly like the rest. He lived what he's saying.
He gave the Warlocks gravitas, legitimacy, and Jerry's encouragement alone
didn't give Pick total confidence. Cheap wine and beer were
(09:55):
of clutch. After a few kind words from Jerry a
few SIPs of something high proof, pig Pen was uninhibited.
He held court at the center of the band on stage,
belting out slim harpos king b or Rufus. Thomas is
walking the dog like he'd been singing them his entire life.
All the fractured pieces of Jerry's world were reassembling themselves fast.
(10:17):
The band ditched Dana Morgan's son for Phil Lesh, a
better bass player. Eventually they ditched their name for a
better one too, and they played their asses off six
nights a week, five sets a night, and their popularity grew.
If you knew, you knew, the band with the street
savvy bluesman fronting a bunch of newly music nerds is
where it was at. Everyone knew it, especially those who
(10:38):
were turning on and tuning on. But the ones with
the keys to the magic bus would soon take the
band in the most important trip of its life. Ron
Pigpen McCarney didn't know it that will. He'd be getting
off at one of those next stops. What about you, Ken,
(11:22):
you want to go? The neighbor was staring into his eyes,
almost staring at him. But was this actually dangerous enough
to be a dare a government mandated test in that way?
So why the hell, they Ken, KESI feel so spooked.
The neighbor tapped his foot and Kesi remained silent, And
they'll pay you seventy five bucks. I know you need it.
(11:44):
He did need it. It was and Ken Kesi had
moved from Oregon to just outside the Stanford campus, settling
in a lively bohemian student section. Kesi was at the
school on an academic fellowship studying creative writing. Financially of
any kind was needed, but still he was hesitant, and
the neighbor continued his pitch. It's perfectly safe. They use
(12:07):
it on patients all the time, alcoholics, mostly. This thing
is going to be known as a miracle drug in
a few years. Kesi was worried about how it might
affect his Olympic training in his writing. He'd never even
been drunk before, but seventy five dollars to sit in
a room for a couple of hours too good to
pass up. Fucking Kesi study was in. The room was
(12:29):
bare except for a handful of hospital beds. Kesi sat
patiently on a mattress with something supposed to be happening.
He felt completely normal. A tape recorder sat in front
of him. He was supposed to speak into it and
record his experiences. The tape recorders school just spun, waiting
for Kesy to describe what he saw in the room.
(12:50):
Kezi studied the white walls of the room, but nothing,
and then nothing slowly turned into everything. The lights above
him filled the room with a warm glow. The glow
evolved into different colors. He wrote his eyes, but that
only made the colors multiply and then mutated into hexagons pentagons.
The walls of the room began to bend, The clock's
(13:12):
tick fell to an impossible rate, and the tape recorder
turned into a toad. Bats cascaded from the lights. He
heard music, and then he saw music. Kezi's mind rushed
in a thousand different directions as the curtain of the
world was pulled back. Ship was wild as part of
his participation in government funded testing. Ken Kezi had just
(13:32):
experienced his first trip by my surgic gas at Thole
of Mind a k a LSD. He returned the following Tuesday,
and then every Tuesday after that for nearly half a year.
During this time, ken Kezi would test, amongst other drugs, psilocybin, mescaline,
and emphatic means, but none of them compared to LSD.
(13:55):
That was the one. Kesi felt like he had found
a buried treasure. He was obsessed. He called his experience
beautiful and overwhelming. He wanted to take it with him,
share it with his friends, share it with anyone who
might need to see what he'd seen, to rattle their
brain out of the monotony of life and get a
vision beyond the mental and physical limitations of the mind
and the body to see the truth. Unfortunately, the doctors
(14:17):
running the experiments weren't in the business of sending home leftovers,
so Keisie got creative to score more doses. He got
a part time gig in a psych ward, a gig
that would inspire his classic novel One Flew Over the
Cuckoo's Nest. Through his new employment, he was able to
obtain plenty of LSD. It would begin building a community
of like minded adventurers, those ready to traverse the innermost
(14:39):
parts of their minds and the outermost parts of the universe.
Albert Hoffman, a Swiss scientist, first synthesized LSD in but
it wasn't until five years later that he accidentally dosed
himself with a small amount, and things got funky funky
enough that just a few days later he conducted a
(15:00):
real experiment with ten times the amount and tripped the
funk out. Hoffman thought he was dying, but a quick
visit from a physician confirmed no physical abnormalities. When Hoffman
came down, he knew he had stumbled on something important.
