As the Grateful Dead’s star continued to rise, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan felt he would rather be a dark star, invisible to the world. But he couldn’t hide. Not from the throngs of fans. And not from the San Francisco Police Department. Maybe they saw Pig’s leather vest and cowboy hat and figured he was an outlaw. Or maybe they just wanted to outlaw his type and the whole freaky scene along with him. And they tried to do just that in the fall of 1967, as the sun set on the Summer of Love and the Dead waited like sitting ducks at their house at 710 Ashbury Street.
Sources:
A Long Strange Trip: The Inside Story of the Grateful Dead, by Dennis McNally
Searching for the Sound, by Phil Lesh
Why the Grateful Dead's Debut Was So Hastily Recorded (Ultimate Classic Rock)
Joe Smith Digital Collection (Library of Congress)
RCA's Studio B, 6363 Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood, CA (Jerry’s Brokedown Palaces)
Joe Smith Ran Record Labels and Signed the Grateful Dead (Wall Street Journal)
Grateful Dead first record contract (Julien’s)
The Grateful Dead: 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition Album Review (Pitchfork)
That Time Joe Smith Sent the Grateful Dead a Letter Complaining About Their Work Ethic (Rolling Stone)
Grateful Dead Guide: The Very Short Tale of Golden Road (Dead Essays)
Joe Smith obituary (The Guardian)
Brian Jones at Monterey Pop (YouTube)
Monterey Pop Festival – 40 Years Ago (YouTube)
Opinion | The Greatest Music Festival in History (NY Times)
Anatomy of a Love Festival - Part Two (Criterion)
Today in 1967: Otis Redding at the Monterey Pop Festival (Rhino)
The Grateful Dead Did Get It: Reporters and Cops (Rolling Stone)
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, Double Elvis Club is the production of I Heart
Radio and Double Elvis. Ron Pigpen mccernan died at the
age of and he lived a life that often changed
(00:21):
too quickly for him to ever grab hold of it.
I can give you twenty seven reasons why that statement
is true. Eight would be the number of songs on
The Grateful Dead's first album that he didn't sing lead on,
only a year after he had been the group's focal point.
Another five will be the number of days the Grateful
Dead recorded that album, expediting their typically slower process and
(00:43):
leaving them disappointed with the outcome. Three more would be
the number of days the group spent at the Monterey
Pop Festival, where they worked on a scheme to subvert
the greedy promoters and movie producers looking to cash in
on their homegrown scene. Another two would be the number
of hundreds of thousands who would watch The Dead at
that festival. Three more will be the number of decades
(01:04):
of jail time Pigpen faced when police found a pound
of hash in the Dead's communal house and the hate
in Six would be the number of hours he'd sweat
it out into San Francisco courthouse, waiting to make bail
all totally on this our fourth episode of season five,
sidelined in the studio, cashing in on a home grown
(01:26):
scene thirty years for a Pound of Grass, and Ron
Pigpen mccarnin I'm Jake Brennan in This is the Club.
(02:10):
H Warner Brothers record executive Joe Smith didn't know what
the funk was going on at the Avalon Ballroom. Just
an hour before, he was having a quiet dinner with
his wife in a respectable San Francisco restaurant. Now he
(02:34):
was subjected to, well, whatever the hell this was? The Avalon,
not a large venue by any stretch of the imagination,
was walled wall with kids wearing outlandish clothes, and some
without many clothes at all, somewhere on the floor, laying
on their backs, their bodies painted, smoking cigarettes. And there
was Joe, buttoned up in a navy blue suit and
(02:55):
slicked back hair. And the kids in the ballroom may
have been on another planet, but O was the one
who looked like an alien. The crowd around him danced, sang,
It seemed to be having near religious experiences. Joe was
desperately trying to steer clear of the spinning teenagers next
to him, desperately trying to see the stage through the
smoke that was filling the room and the light show
(03:16):
that flashed through the haze. When the smoke momentarily cleared,
he caught a good look at the guys on that stage. Really,
this is what the kids were into. The drummer looked
like a mechanic, but Joe had to admit he thought
it out a perfect rock and roll rhythm. The basis
with the golden flowing hair was straight out of a
(03:37):
Lloyd Alexander novel, but he was laying down a foundation
with an expert precision. The pretty boyd guitarists looked all
of seventeen years old, but he had the voice of
a seasoned folk singer. Then there was the wavy haired
warlock with only nine fingers who spawned transcendence from his
guitar neeling. And lastly was the keyboardist Leather shoulder Land,
(04:00):
the mob of black hair held in place by a
tribal headpand jet black mustache. He looked like he belonged
in some biker bar out in palm desert, or better yet,
a prison, but he's sang like a blues man of
the highest order, and Joe figured he had to be
the one they called pig Pen. Pig Pen emptied the
(04:20):
canop beer that was sitting on his vox organ. He
wiped his mouth and grabbed the microphone and stepped to
the front of the stage. As the band wrapped up
the song, he was slow meandering. Was he drunk or
was this part of the performance? Joe couldn't tell. It
didn't seem to matter. Pigpen leaned out over the crowd,
enticing them to give away free love, enticing them to
(04:41):
stop fooling around with themselves and fool around with the
person next to them, enticing them to dance. The band
took flight with Wilson Pickets in the midnight hour, a
top forty hit from the previous year that didn't exactly
seem like an obvious choice for a cover from this crew,
the pig Pen made it his own. He crooned and
(05:02):
crowed and shouted out lyrics, and the kids dug it.
They moved their bodies, shaking along to the music, which
didn't seem to be stopping anytime soon. Pig Pan kept rolling,
he kept rapping, he kept rocking, and the music to
come over. It took the band over, and they took
the room over. A two minute and forty second song
stretched to nearly twenty minutes. This was what the Grateful
(05:23):
Dead were all about. Joe couldn't deny the energy. It
was a feeling of cohesion in the room, as if
someone had bottled what was happening in San Francisco had
dumped it into a contained setting. It reminded Joe of
the music he spawned as a DJ ten years ago
back in Boston. But that was the past. This, whatever
it was, it was the new youth movement, the future.
(05:46):
And what was Warner Brothers doing peddling albums by Bob Newhart,
the Everly Brothers, Dean Martin. They were peddling the past.
They needed a new flux of the future in a
bad way. Signing pig Pen and the Dead was a
no rainer. Joe approached the band backstage after the show,
and after refusing several doses of LSD, he gave them
(06:09):
the pitch that the Dead representative major change in music,
and Warner Brothers needed to change in a major way
as well. Two weeks later, they made it official a
record deal, their own slab of wax. It was what
pig had fantasized about since he sat on his parents
living room floor handling his father's records, getting to know
the field of the jackets, studying their sound. Now he
(06:31):
joined his heroes and the grooves. There was one caveat
There were no recording studios in the Bay Area that
could get the crisp, clean sound that Warner Brothers wanted.
