A dark cloud of death hung over the Grateful Dead as they went into the studio to make what is arguably their masterpiece, American Beauty. Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones…they were all gone. All dead at the age of 27. But time didn’t stop. Time marched on. The cold hands of death could close in on any of them. But who? When would they go? And how would they go?
Sources:
A Long Strange Trip: The Inside Story of the Grateful Dead, by Dennis McNally
Searching for the Sound, by Phil Lesh
Euphoria Ballroom - July 16, 1970 (Dead.net)
The Story Behind the Song: The burden lifted by Grateful Dead's 'Box of Rain' (Far Out)
Grateful Dead live at Winterland, 10/4/1970
The Story of the Grateful Dead 'American Beauty' (Classic Album Sundays)
50 Years Later; Grateful Dead's American Beauty (Open Chord Music)
How Grateful Dead Rose Above Hard Times on 'American Beauty' (Ultimate Classic Rock)
October 1970: Jerry Garcia Interview (Dead Sources)
Pigpen Solo Projects 1969, 1971, 1973 (Why?) (Lost Live Dead)
Greatest Stories Ever Told - "Operator" (Dead.net)
Janis Joplin Remembered After Her Death (Rolling Stone)
The Day Grateful Dead's Ron 'Pigpen' McKernan Died (Ultimate Classic Rock)
Ron "Pigpen" McKernan Dies | World History Project (World History Project)
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Double Elvis Club is a production of I Heart Radio
and Double Elvis Ron. Pigpen mccernan died at the age
of and he lived a life so loose that it
was always bound to unravel. I can give you twenty
seven reasons why that statement is true. Eighteen would be
(00:27):
the number of minutes he would get lost in the
booze soaked ecstasy of an epic love life performance with
his musical soulmate, just months before she'd be six ft under.
Another three would be the number of additional deaths that
would hang over the group like a dark cloud as
they entered the studio to record a new album, lending
a very palpable and grim feeling of mortality. Three more
(00:50):
would be the number of weeks it would take the
Grateful Dead to record that album, arguably their finest album ever,
an album pig Pen would make very real contribution too.
It would help him evolve his own sounds and taste.
It was also the last studio album he would ever
appear on. Another one would be the number of hospital
visits it would take for him to learn that his
(01:12):
years of hard living had finally caught up to him,
forcing him to make monumental lifestyle changes, and two would
be the number of years he had left on this
earth when the Dead finally hit superstardom. All totally on
This our eighth episode of season five. Booze Soaked Ecstasy,
(01:33):
Dark Clouds, Hard Living, and Ron Pigpen mccernin. I'm Jake
Brennan and this is the seven Cloth YEA m M.
(02:26):
The Euphoria Ballroom in San Rafael, California was filled with smoke.
The Grateful Dead had just wrapped up Candy Man, a
song they were close to perfecting and hadn't yet been released,
but it was sounding damn good. They were sounding damn good.
Working Man's Dead had rekindled an elusive spark for the band.
(02:47):
There was some sort of musical and spiritual revival going on.
They could feel it. Crowd and Euphoria could definitely feel it.
A Roady ran out implanted an additional microphone stand in
the middle of the stage, just at had pointed to
the front row of the audience, trying to coax someone
to the stage. Not just any audience member, A good
(03:07):
old friend of the good old Grateful Dead, a friend
who could let up a stage like no other, A
friend who by that point in the summer of nine
seventy was a certified superstar. Janis Joplin ashtra cigarette down,
the contents of the paper cup in her head and
climbed on stage. She was smiling. Ron Pigpen mccernin, standing
(03:29):
center stage, wearing the cowboy hat that now seemed to
go wherever he went, was waiting for her, he granted.
When Janison pig get together, it was as if no
time at all had passed, and they were transported back
to the outdoor jams of olden Polly back to playing
blues tunes all night long and Pigpen shack La Nina's
back to spinning records while sipping soco in the back
(03:50):
room of seven ten Ashbury. The energy between the two
was undeniable. Two old flames, two children of the blues
to show stoppers together. The Dead began to groove in
the background as Janison Pigpen looked into each other's eyes.
The crowd began to clap along. The energy was in intoxicating.