Over the next two decades, the effects of LSD would
be studied in clinical research. Psychologists prescribed it to treat
(15:22):
a variety of ailments, anxiety, depression, and addiction. LSD was
no secret, it wasn't even illegal. Author Albus Huxley was
a very public supporter, as was Harvard professor Timothy Leary.
L s D helped treat Hollywood legend carry grants psychological
issues stemming from childhood trauma, and influenced the writings of
Jack Kerouac, Alan Ginsburg, and William S. Burrows. During the
(15:46):
same time, the world was also dead center. In the
middle of the Cold War, the distrust, paranoia, and concerned
about mass destruction had reached its peak. There were rumors
that communists had discovered a way to control of minds
of prisoners and operatives. The United States, which was already
racing Russia to the moon, couldn't afford to fall behind again,
(16:08):
so the CIA started an illegal human experimentation program called
mk Ultra, in which they identified LSD as potentially important
and useful, and began testing the drug in hospitals, prisons,
and psychiatric institutions. Notorious Boston gangster Whitey Bulger was a
participant while incarcerated at Alcatraz. He later claimed that because
(16:31):
of ensuing nightmares, he was only ever able to sleep
for a few hours at a time ever since nineteen
fifty seven, and the government also opened up testing the volunteers,
which included college students. College students like Ken Kesi. Once
Kesi finished the tests, he was as the saying goes
(16:51):
turned on. He turned on many of his Stanford classmates too,
and when Cuckoo's Nest blew up, Kesy spread the wealth.
Kezi his Emily, in a circle of precocious pals, now
referring to themselves as the Mary Pranksters, moved out to
La Honda, a quiet place in the woods about an
hour from downtown San Francisco. In La Honda, they could
(17:13):
stretch their legs and their minds, a place to search
for a peaceful, meaningful existence away from the fear and
paranoia of the so called real world. Keisi also bought
a school bus, which already had the basic necessities of travel,
and the Pranksters covered it in intricate pattern, shapes and symbols,
every color of the rainbow and bright neon, and named
(17:34):
it the Further Bus. They took the show on the road,
traveling the country, driving coast to coast with Kesi at
the wheel, spreading their message at conventions, presidential debates, public parks,
looking for anyone who's up for a new experience, but
mostly Keisi and the Pranksters continued to experiment in La Honda.
They put up flyers all around the peninsula, promoting parties
(17:54):
at their homes, and they wanted to find like minded individuals,
and their circle quickly grew. One of those flyers caught
the eye of Phil Lesh. Phil Jerry and Bob were
no strangers to LSD, but when they got to the
Pranksters party, it was safe to say they had never
seen anything like it. Thoughts flowed freely, people did what
(18:15):
they wanted, and no lines to cross, no limits, only
total freedom. Something important was happening out in the woods
they could feel it. They were all kindred spirits on
the same wavelength, but there was one uniting force that
was noticeably absent from the party music. We'll be right
back after this word. We were Ron pigpen mcernan could
(18:46):
feel his influence waning. He held onto the microphone in
a death grip, like if he didn't let go, then
he'd always be in control, Like if he tugged hard
enough on the mic, hebe He pulled the rest of
the band safely back down to the ground, him back
to reality, but he knew deep down that he was
already losing them. He lurched over the microphone, his stomach
(19:08):
poked out from behind his shirt buttons wine belly again,
he kept howling the blues raw power, and the rest
of the Warlocks were operating on a different kind of power,
and not just Bob Weir's country and folk influences. Though
the band was developing a more rounded set list that
went beyond Pig's personal passions. But off stage two, Jerry, Phil, Bob,
(19:30):
and Bill spent their days exploring the cosmos, listening to music,
and talking literature. While loaded to the gills on LSD,
Pig didn't partake so in n when pig Pen walked
into the Big Beat Club with Pizza joined by day,
in one of the Peninsula's first rock clubs by night,
(19:52):
he didn't have the same experiences that everyone else had.
To pig the strobe lights were just bright as ship
and hurt his eyes into the others. They holts from
the darkness like a siren said, welcome visitors from near
and far. Peek further into this abyss, to send further
into this madness. White sheets covered the club's walls. Short
films were projected onto the blank canvas. To just off
(20:15):
center in the room sat a TP Images of Native
Americans were projected on its canvas from the inside, haunting ghosts.
Like the artist was present with an explanation for what
the piece was supposed to mean, but like every other
sensory experience in the room, ultimately its meaning was subjective.
Couches inhabited by saucerrid characters and colorful clothing and painted
(20:37):
faces lined the walls. Dancers twirled into the dull glow
of the projectors. Spinning was indifference. The music came from everywhere,
the walls, the floor, of the ceiling. It didn't just
vibrate the room. It melted the room, and the dancers
weren't dancing to the music. They weren't listening to the music.