Warners wasn't sucking around. Yes, the Dead could have control
of their music, but they were going to have to
record it professionally. That was non negotiable. Pig pank and
(06:51):
hoot and holler all He wanted to live audiences, but
this wasn't a live audience of kids with heads full
of dope. This was the big leagues. So the Dead
jetted down to l A. As the plane dropped an altitude,
Pigpens studied the gridded streets of the city. He thought
of their experience and watts during the previous year. It
(07:13):
weighed heavy on his mind, but not the experience of
bears all meat diet or the war zone asset tests.
What ran through Pigpen's mind was the music. A year ago.
The Dead were continuing their sonic explorations when they got
caught in the whirlwind of Ken Keisi and his pranksters.
Now there were times Pigpen hardly recognized the band at all.
(07:34):
The days of playing blues covers at Magoose Pizza and
those were gone, and the Dead had become some strange,
hybrid and unclassifiable some of its parts, and Pig knew
that his part was getting smaller every day. Pig wondered
what role he'd play on the album. As the band
sat in the waiting room of our Cier studio a
on Sunset Boulevard. The place was an accurate reflection of
(07:57):
what Warner Brothers was in n Stuck in the nineteen fifties,
oppressively ordinary. The dad looked his out of place at
the studio as Joe Smith looked at the Avalon ballroom.
Pig smiled at the receptionist. To a surprise, she wasn't
too thrown off. Jefferson Airplane had been there a few
(08:17):
months prior the Rolling Stones the year before, and much
to the receptionist chagrin, she was getting used to these
long hairs. The band was waiting for their producer, David Hassinger,
who had engineered the Stones album after Math the year before,
and it felt fortunate to have landed him. But when
he finally arrived with his slick back hair, white collared
shirt and gold chain bracelet, the Dead knew they were
(08:39):
in for it. David was a no nonsense old school
record producer brought in by Warners to keep the Dead
under control. The label was convinced that the band would
take way too long to make a record, so David
pushed the band. He made them grind the sessions out.
Pig and Bob Weir, who was currently abstaining from pharmaceuticals,
(09:00):
watched from the sidelines as the rest of the group
gobbled down riddle and to keep up with the pace.
What resulted was sometimes mannic, sometimes burnt out vibe. It
was almost worse than the Acid. But even worse than
that was how Pig couldn't help but notice the way
the sessions were progressing, song after song after song, and
still no lead vocal for him. He was the energy
(09:22):
of the band, and now he was truly being sidelined.
Jerry took the lion's share of the tracks, with Bob
cutting in for two, including Viola lee Blues. The only
fucking long form jam on the entire album. The jam
was Pigpen specialty, and the song had been a pig
tune once upon a time, but no more. Hell if
it weren't for Pig with that suit from warners even
(09:43):
have signed the debt. It wasn't until Pigpen opened his
mouth that Joe Smith even got what was going on
with the band's vibe. When it was finally Pigs turned
to step to the plate, things got real, real fast.
And this wasn't rehearsal. Pig knew that if you bitched
too much about how Good Morning the Schoolgirl was supposed
to sound, it wouldn't result in him simply getting sent
home from rehearsal. It would result with him getting cut
(10:04):
from the record. Pig bit his lip. This was nothing
like he'd imagined it would be. Passing or kept pushing
the tempo, So did the riddling. Pig couldn't relax, couldn't
get loose like he was used to. Everything was uptight.
This wasn't it, man, This wasn't the dead, This wasn't
playing music because you love music. This felt like a machine.
Pig got it out. His vocal sounded nothing like the
(10:27):
live performances, nothing like it was supposed to sound. The
studio was sterile, claustrophobic. Something was lost here. Pig was
unsatisfied with his track. It didn't matter. The Dead laid
down some overdubs and that was that. Passing Or rushed
them out of our cia in just five days, out
of l A and back to the Bay. Joe Smith
(10:49):
and the executives at Warner Brothers didn't hear a single
from the sessions, not one single on the entire album.
How are they supposed to sell this? Warners demanded another
song be recorded. The Dead hit the San Francisco studio,
one of the ones Warner Brothers had initially deemed unfit,
and laid down a pedal to the metal rave up
that clocked in and just over two minutes it was
(11:10):
called the Golden Road to Unlimited Devotion. The song was
a distillation of the San Francisco that the Dead new
barefoot girls, neon light diamonds, take off his shoes and
try on some wings. The parties, the people, the drugs,
the goodwill, the love, the mood, shaking loose of the
stuff in nineteen fifties and rolling down the winding hills
of this great city, gathering every free spirited member of
(11:33):
society who dared to open their mind that vibe was
about to become a summer that nobody would ever forget.
(12:11):
Big Brother in the Holding Company were ripping their way
through Big Mama Thornton's ball and chain. The crowd had
swelled to nearly two hundred thousand, and they were in
awe of Janis Joplin's primordial screen. Pig Pen Jerry Garcia,
ungrateful dead manager Rock Scully watched from the wings. Goddamn
pigs Hot. She was so good. She had the audience
(12:33):
in the palm of her hand, hanging on every note.
It was hard for Pig to think of Janis is
anything other than the counterpoints who is boosts so blues
in that cabin back in log Anita's. But her star
had rocketed in the past year. She was no longer
some unknown blues singer in the woods. She was becoming
a household name. And with acts like Janis and Big Brother,
(12:53):
Jimi Hendrix, The Who, and Simon and Garlf Uncle, the
Monterey Pop Festival was turning into more than an incredible success.
It was on its way to becoming a defining moment
tense line of football field of nearby Monterey Peninsula. College
kids and dogs ran free, people bashed out chords and guitars,
right poetry, painted their bodies, meditated and makeshift circles, trip balls,
(13:18):
and the free living, free loving aesthetic. The dead it
conceived of the summer before, had been injected directly into
the mainstream. As Big Brother wrapped up their set, Pig
Jerry and Rock overheard a group of suits arguing about
getting Janice in the movie and about distribution deals. Thousands
of fans stretched out in front of them. Some of
the most unbelievable music in existence being played in these
(13:40):
heels were talking about money. The movie in question was
a comprehensive document of the Monterey Pop Festival, seemed like
less of a document and more of a ploy to
capitalize on the counterculture, to make a buck on what,
to the outside world was the latest trend. These suits
kept on with their wheeling and dealing, and like the
music and the people, which is docks to invest in.