The Dead pumped out the first bars off Turn On
(04:12):
Your Love Life, and Janice grabbed the mic and addressed
the crowd, you know what this is about. Don't you.
It's about getting it on man, And she looked over
to the side and pig who was standing ready at
his mic. Then she let it rip in her gravelly,
bourbon silk voice implored Pigpen to turn it on over
and over. Then pig did just that, a raucous call
(04:36):
and response at the crowd of hollering. With each passing moment,
the euphoria was turning into a hockey talk. Janice once
again asked Pigpen if you knew what the song was about,
pounding him for the answer, telling him it was easy.
It was the easiest dancer ever. She wanted to hear
him saying, the pig Pen played it cool, you know
what it's about. I think you made it look so good.
(05:00):
Janice laughed that laugh, the one that could make the
world stop from spinning. She was driving pig crazy and
she liked it. They turned it on for six minutes straight,
each other the audience that love light, and then Pigpen
brought the energy down real smooth and started to wrap.
What they all needed was to stand beside someone like Janice,
(05:22):
or has someone like Janis stand next to them, and
Janice felt loose and free. She walked in the front
of the stage. Pigpen followed. The entire band dropped out
except Bill Kritzman. He kept the rhythm steady on the drums.
Billy thundered on the beat, still gaining steam, not letting up.
Janison pig implored the crowd and raised their hands to
(05:42):
get out of their seats to join the ancient dances.
Billy's backbeat echoed through the room, and then the Dead
all kicked back in again, louder, and then louder again,
and louder still. Janison Pigpen whipped the place into a frenzy,
empowered through another twelve intoxicating minutes of love light. It
was everything music could be, everything it was supposed to be, cathartic, inspiring,
(06:05):
a moment that takes over your brain and your body,
a moment that you experience along with a room full
of strangers who were all on the same trip. And
now it's pig Pen. That moment was just a memory.
It was three months later, and instead of turning on
a love light, he was turning on his keyboard, once again.
(06:27):
Relegated to the side of the stage. The Dead were
on stage at winter Land in San Francisco, grinding through
Uncle John's band, half in frustration and half an anger,
not inspired in the least. Rendition was passible, but the
mind of each band member was somewhere else Entirely this time.
It wasn't because they were in the midst of some
(06:48):
sort of psychedelic journey. The vocal mix was off, the
energy in the room was off. It was all just off.
Pigpen studied the eyes and the crowd throughout that night.
Set of people look shaken up, others seem more oblivious.
He kept turning over the words he heard just before
the Dead walked on stage, turning them over like an
engine that wouldn't start. He couldn't pour himself into the music.
(07:11):
He couldn't think of anything else besides that one dark thought.
Was it true? That was the question, not the pig
Pen couldn't believe it was. Of course it could be true.
It would be foolish not to assume that that one
could maintain a reckless cruising speed without a crash. So yeah,
it could be true. Pig Pen just didn't want it
to be true. The Dead slogged through the final few
(07:34):
chords of the song and thanked the audience, and there
wouldn't be an encore, not on an off night like this.
They didn't have the heart for it, because once they
stepped off the stage, there stood their manager, Rock Scully,
with a sullen look on his face, and they wouldn't
have the heart for it. Once Rock uttered those two
words nearly under his breath, She's gone. The unconfirmed news
(07:57):
that was floating around before the grateful Dead to the
stage was now confirmed. Janice Joplin had been found on
the floor of a room at the Landmark Hotel in Hollywood.
It was October four. The band fell into the furniture
backstage and sat in a meditative silence. Pigpenk cracked the
bottle of bourbon and drank to his fallen comrade. But
(08:20):
this wasn't just about Janice. It was all becoming too much.
The programs for the Winter Land Show featured a backpage
tribute to the recently deceased Jimmie Hendricks. Jimmy turned up
dead in London just weeks earlier, and the dead only
had passing interactions with the man, but it was a
blow nonetheless, just like the news of Brian Jones's passing
(08:41):
have been the year prior, Janice Jimmy, Brian, They're all
just twenty seven years old. The cold hand of the
grim Reaper and made its way into the dead's inner
circle as well. Jerry Garcia's mother passed away just weeks
before Janice, the victim of a car crash. Jerry left
(09:01):
the studio to be with her as she left the world,
and in turn left Jerry without closure. It would have
been a lifelong, complicated relationship. A few months before that,
Phil Lesh spent many days driving back and forth to
a hospital near his home, comforting his own father as
he slowly lost about with cancer. It was during these
(09:21):
trips that he started working out the beautiful and weighty
Box of Rain. A heavy, dark cloud hung over the group.