They were feeling the music. On top of the music,
(20:57):
a voice bellowed through a megaphon and ploring the attendees
to get freaky release sanity. The more voices grunted through
the microphone out at the p A and the sounds
of someone moaning, then screaming, then laughing, and the source
of the sound seemed to be a man standing on
a very low stage at one end of the room,
flanked by speakers, tape recorders in an organ painted with
(21:19):
the brightest neon known demand. Ken Kisi began to recite music.
As the oppressive flashing lights continued and the crowd swayed together,
the entire room felt like it was breathing. Everyone there
was high as fuck, and the music droned on from
the opposite end of the room. Pig Pen thought it
(21:39):
was a little too weird, a little too far out,
and maybe you had to be dosed to truly appreciate it.
That it didn't matter. He still got up on that stage,
surrounded by all this freak flag insanity and led the
Warlocks through another set. The group was a mishmash of size,
of shape, styles and vibes, a perfect reflection of the
scene laid out in front of them, and they tried
(22:01):
to hold it together, and they really did. But after
tripping on LSD all day long, you couldn't just pretend
to ignore what you had seen and experienced. It was
hard to play straight, and you still weren't thinking straight.
The Warlocks had figured out how to perfectly time their
trips with their sets throughout nineteen five, while playing five
(22:21):
sets a night, six nights a week at the Inn Room,
a divorce bar twenty minutes south San Francisco designed specifically
for drinking away heartache and inhibition. While Pig hung tight
to his beloved Blues, the rest of the band was
vibing out to John Coltrane, and they were enamored with
how Train and his band took short, simple structures and
(22:42):
stretched them out into longer pieces, creating fascinating textures and improvisations.
They endeavored to translate that idea and that energy to
their music on the stage, and they did quickly find, however,
that acid in the Inn Room boozers were a terrible combination,
much to it pends relief. That meant they had to
come down well before they began to perform. While the
(23:06):
effects of the hallucinogens may have worn off by the
time they kicked into their first song, their author perspective
did not. Simple songs became sprawling, auditory expeditions, and were
at times and possibly loud, often clearing a great percentage
of the club's patrons out of the building. Pig Pen
vamped on, but he could see his band evolving right
(23:26):
before his eyes, his decidedly undilated pupils. The Blues weren't
being left by the wayside yet, but they were fast
becoming less important. Shortly after they amicably parted ways with
the Inn Room, the Warlocks discovered that they weren't the
only Warlocks. Another band already cut a record under that
(23:49):
same name. Meanwhile, a New York band called the Warlocks
would also ditch the name for something even more idiosyncratic,
The Velvet Underground. But the West Coast Warlocks needed to
come up with something a little more unique. On a
rainy afternoon, Phil invited the boys over to his place
for a brainstorm session. Jerry, who showed up late high
(24:11):
on d mt sat down on Phil's couch, opened a
nine edition of The Funking Wagonal's New Practical Standard Dictionary
Britannia World Language Edition, and let his finger fall on
the first page that presented itself. The Grateful Dead motif
for an old folk tale about a hero who happens
upon an anonymous corps who has not been given a
(24:33):
proper burial because it owed a debt. The hero takes
care of the corpses debt, not expecting to be rewarded
in return. Soon after, the hero finds himself in desperate
need of help and the spirit of the corpse comes
to his rescue. What goes around comes around, and dig
that the Warlocks now had their new name. In a
(24:57):
short time later, the Grateful Dead were made the red
it in house man for Ken Keisi and the Mary
Pranksters legendary asset tests. It would spend the next six
months helping delight the fuse of the counterculture that was
about to explode into the mainstream. Most of the Grateful
Dead's members took the tests themselves, spending many nights on
stage sliding in and out of time and space while
(25:18):
playing sets to the crowds gathered one member of the group, however,
opted out. Pigad was all set buzzing on booze. He
formed a habit early at thirteen years old and never
even considered getting on a wagon to fall off of.
He came to see alcohol as an integral part of
the blues, and so it was an integral part of him.
(25:41):
The rest of the dead and never judged him for him,
so pig never passed judgment for the trips they took.
He did, however, need to serve as an anchor for
the band, as he did that night back at the
Big Beat Club, and after the band set, pig remained
in the corner of the club until the bottle of
SoC he was sitting from disappeared. Along with this inhibitions.