(14:01):
The conversation about the commodification of the burgeoning San Francisco
scene all but confirmed the dead suspicions. When the show
is being planned, festival producers flew out from Sunny l
A to invade the Bay. Record producer Lou Adler and
John Phillips and the Mamas and the Papas worked over
the local bands the dead news something was up, but
(14:22):
they helped anyway. Ship. If Rock Scully hadn't secured the
nearby Monterey Peninsula College football field as a free campground
for the fans, most of the local bands would have
told John Phillips and Lou Adler to go funk themselves.
Pig Pen and Jerry hatched an idea they do something
these suits couldn't capture on film, some impromptu jams over
(14:44):
on the football field for the community and by the community.
It need to be easy. Pig and Jerry scrambled around
and following the musicians backstage of their covert plan they'd
set up in the dark long after the night show
was over. The campground would get the surprise of life
because it wasn't supposed to be just a show. It
was supposed to be an experience and experienced Pigpen thought.
(15:08):
Of course, earlier in the day, Pigpen had struck up
a conversation with No Reading and Mitch Mitchell as a
Jimmy Hendrix experience. Being two lads from England, they were
pretty much awe struck by every part of the American
blues experience, and they love Pigpens authenticity. They introduced Pigpen
to Jimmy shortly after, and a friendship was born. Pig
(15:31):
approached Jimmy about there after hours Clandestine experienced concept and
jim was in same for David Crosby, Pete Townsend, and
Eric Burton. But first that evening slate of sets went
ahead as scheduled. There was no way pig Pen was
missing OTIS reading. Pig Pen was obsessed with OTIS. He
spawn Otis's records daily. The only person who may have
(15:53):
been more obsessed with OTIS reading was Janice Choplin. Pig
Pen and Janice watched Otis from stage. Pig's eyes drifted
to Janice. She was beautiful, but nothing more than a friend.
They shared a bottle. If Pig had any illusions about
the relationship from the summer before, he no longer did.
Inside of driving each other wild, and they both let
(16:16):
orders reading set do the work, sweating it out like
a man possessed. After the show, pig and Janice rubbed
elbows with Otis's entourage backstage. They were headed back to
a nearby motel one, right near where both Big Brother
and the Dead were staying. Janice took the bait, and
then she took things into her own hands. She wasn't
(16:37):
waiting around. She was going to find artiss room. After midnight,
long after Janice had gone on her search for the
Big Oh, pig Pen made his way to the football
field on the opposite end of the fair grounds. The
plan he hatched earlier in the day with Jerry Garcia
was about to be put into motion. He saw the
small raised platform where crew members and musicians were setting
(17:00):
up in the dark. They wielded flashlights, carefully assembling an
open form jam space that would provide a more intimate
experience for the fans camping that evening. Many of the
campers couldn't even afford tickets to get into the actual
music festival itself. Just after two in the morning, harmonica
rang out a makeshift light show illuminated a makeshift band.
(17:21):
Campers who have been put to bed by the sounds
of Otis writing were shaken out of their slumber by
pig Pen, Jimmie Hendrix, Jerry Garcia in a rotating mix
of musicians playing just for them, the greatest supergroup that
never was. This was the essence of moderate pop, and
the suits from l A would never capture it on camera.
(17:42):
Pig Pen returned to the Grateful Dead's motel early the
next morning. The sun was beginning to rise. He could
barely keep his eyes open. He navigated his way back
to his room, and just as he inserted the key
into the door, he heard someone else center the quiet hallway.
It was Janice returning to a room. She smiled as
she passed pig Pen. He smiled back. The following night,
(18:05):
the Dead played their set at Monterey Sandwich. Between the
demolition derby wrought by the Who and the earth shattering
display of raw power by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the
Dead were stuck in limbo and overlooked. Between those two
performances that night, they realized the music scene was evolving
at an exponential rate in that summer. It seems San
(18:26):
Francisco was as well. We'll be right back after this
word we were. It was nearly noon when pig Pen
finally pulled himself out of bed. He threw on his bathroom,
opened his bedroom door and walked into the kitchen. He
(18:49):
tossed an old Chess label LP on the turntable cranked
the volume on the receiver as high as it could go.
A few minutes later, bacon was frying on the stove top.
Pig was half way through his first beer of the day,
and he gazed up at the ceiling. It's like I
even here anymore. Pig listened closely for any sign of life.
(19:09):
He couldn't even remember the last time he saw his
only remaining roommate. In nineteen sixty six, shortly after the
Dead returned from their foray into Watts and before they
checked up to Olam Polly, manager Rock Scully became obsessed
with the idea of the band taking up residence in
the grand old Victorian boarding house at seven ten Ashbury Street,
(19:30):
San Francisco. Was happening, and the Dead needed to be there.
The only issue was at the boarding house was full.
Rock convinced the house manager, Danny Rifkin, to give the
Dead the home. Rock promised him a role as co
manager of the group. Hasn't sentive. It was an offer
Danny couldn't refuse. He gave the tenants thirty days to disperse,
(19:54):
and the order didn't seem to have any impact, and
so pig Pen was called upon to speed up the process.
Pig station in a downstairs bedroom for only a few weeks.
By the time he convinced four tenants to abandon their rooms,
not only one tenant remained. Morning after morning, pig dragged
his speakers into the kitchen, throw on every down and
Dirty Blues record he had, and started drinking. At first,
(20:16):
the tenant didn't budge, but after a couple of weeks
went by, convinced the music would never end, he finally
waved the white flag the house at seven ten Ashbury.
It was cleared once and for all, and the Dead
set up shop immediately upon their return from Lognitas in
the fall of nineteen sixty six. In the short time
the Dead had been gone, San Francisco had changed. The
(20:38):
smell of grass was everywhere, packs of kids running with
packs of dogs, group meditations, drum circles. Every corner store
seemed to be hawking trinkets and incense. There were people
who looked like they had stumbled I don't want of keys.
The's acid tests roaming every street. That vibe had extended
beyond the street to the establishments in the area, including
the Blue Unicorn Coffee Shop, which was right around the
(21:00):
corner from seven ten Ashbury. As fate would have it,
one morning, as Pigpen student line, nursing a hangover and
trying to read the menu, he heard the voice of
an angel. The angel was sporting an afro and was
dressed in a turtleneck, hoop, earrings in bell bottoms. Veronica Barnard,
(21:21):
whom pig would later lovingly refer to as V, was
in San Francisco for the same reason a lot of
kids were, because why the hell not. She had left
her highly religious home and planted her flag and the
hate because that's where it was all going down. Pig Pen, ever,
the romantic and the gentleman, approached politely and invited her
to a party. Over the next few months, they would
(21:43):
spend more and more time together. V made Pigpen quickly
realize he liked his relationships the way he liked his
blues traditional pig Pen, before we even asking, V announced
that his lady was moving into seven ten Ashbury. The
entire band, apart from Phil Lash and Bill Kritzman, also
moved into the home. This included several roadies, Rock Scully,
(22:04):
Danny Rifkin, current girlfriends, along with Jerry's wife, Mountain Girl,
and their daughter Sunshine. The house at seven ten Ashbury
was ancient in the amenities left much to be desired.