As always, the good times were imbued with very heavy vibes.
Time didn't stop. Many of the band members were approaching
thirty years old. Those cold hands of death could close
in on any of them at any time. Any of
(09:44):
them could be next. But who, when would they go
and how would they go? Thoughts like those were dark,
no doubt, but they were also inescapable. Pig Pen took
another long pull from his bottle, knowing he never share
another one with his friend, but at the train keep rolling.
(10:31):
The assistant engineer quickly got the studio in order, three
microphones in the center of the room, mic stands, flanked
by two sets of drums a box keyboard. He moved
back into the booth, where he stretched his arms and yawned. Coffee.
He needed coffee, the biggest, most bottomless cup fucking coffee.
(10:52):
Stephen Barncard was burning the candle at both ends. David
Crosby showed up at the studio at seven pm the
night before, and now the Grateful Dead would do to
roll in any minute. He'd heard all about the let's
say complexity of the band's relationship with studio engineers and
producers and label executives. That whole thick air request where
the band insisted on using separate tracks on the tape
(11:14):
to record ambient noises from the desert in the city
and drove a producer to quit. It was one of
those crazy recording stories that was passed on from studio
the studio. Stephen, who had worked not just with Crosby,
Stills and Nash, but also with Steve Miller and Jefferson Airplane,
had also heard the stories about the Dead jamming pennies
and the pianos and destroying a dozen microphones for a
(11:36):
few seconds of audio. But when they showed up, they
brought none of that crazy baggage with her, and they
were ready to work. And it was just the band.
No hangers on, no managers with their own creative input,
no really enthusiastic sound man looking to crowd the kitchen
with too many cooks. It was just the band and
Steve and Barncard and the studio. In the summer nineteen
(12:01):
seventies sessions were a revelation for Steven. The Dead were
continuing the thread they'd begun to weave with working man Stead.
The new songs were simple and straightforward, and he had
to admit they sounded like instant classics. The Grateful Dead
weren't interested in crafting a musical essay of an album.
The Dead weren't looking to funk around with studio trickery,
(12:21):
and they weren't hammering sections over and over again until
something felt right. Everything already felt right, and the Grateful
Dead were still after that holy grail of all holy
grills to translate their live sound onto wax, and they
were getting real close. The vibes were loose and Feeling
Light and It's the Dead were under any pressure to
push out an album, it didn't show. Shortly after they
(12:46):
arrived at the studio, they were already cooking up another
take off Operator, a song that marked pig pens first
writing contribution in nearly three years, and it was more
than just a writing credit. Operator was a country blues
throw down, in a clear indication that Pigpen was not
only interested in the direction the band was headed, but
that he could actively contribute to the new sound, something
(13:07):
that seemed impossible during The Dead Psychedelic Turn just a
couple of years before. As the Dead banged out the
first few bars of their fourth take, pig Pen had
a momentary lapse and stepped away from the mic. He
rolled his shoulders around his neck, and then he rolled
him around again, and he asked the band to start
it up once again. This wasn't a new pig Pen
(13:30):
had been randomly slipping up like this more and more.
But whereas in the past, Jerry might breake Pick forrehating
the bottle too hard, this time the band just barked
out the name of the song to him, and pig
Pen played right along Operator. Yeah, that was it. The
Dead didn't question of Pig's abilities, his choices, or his commitment,
and it has called him a piece of ship out
(13:52):
of love, of course, and Pigman laughed it off and
faked a fart into the microphone. The Dead were having
fun in the studio and included pig Pan. The funing,
the fussing, the frustration, and the past recording experiences went
completely out. The Window Operator was the perfect song for
the recalibrated mood. It incorporated pig Pen and the Dead's
(14:14):
original influences, taking lyrical and musical nods from old time
Appalachian music, blues and R and B, and rock and
roll from the nineteen fifties. It was the story of
a man looking for a phone number, trying to find
some old love that he had lost. It could have
been about pig Pen himself searching for that place to belong,
searching for the center of his original musical inspirations, searching
(14:36):
for his niche, his place in the dead. Pig had
taken the writing pages and pages of music. He had
big ideas about how his personal sound and style was developing.