(26:01):
Pigs sunk into his chair, Exhausted. The trip was about
to get even stranger. Pigpen hammered the keys on his
(26:36):
Vox electric piano. Come the fuck on, guys. The group
was beginning to spin off in different directions. A few
more minutes and they'd be lost to the cosmos for
the rest of the evening. Pig Pen grit his teeth.
He punctuated the next few changes in the song with
sharp staccato hits, giving the groove a heavy blues vibe.
(26:56):
The band fell behind it for a few metres and
then started off in another tripped out direction, improvising something
that didn't resemble the blues at all. Pig tried to
pull them back again, but it didn't matter. Sensory overload
was right in front of them. The lights, the dancers,
the colors, the voices rambling on over the p A
about God knows what, and the acid, always the acid.
(27:18):
These guys are on Saturn christ. Pig even had to
chew out Housie Stanley A K Bear before the show
for taking too long to set up their gear. Bear
was deep in the thralls of paranoia, thinking ken Keys
he might be trying to control his mind. Pig and
told that. He told all of them over and over again,
take as much as you want, but hold it together
on stage. It wasn't about to be responsible for freaking
(27:41):
out an entire room of sauceried weirdos once the band
started tweaking. Yet here they were, and the goddamn pranksters
and the p A kept yelling out over the music incessantly,
and Pigs started growling on a rap over the song,
attempting to overpower the voices. It only resulted in some
bizarre our call and response that did nothing but make
(28:02):
the trip more intense. If he couldn't overpower the room,
then maybe he could tell the band to reality. He
caught Jerry's eye. Jerry was the one Pig really needed.
If pigpen was the engine of the dead, Jerry was
steering the car, and the pranksters didn't call him Captain
Trips for nothing. Pig and Jerry had a connection, a
(28:23):
way of communicating through the music. He just hoped Jerry
was still capable of accessing that wavelength in this current state.
Pig barked out a few more chords and mercifully caught
Jerry's attention. Once he had Jerry, it became easier. One
by one, Pig rilled them in, keeping them straight enough
and tight enough to at least finish the set. Sometime later,
(28:47):
after the band had finished playing and it started milling
about in the crowd, Pig was in his usual position,
set up in a corner with a bottle of Southern Comfort.
It wasn't hard to see what was happening, and not
just the next show. Everything the LSD the pranksters, the scene,
the obsession was experimenting with sound. Why couldn't they just
vamp on the one four five and keep it simple?
(29:09):
Pig took another long pull from the bottle. The Dead
were already not the same band they once were. Pigs
beloved blues had become marginalized, just incidental transition music from
one spaced out jam to the next, slim harpone never
had to deal with the ship. Pig tipped the bottle
up once again. How long this is possibly go on?
(29:30):
And there was no way this was sustainable. The test
how to end at some point, and maybe then Pig
would get to play his music again properly. But he'd
soon fine that things would never really be the same.
This wasn't a phase for the Dead. What they were
doing was laying the foundation for the group's philosophy, the
philosophy that would lead them to numerous decades of experimentation
and exploration of both music and illicit drunks. The band
(29:54):
wouldn't play just the blues, they wouldn't play just anything.
The Dead we're becoming a living, breathing organism that responded
to whatever environment they were in or whatever vibe they encountered.
Pig drained the rest of his Southern comfort and stared
at the empty bottle as the sweet whiskey course through
his body and gave him a warm embrace. Pig didn't
(30:15):
have a care in the world, which was always there
for Pig, always consistent and reliable. Alcohol didn't experiment, It
didn't improvise. It was like a piece of twelve bar blues.
You always knew how to find your way back to
the one. Alcohol was beautiful, simple, and just like the
music he loved. Pig Pen had been knocking it back
(30:37):
for seven years. In another seven the booze would bury
him in the acid tests. They would come to an
end soon enough, but first pig Pen and the grateful
dead would find their own personal hell in the city
of angels Um. Jake Brennan in This is the twenty
(30:58):
seven Club Club is hosted and produced by me Jake
Brennan for Double Elvis in partnership with I Heart Radio.
Zeth Lundie is the lead writer and co producer. This
(31:20):
episode was mixed by Joel Edinburgh. Additional music and score
elements by Ryan Spraaker and Henry Luneta. This episode was
written by Ted Omo. Story and copy ending by Pat Healy.
Sources for this episode are available at Double Elvis dot
com on the twenty seven Club series page, talk to
me on Social act disgrace Land pod, and hang out
(31:42):
with me live on a Twitch channel of disgrace Land Talks.
For more news on your favorite podcast, follow at Double
Elvis on Instagram. Rock rolla, What is
Host
Jake Brennan
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The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.