The dead's day to day methods of living did not
help whatsoever. Old food, dirty clothes. Took a scare from
(22:25):
the sanitation department for things to turn around, and even
then it was mostly the girlfriends and Mountain Girl holding
down domestic duties. Again traditional, and by that I mean
that the grateful dead seemed to have a tradition of
not quite treating women as equals. The dead did little
else but rehearse played gigs around San Francisco and opened
the house up to a steady stream of visitors. The
(22:47):
House of the Good old Grateful Dead became the mecca
of hate, Ashbury the center of the bohemian world. It
was walled of ceiling with all trappings of the hippie world, artwork,
half burnt candles, Kristen's flowers, records, instruments, pig pens room
was a musical heart at the home. The converted living
rooms sported a fireplace, several windows that were usually covered
(23:07):
with shades, a wall of pig Pen's rifle collection and
upright piano. He frequently entertained guests for jam sessions Janis Joplin,
Vince Giraldi, John Lee Hooker. How's that for a trio?
If nobody was around the play, pig Pen spun records.
A constant soundtrack of blues and R and B wafted
through the home. As nineteen sixty six melted into nineteen
(23:31):
sixty seven. Pigpen could almost always be found either playing
the blues, knocking back a bottle of whiskey on the porch,
or hanging with v. V brought a sense of stability
to pick still reeling from the warp speed spin that
had been the last year, and the hate was a
beautiful place to be in love. Tens of thousands of
like minded individuals descended on the area. If you were
(23:52):
in the middle of it, you couldn't help but feel
the same thing the masses were feeling, that life could
be lived in a different way, society could be reorganized.
Never one for the mind expanding drugs, Pigpen nevertheless was
opening himself up to the mind expanding possibilities that the
scene was offering. Like the opportunity to be authentic. Pigpen
(24:12):
dressed like a biker, he wore a cowboy hat and
sang the blues. He rarely focused on his outward appearance.
He felt uncomfortable in his skin for years. Hell, he
still needed liquid courage during concerts. So if this was
the hippie ideal, that it could be who you wanted
to be and do what you wanted to do, no
matter what it looked like or sounded like, or felt
like or smelled like to anyone else. While it all
(24:34):
sounded a little goofy, admittedly, but it was easy to
embrace in the scene embraced pig Pen in the Dead
They played the Human Being Festival in January of nineteen
sixty seven, Monterey Pop in June, and dozens upon dozens
of gigs at the Avalanche Ballroom in the film War,
as well as a smattering of free shows. They were
quickly becoming local celebrities and a massive driving influence of
(24:57):
the scene. Pig wasn't one to see gout the spotlight,
and that's the Dead stars continued to rise. Pig felt
he would rather be a dark star, invisible to the world,
but he couldn't hide not from the throngs of fans,
and not from the San Francisco Police Department. Maybe they
saw pigs, leather vest and cowboy ad and figured to
use an outlaw. Or maybe they just wanted to outlaw
(25:19):
as tight and the whole freaky scene along with him.
Either way, the long arm of the law was about
to ensure that the so called Summer of Love wouldn't
carry into another season. Pig Pen was watching TV and
(26:02):
nursing a bottle of Thunderbird in his room at seven
ten Ashbury when he heard the knocking, not on his
bedroom door, the front door. Pigpen barely registered it. It
was just after three pm and the mid afternoon sun
was peeking through the window, spilled on the Pig's face.
He moved across the room and pulled the curtain shut
with a grunt and returned to his seat. His hangover
(26:24):
was hanging around, which was a commonplace. So were the
four or five shows a week that the dead were playing.
Ditto for the hair of the dog that was routinely
required to keep it all balanced. He'd be fine in
an hour or two, tops, but right now there was
a freight train rolling through his head. Another heavy knocking
on the front door. Pig Pens sat up, annoyed, knocking, Really,
(26:47):
who the fun knocks around here? The knocking came again.
Somebody held out something about visitors not coming inside. The
hell was going on? Pig Pens strapped on his thirty
two buretta. He labored out of his seat, his head swimming.
He paused for a moment, gathered himself, and then took
another swig from the bottle. He exited his room and
(27:09):
moved into the kitchen. He was greeted by a powerful
fog of marijuana, not uncommon. Laid out on the kitchen
table was a minimum a pound of grass, also not
an uncommon sight. At seven ten Ashberry two friends at
the table were now anxiously looking out towards the front door.
Pig finally looked at the front door, and what he saw, well,
(27:31):
that was uncommon. The front door busted open and on
the front steps of the dead's home. They stood at
least half a dozen cops, along with reporters from local
news stations, and the funk was going on. Minutes later,
all eleven people present in the house were gathered in
the kitchen, including Pig Pan and Bob weir, and there
was enough dope at the table to put them all
away for thirty years, and the cops were all too
(27:53):
happy to remind them of that fact. While San Francisco
p D continued to search, the news crews outside were
already He's seen together their stories for the next day,
Big Pen, grittish tea, giving him his smoke grass. Now
he was looking down the barrel of three decades and
Sam Quinn, and they even took his fucking baretta. For
six long hours, the dead sat at the local courthouse,
(28:15):
six hours to ruminate on their future with heavy vibes
and heightened nerves. They were eventually released on bail the
next morning. Right there in the front page of the
San Francisco Chronicle, next to stories about Vietnam was pig
Pen's face and the words busted on marijuana churches, utter horseshit.
Pig Pen was beyond frustrated. Even though his role in
(28:38):
the band was becoming increasingly marginalized, and even though he
didn't smoke that ship, he remained the chows in figurehead
for all the wrong reasons. Not because he was the
soul of the band or because he had like burst
the band. He looked like an outlaw, so he got
the outlaw treatment. The hippie is a hippie as a
hippie in America's size. They were all just lazy burnouts,
dope feeds, acid heads, contributing nothing to society, Pigpen included.
(29:02):
A few days after the arrest, the Grateful Dead held
a press conference at seven ten Ashbury, right in the
living room. Pigpen said nothing. His eyes just scanned around
his home. Two dozen reporters cameras flashes. One of the
Dead's two managers, Danny Rifkin, offered the group's views on politics, marijuana,
the law, and the hippie stereotype. Danny's words would simultaneously
(29:25):
rufflesome feathers while making the band of idols to even
more people. The press conference dragged on, Pigpen just wanted
to get out of there. In the aftermath, the Dead
eluded any official charges, but all that dope and Pig's
pistol were gone forever. Pigpen walked the two dozen steps
(29:47):
back to his room, picked up his guitar, and opened
a bottle. He needed to escape the madness for a moment.
Things were happening outside the walls of seven ten Ashbury
that we're out of his control, out of anyone's control.
One hun R. S. Thompson, once referred to as the
high water mark in San Francisco, had come and gone.
The scene was getting rubber necked, commodified, and the hate
(30:10):
was devolving into a strange parody of itself. It was
growing increasingly dangerous, and the vibes swung from good to bad.
At either Pig and the Grateful Dead would learned to
navigate it where they'd have to plan their great escape.
I'm Jake Brennan, and this is the Club. Club is
(30:42):
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 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 and being by Pata Heally. Sources for
(31:04):
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 with me
live on' a Twitch channel of disgrace Land talks for
more news on your favorite podcast, Follow at Double Elvis
on Instagram. Rocar ROLLA what's up for your is
Okay, Double Elvis Club is the production of I Heart
Radio and Double Elvis. Ron Pigpen mccernan died at the
age of and he lived a life that often changed
(00:21):
too quickly for him to ever grab hold of it.
I can give you twenty seven reasons why that statement
is true. Eight would be the number of songs on
The Grateful Dead's first album that he didn't sing lead on,
only a year after he had been the group's focal point.
Another five will be the number of days the Grateful
Dead recorded that album, expediting their typically slower process and
(00:43):
leaving them disappointed with the outcome. Three more would be
the number of days the group spent at the Monterey
Pop Festival, where they worked on a scheme to subvert
the greedy promoters and movie producers looking to cash in
on their homegrown scene. Another two would be the number
of hundreds of thousands who would watch The Dead at
that festival. Three more will be the number of decades
(01:04):
of jail time Pigpen faced when police found a pound
of hash in the Dead's communal house and the hate
in Six would be the number of hours he'd sweat
it out into San Francisco courthouse, waiting to make bail
all totally on this our fourth episode of season five,
sidelined in the studio, cashing in on a home grown
(01:26):
scene thirty years for a Pound of Grass, and Ron
Pigpen mccarnin I'm Jake Brennan in This is the Club.
(02:10):
H Warner Brothers record executive Joe Smith didn't know what
the funk was going on at the Avalon Ballroom. Just
an hour before, he was having a quiet dinner with
his wife in a respectable San Francisco restaurant. Now he
(02:34):
was subjected to, well, whatever the hell this was? The Avalon,
not a large venue by any stretch of the imagination,
was walled wall with kids wearing outlandish clothes, and some
without many clothes at all, somewhere on the floor, laying
on their backs, their bodies painted, smoking cigarettes. And there
was Joe, buttoned up in a navy blue suit and
(02:55):
slicked back hair. And the kids in the ballroom may
have been on another planet, but O was the one
who looked like an alien. The crowd around him danced, sang,
It seemed to be having near religious experiences. Joe was
desperately trying to steer clear of the spinning teenagers next
to him, desperately trying to see the stage through the
smoke that was filling the room and the light show
(03:16):
that flashed through the haze. When the smoke momentarily cleared,
he caught a good look at the guys on that stage. Really,
this is what the kids were into. The drummer looked
like a mechanic, but Joe had to admit he thought
it out a perfect rock and roll rhythm. The basis
with the golden flowing hair was straight out of a
(03:37):
Lloyd Alexander novel, but he was laying down a foundation
with an expert precision. The pretty boyd guitarists looked all
of seventeen years old, but he had the voice of
a seasoned folk singer. Then there was the wavy haired
warlock with only nine fingers who spawned transcendence from his
guitar neeling. And lastly was the keyboardist Leather shoulder Land,
(04:00):
the mob of black hair held in place by a
tribal headpand jet black mustache. He looked like he belonged
in some biker bar out in palm desert, or better yet,
a prison, but he's sang like a blues man of
the highest order, and Joe figured he had to be
the one they called pig Pen. Pig Pen emptied the
(04:20):
canop beer that was sitting on his vox organ. He
wiped his mouth and grabbed the microphone and stepped to
the front of the stage. As the band wrapped up
the song, he was slow meandering. Was he drunk or
was this part of the performance? Joe couldn't tell. It
didn't seem to matter. Pigpen leaned out over the crowd,
enticing them to give away free love, enticing them to
(04:41):
stop fooling around with themselves and fool around with the
person next to them, enticing them to dance. The band
took flight with Wilson Pickets in the midnight hour, a
top forty hit from the previous year that didn't exactly
seem like an obvious choice for a cover from this crew,
the pig Pen made it his own. He crooned and
(05:02):
crowed and shouted out lyrics, and the kids dug it.
They moved their bodies, shaking along to the music, which
didn't seem to be stopping anytime soon. Pig Pan kept rolling,
he kept rapping, he kept rocking, and the music to
come over. It took the band over, and they took
the room over. A two minute and forty second song
stretched to nearly twenty minutes. This was what the Grateful
(05:23):
Dead were all about. Joe couldn't deny the energy. It
was a feeling of cohesion in the room, as if
someone had bottled what was happening in San Francisco had
dumped it into a contained setting. It reminded Joe of
the music he spawned as a DJ ten years ago
back in Boston. But that was the past. This, whatever
it was, it was the new youth movement, the future.
(05:46):
And what was Warner Brothers doing peddling albums by Bob Newhart,
the Everly Brothers, Dean Martin. They were peddling the past.
They needed a new flux of the future in a
bad way. Signing pig Pen and the Dead was a
no rainer. Joe approached the band backstage after the show,
and after refusing several doses of LSD, he gave them
(06:09):
the pitch that the Dead representative major change in music,
and Warner Brothers needed to change in a major way
as well. Two weeks later, they made it official a
record deal, their own slab of wax. It was what
pig had fantasized about since he sat on his parents
living room floor handling his father's records, getting to know
the field of the jackets, studying their sound. Now he
(06:31):
joined his heroes and the grooves. There was one caveat
There were no recording studios in the Bay Area that
could get the crisp, clean sound that Warner Brothers wanted.
Warners wasn't sucking around. Yes, the Dead could have control
of their music, but they were going to have to
record it professionally. That was non negotiable. Pig pank and
(06:51):
hoot and holler all He wanted to live audiences, but
this wasn't a live audience of kids with heads full
of dope. This was the big leagues. So the Dead
jetted down to l A. As the plane dropped an altitude,
Pigpens studied the gridded streets of the city. He thought
of their experience and watts during the previous year. It
(07:13):
weighed heavy on his mind, but not the experience of
bears all meat diet or the war zone asset tests.
What ran through Pigpen's mind was the music. A year ago.
The Dead were continuing their sonic explorations when they got
caught in the whirlwind of Ken Keisi and his pranksters.
Now there were times Pigpen hardly recognized the band at all.
(07:34):
The days of playing blues covers at Magoose Pizza and
those were gone, and the Dead had become some strange,
hybrid and unclassifiable some of its parts, and Pig knew
that his part was getting smaller every day. Pig wondered
what role he'd play on the album. As the band
sat in the waiting room of our Cier studio a
on Sunset Boulevard. The place was an accurate reflection of
(07:57):
what Warner Brothers was in n Stuck in the nineteen fifties,
oppressively ordinary. The dad looked his out of place at
the studio as Joe Smith looked at the Avalon ballroom.
Pig smiled at the receptionist. To a surprise, she wasn't
too thrown off. Jefferson Airplane had been there a few
(08:17):
months prior the Rolling Stones the year before, and much
to the receptionist chagrin, she was getting used to these
long hairs. The band was waiting for their producer, David Hassinger,
who had engineered the Stones album after Math the year before,
and it felt fortunate to have landed him. But when
he finally arrived with his slick back hair, white collared
shirt and gold chain bracelet, the Dead knew they were
(08:39):
in for it. David was a no nonsense old school
record producer brought in by Warners to keep the Dead
under control. The label was convinced that the band would
take way too long to make a record, so David
pushed the band. He made them grind the sessions out.
Pig and Bob Weir, who was currently abstaining from pharmaceuticals,
(09:00):
watched from the sidelines as the rest of the group
gobbled down riddle and to keep up with the pace.
What resulted was sometimes mannic, sometimes burnt out vibe. It
was almost worse than the Acid. But even worse than
that was how Pig couldn't help but notice the way
the sessions were progressing, song after song after song, and
still no lead vocal for him. He was the energy
(09:22):
of the band, and now he was truly being sidelined.
Jerry took the lion's share of the tracks, with Bob
cutting in for two, including Viola lee Blues. The only
fucking long form jam on the entire album. The jam
was Pigpen specialty, and the song had been a pig
tune once upon a time, but no more. Hell if
it weren't for Pig with that suit from warners even
(09:43):
have signed the debt. It wasn't until Pigpen opened his
mouth that Joe Smith even got what was going on
with the band's vibe. When it was finally Pigs turned
to step to the plate, things got real, real fast.
And this wasn't rehearsal. Pig knew that if you bitched
too much about how Good Morning the Schoolgirl was supposed
to sound, it wouldn't result in him simply getting sent
home from rehearsal. It would result with him getting cut
(10:04):
from the record. Pig bit his lip. This was nothing
like he'd imagined it would be. Passing or kept pushing
the tempo, So did the riddling. Pig couldn't relax, couldn't
get loose like he was used to. Everything was uptight.
This wasn't it, man, This wasn't the dead, This wasn't
playing music because you love music. This felt like a machine.
Pig got it out. His vocal sounded nothing like the
(10:27):
live performances, nothing like it was supposed to sound. The
studio was sterile, claustrophobic. Something was lost here. Pig was
unsatisfied with his track. It didn't matter. The Dead laid
down some overdubs and that was that. Passing Or rushed
them out of our cia in just five days, out
of l A and back to the Bay. Joe Smith
(10:49):
and the executives at Warner Brothers didn't hear a single
from the sessions, not one single on the entire album.
How are they supposed to sell this? Warners demanded another
song be recorded. The Dead hit the San Francisco studio,
one of the ones Warner Brothers had initially deemed unfit,
and laid down a pedal to the metal rave up
that clocked in and just over two minutes it was
(11:10):
called the Golden Road to Unlimited Devotion. The song was
a distillation of the San Francisco that the Dead new
barefoot girls, neon light diamonds, take off his shoes and
try on some wings. The parties, the people, the drugs,
the goodwill, the love, the mood, shaking loose of the
stuff in nineteen fifties and rolling down the winding hills
of this great city, gathering every free spirited member of
(11:33):
society who dared to open their mind that vibe was
about to become a summer that nobody would ever forget.
(12:11):
Big Brother in the Holding Company were ripping their way
through Big Mama Thornton's ball and chain. The crowd had
swelled to nearly two hundred thousand, and they were in
awe of Janis Joplin's primordial screen. Pig Pen Jerry Garcia,
ungrateful dead manager Rock Scully watched from the wings. Goddamn
pigs Hot. She was so good. She had the audience
(12:33):
in the palm of her hand, hanging on every note.
It was hard for Pig to think of Janis is
anything other than the counterpoints who is boosts so blues
in that cabin back in log Anita's. But her star
had rocketed in the past year. She was no longer
some unknown blues singer in the woods. She was becoming
a household name. And with acts like Janis and Big Brother,
(12:53):
Jimi Hendrix, The Who, and Simon and Garlf Uncle, the
Monterey Pop Festival was turning into more than an incredible success.
It was on its way to becoming a defining moment
tense line of football field of nearby Monterey Peninsula. College
kids and dogs ran free, people bashed out chords and guitars,
right poetry, painted their bodies, meditated and makeshift circles, trip balls,
(13:18):
and the free living, free loving aesthetic. The dead it
conceived of the summer before, had been injected directly into
the mainstream. As Big Brother wrapped up their set, Pig
Jerry and Rock overheard a group of suits arguing about
getting Janice in the movie and about distribution deals. Thousands
of fans stretched out in front of them. Some of
the most unbelievable music in existence being played in these
(13:40):
heels were talking about money. The movie in question was
a comprehensive document of the Monterey Pop Festival, seemed like
less of a document and more of a ploy to
capitalize on the counterculture, to make a buck on what,
to the outside world was the latest trend. These suits
kept on with their wheeling and dealing, and like the
music and the people, which is docks to invest in.
(14:01):
The conversation about the commodification of the burgeoning San Francisco
scene all but confirmed the dead suspicions. When the show
is being planned, festival producers flew out from Sunny l
A to invade the Bay. Record producer Lou Adler and
John Phillips and the Mamas and the Papas worked over
the local bands the dead news something was up, but
(14:22):
they helped anyway. Ship. If Rock Scully hadn't secured the
nearby Monterey Peninsula College football field as a free campground
for the fans, most of the local bands would have
told John Phillips and Lou Adler to go funk themselves.
Pig Pen and Jerry hatched an idea they do something
these suits couldn't capture on film, some impromptu jams over
(14:44):
on the football field for the community and by the community.
It need to be easy. Pig and Jerry scrambled around
and following the musicians backstage of their covert plan they'd
set up in the dark long after the night show
was over. The campground would get the surprise of life
because it wasn't supposed to be just a show. It
was supposed to be an experience and experienced Pigpen thought.
(15:08):
Of course, earlier in the day, Pigpen had struck up
a conversation with No Reading and Mitch Mitchell as a
Jimmy Hendrix experience. Being two lads from England, they were
pretty much awe struck by every part of the American
blues experience, and they love Pigpens authenticity. They introduced Pigpen
to Jimmy shortly after, and a friendship was born. Pig
(15:31):
approached Jimmy about there after hours Clandestine experienced concept and
jim was in same for David Crosby, Pete Townsend, and
Eric Burton. But first that evening slate of sets went
ahead as scheduled. There was no way pig Pen was
missing OTIS reading. Pig Pen was obsessed with OTIS. He
spawn Otis's records daily. The only person who may have
(15:53):
been more obsessed with OTIS reading was Janice Choplin. Pig
Pen and Janice watched Otis from stage. Pig's eyes drifted
to Janice. She was beautiful, but nothing more than a friend.
They shared a bottle. If Pig had any illusions about
the relationship from the summer before, he no longer did.
Inside of driving each other wild, and they both let
(16:16):
orders reading set do the work, sweating it out like
a man possessed. After the show, pig and Janice rubbed
elbows with Otis's entourage backstage. They were headed back to
a nearby motel one, right near where both Big Brother
and the Dead were staying. Janice took the bait, and
then she took things into her own hands. She wasn't
(16:37):
waiting around. She was going to find artiss room. After midnight,
long after Janice had gone on her search for the
Big Oh, pig Pen made his way to the football
field on the opposite end of the fair grounds. The
plan he hatched earlier in the day with Jerry Garcia
was about to be put into motion. He saw the
small raised platform where crew members and musicians were setting
(17:00):
up in the dark. They wielded flashlights, carefully assembling an
open form jam space that would provide a more intimate
experience for the fans camping that evening. Many of the
campers couldn't even afford tickets to get into the actual
music festival itself. Just after two in the morning, harmonica
rang out a makeshift light show illuminated a makeshift band.
(17:21):
Campers who have been put to bed by the sounds
of Otis writing were shaken out of their slumber by
pig Pen, Jimmie Hendrix, Jerry Garcia in a rotating mix
of musicians playing just for them, the greatest supergroup that
never was. This was the essence of moderate pop, and
the suits from l A would never capture it on camera.
(17:42):
Pig Pen returned to the Grateful Dead's motel early the
next morning. The sun was beginning to rise. He could
barely keep his eyes open. He navigated his way back
to his room, and just as he inserted the key
into the door, he heard someone else center the quiet hallway.
It was Janice returning to a room. She smiled as
she passed pig Pen. He smiled back. The following night,
(18:05):
the Dead played their set at Monterey Sandwich. Between the
demolition derby wrought by the Who and the earth shattering
display of raw power by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the
Dead were stuck in limbo and overlooked. Between those two
performances that night, they realized the music scene was evolving
at an exponential rate in that summer. It seems San
(18:26):
Francisco was as well. We'll be right back after this
word we were. It was nearly noon when pig Pen
finally pulled himself out of bed. He threw on his bathroom,
opened his bedroom door and walked into the kitchen. He
(18:49):
tossed an old Chess label LP on the turntable cranked
the volume on the receiver as high as it could go.
A few minutes later, bacon was frying on the stove top.
Pig was half way through his first beer of the day,
and he gazed up at the ceiling. It's like I
even here anymore. Pig listened closely for any sign of life.
(19:09):
He couldn't even remember the last time he saw his
only remaining roommate. In nineteen sixty six, shortly after the
Dead returned from their foray into Watts and before they
checked up to Olam Polly, manager Rock Scully became obsessed
with the idea of the band taking up residence in
the grand old Victorian boarding house at seven ten Ashbury Street,
(19:30):
San Francisco. Was happening, and the Dead needed to be there.
The only issue was at the boarding house was full.
Rock convinced the house manager, Danny Rifkin, to give the
Dead the home. Rock promised him a role as co
manager of the group. Hasn't sentive. It was an offer
Danny couldn't refuse. He gave the tenants thirty days to disperse,
(19:54):
and the order didn't seem to have any impact, and
so pig Pen was called upon to speed up the process.
Pig station in a downstairs bedroom for only a few weeks.
By the time he convinced four tenants to abandon their rooms,
not only one tenant remained. Morning after morning, pig dragged
his speakers into the kitchen, throw on every down and
Dirty Blues record he had, and started drinking. At first,
(20:16):
the tenant didn't budge, but after a couple of weeks
went by, convinced the music would never end, he finally
waved the white flag the house at seven ten Ashbury.
It was cleared once and for all, and the Dead
set up shop immediately upon their return from Lognitas in
the fall of nineteen sixty six. In the short time
the Dead had been gone, San Francisco had changed. The
(20:38):
smell of grass was everywhere, packs of kids running with
packs of dogs, group meditations, drum circles. Every corner store
seemed to be hawking trinkets and incense. There were people
who looked like they had stumbled I don't want of keys.
The's acid tests roaming every street. That vibe had extended
beyond the street to the establishments in the area, including
the Blue Unicorn Coffee Shop, which was right around the
(21:00):
corner from seven ten Ashbury. As fate would have it,
one morning, as Pigpen student line, nursing a hangover and
trying to read the menu, he heard the voice of
an angel. The angel was sporting an afro and was
dressed in a turtleneck, hoop, earrings in bell bottoms. Veronica Barnard,
(21:21):
whom pig would later lovingly refer to as V, was
in San Francisco for the same reason a lot of
kids were, because why the hell not. She had left
her highly religious home and planted her flag and the
hate because that's where it was all going down. Pig Pen, ever,
the romantic and the gentleman, approached politely and invited her
to a party. Over the next few months, they would
(21:43):
spend more and more time together. V made Pigpen quickly
realize he liked his relationships the way he liked his
blues traditional pig Pen, before we even asking, V announced
that his lady was moving into seven ten Ashbury. The
entire band, apart from Phil Lash and Bill Kritzman, also
moved into the home. This included several roadies, Rock Scully,
(22:04):
Danny Rifkin, current girlfriends, along with Jerry's wife, Mountain Girl,
and their daughter Sunshine. The house at seven ten Ashbury
was ancient in the amenities left much to be desired.
The dead's day to day methods of living did not
help whatsoever. Old food, dirty clothes. Took a scare from
(22:25):
the sanitation department for things to turn around, and even
then it was mostly the girlfriends and Mountain Girl holding
down domestic duties. Again traditional, and by that I mean
that the grateful dead seemed to have a tradition of
not quite treating women as equals. The dead did little
else but rehearse played gigs around San Francisco and opened
the house up to a steady stream of visitors. The
(22:47):
House of the Good old Grateful Dead became the mecca
of hate, Ashbury the center of the bohemian world. It
was walled of ceiling with all trappings of the hippie world, artwork,
half burnt candles, Kristen's flowers, records, instruments, pig pens room
was a musical heart at the home. The converted living
rooms sported a fireplace, several windows that were usually covered
(23:07):
with shades, a wall of pig Pen's rifle collection and
upright piano. He frequently entertained guests for jam sessions Janis Joplin,
Vince Giraldi, John Lee Hooker. How's that for a trio?
If nobody was around the play, pig Pen spun records.
A constant soundtrack of blues and R and B wafted
through the home. As nineteen sixty six melted into nineteen
(23:31):
sixty seven. Pigpen could almost always be found either playing
the blues, knocking back a bottle of whiskey on the porch,
or hanging with v. V brought a sense of stability
to pick still reeling from the warp speed spin that
had been the last year, and the hate was a
beautiful place to be in love. Tens of thousands of
like minded individuals descended on the area. If you were
(23:52):
in the middle of it, you couldn't help but feel
the same thing the masses were feeling, that life could
be lived in a different way, society could be reorganized.
Never one for the mind expanding drugs, Pigpen nevertheless was
opening himself up to the mind expanding possibilities that the
scene was offering. Like the opportunity to be authentic. Pigpen
(24:12):
dressed like a biker, he wore a cowboy hat and
sang the blues. He rarely focused on his outward appearance.
He felt uncomfortable in his skin for years. Hell, he
still needed liquid courage during concerts. So if this was
the hippie ideal, that it could be who you wanted
to be and do what you wanted to do, no
matter what it looked like or sounded like, or felt
like or smelled like to anyone else. While it all
(24:34):
sounded a little goofy, admittedly, but it was easy to
embrace in the scene embraced pig Pen in the Dead
They played the Human Being Festival in January of nineteen
sixty seven, Monterey Pop in June, and dozens upon dozens
of gigs at the Avalanche Ballroom in the film War,
as well as a smattering of free shows. They were
quickly becoming local celebrities and a massive driving influence of
(24:57):
the scene. Pig wasn't one to see gout the spotlight,
and that's the Dead stars continued to rise. Pig felt
he would rather be a dark star, invisible to the world,
but he couldn't hide not from the throngs of fans,
and not from the San Francisco Police Department. Maybe they
saw pigs, leather vest and cowboy ad and figured to
use an outlaw. Or maybe they just wanted to outlaw
(25:19):
as tight and the whole freaky scene along with him.
Either way, the long arm of the law was about
to ensure that the so called Summer of Love wouldn't
carry into another season. Pig Pen was watching TV and
(26:02):
nursing a bottle of Thunderbird in his room at seven
ten Ashbury when he heard the knocking, not on his
bedroom door, the front door. Pigpen barely registered it. It
was just after three pm and the mid afternoon sun
was peeking through the window, spilled on the Pig's face.
He moved across the room and pulled the curtain shut
with a grunt and returned to his seat. His hangover
(26:24):
was hanging around, which was a commonplace. So were the
four or five shows a week that the dead were playing.
Ditto for the hair of the dog that was routinely
required to keep it all balanced. He'd be fine in
an hour or two, tops, but right now there was
a freight train rolling through his head. Another heavy knocking
on the front door. Pig Pens sat up, annoyed, knocking, Really,
(26:47):
who the fun knocks around here? The knocking came again.
Somebody held out something about visitors not coming inside. The
hell was going on? Pig Pens strapped on his thirty
two buretta. He labored out of his seat, his head swimming.
He paused for a moment, gathered himself, and then took
another swig from the bottle. He exited his room and
(27:09):
moved into the kitchen. He was greeted by a powerful
fog of marijuana, not uncommon. Laid out on the kitchen
table was a minimum a pound of grass, also not
an uncommon sight. At seven ten Ashberry two friends at
the table were now anxiously looking out towards the front door.
Pig finally looked at the front door, and what he saw, well,
(27:31):
that was uncommon. The front door busted open and on
the front steps of the dead's home. They stood at
least half a dozen cops, along with reporters from local
news stations, and the funk was going on. Minutes later,
all eleven people present in the house were gathered in
the kitchen, including Pig Pan and Bob weir, and there
was enough dope at the table to put them all
away for thirty years, and the cops were all too
(27:53):
happy to remind them of that fact. While San Francisco
p D continued to search, the news crews outside were
already He's seen together their stories for the next day,
Big Pen, grittish tea, giving him his smoke grass. Now
he was looking down the barrel of three decades and
Sam Quinn, and they even took his fucking baretta. For
six long hours, the dead sat at the local courthouse,
(28:15):
six hours to ruminate on their future with heavy vibes
and heightened nerves. They were eventually released on bail the
next morning. Right there in the front page of the
San Francisco Chronicle, next to stories about Vietnam was pig
Pen's face and the words busted on marijuana churches, utter horseshit.
Pig Pen was beyond frustrated. Even though his role in
(28:38):
the band was becoming increasingly marginalized, and even though he
didn't smoke that ship, he remained the chows in figurehead
for all the wrong reasons. Not because he was the
soul of the band or because he had like burst
the band. He looked like an outlaw, so he got
the outlaw treatment. The hippie is a hippie as a
hippie in America's size. They were all just lazy burnouts,
dope feeds, acid heads, contributing nothing to society, Pigpen included.
(29:02):
A few days after the arrest, the Grateful Dead held
a press conference at seven ten Ashbury, right in the
living room. Pigpen said nothing. His eyes just scanned around
his home. Two dozen reporters cameras flashes. One of the
Dead's two managers, Danny Rifkin, offered the group's views on politics, marijuana,
the law, and the hippie stereotype. Danny's words would simultaneously
(29:25):
rufflesome feathers while making the band of idols to even
more people. The press conference dragged on, Pigpen just wanted
to get out of there. In the aftermath, the Dead
eluded any official charges, but all that dope and Pig's
pistol were gone forever. Pigpen walked the two dozen steps
(29:47):
back to his room, picked up his guitar, and opened
a bottle. He needed to escape the madness for a moment.
Things were happening outside the walls of seven ten Ashbury
that we're out of his control, out of anyone's control.
One hun R. S. Thompson, once referred to as the
high water mark in San Francisco, had come and gone.
The scene was getting rubber necked, commodified, and the hate
(30:10):
was devolving into a strange parody of itself. It was
growing increasingly dangerous, and the vibes swung from good to bad.
At either Pig and the Grateful Dead would learned to
navigate it where they'd have to plan their great escape.
I'm Jake Brennan, and this is the Club. Club is
(30:42):
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 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 and being by Pata Heally. Sources for
(31:04):
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 with me
live on' a Twitch channel of disgrace Land talks for
more news on your favorite podcast, Follow at Double Elvis
on Instagram. Rocar ROLLA what's up for your is
Host
Jake Brennan
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