He was recording his own reels of music. He wasn't
just singing heartbreaking blues anymore, but insightful, uplifting tunes and
pig Pens optimism mirrored that kind, good natured soul of his.
(14:58):
He was looking forward to the future. Operator also could
have been about the grateful Dead as a whole. They've
been through the fire and the flames, the turbulence of
the nineteen sixties, the head first dive into the counterculture.
Whereas once they were jamming themselves into boxes to satisfy
the search for a specific sound, now they were cutting
their second consecutive album that defied any mood or vibration
(15:21):
that wasn't completely natural. Pigpin didn't know where they were going.
He didn't care where they had been long as they've
been doing it right American beauty. He wasn't turning out
to be just a set of quality tunes or meditation
on a specific type of sound. It was turning out
to be an experience. But this wasn't the manufactured experience
(15:42):
the Dead had sought out before. This was just them,
the closest they had ever come to capturing their live
sound in the studio, months on the road, perfecting the
tunes in front of audiences and communicating with each other
within those performances allowed for a breezy, freewheeling ten track
album containing the best music the Grateful Dead had ever
pressed onto vinyl, and it took just three weeks to complete.
(16:06):
The album is a masterpiece Box of Rain, Friend of
the Devil, Sugar Magnolia, and that's just the first three tracks.
This is the one with Ripple In, Candy Man and
of course Trucking, a song that not only coined the
long Strange trip line, but at number sixty four, was
the highest charting Grateful Dead single for seventeen years until
(16:26):
Touch of Gray put The Grateful Dead and the long
elusive top ten American Beauty perfectly represented the Grateful Dead's
diverse style, attitude, and personality. The album didn't only sound
good and achieved overwhelming critical success and peaked at number
thirty on the nineteen weeks day on the Billboard two
D chart. Against all odds, the Grateful Dead found themselves
(16:48):
a household name, a designation that came with money and fame,
and naturally, the Grateful Dead's delightful Devil May Care Pleasure
Crews would not be without its downside, There were the
more disturbing quote unquote fans the ones that Jerry Garcia
referred to as vampires. He'd long noticed them hanging around
bigger acts, always looking for a handout, looking to ride
(17:11):
the coattails of the artists, taking to success like sharks
to fresh blood. The Dead had minimal exposure to such trappings,
but they would soon become unavoidable. Drugs had always been around,
but now at every backstage of every show there would
be at least one dealer present. The candy man wasn't
just moving acid and grass either. More unsavory characters would
(17:32):
make their presence felt as well, businessmen, con artists, and groupies,
hoping that members of the Dead's entourage should be fixing
to solicit their services for the evening. Gone were the
days of free shows of goodwill and casual engagements. The
record industry was changing, rock and roll was becoming industrialized
and commercialized, and the grateful Dead were directly in the
(17:54):
center of it. And word was getting out. And while
the rest of the Dead may have had their own
views on their new on fame and fortune, neither were
ever pig pens Bag. He didn't care about success in
the least. All he cared about was playing in the
band We'll be right back after this word word word.
(18:22):
Jerry Garcia sat on the floor of pig Pens room,
quietly plucking out some basic twelve bar blues on a guitar.
Place was a mess, random pieces of clothing and empty
cigarette boxes scattered haphazardly around, but there was one thing
that was in some kind of order though. Pig was
thumbing through his impressive collection of LPs and forty five
(18:43):
looking for the right record to set the mood. It's
all about the mood, all about the vibe, and the
right record was paramount to the mood. Something he picked
up from Phil mccurrnin a K A Cool Breeze, his
disc jockey father. Pig pulled an album and flashed to Jerry,
cover red, here's the man Dynamic Bobby Land. Someone had
scribbled meticulous notes all over it. He placed the record
(19:05):
on the turntable and dropped The needle, crackled like it
was coming to life, and then a wall of horns
hit Jerry's ears. Jerry grinned this was where a pig
got it. Flipping through his father's record collection, analyzing the
music in real time, not in a technical sense, but
in an emotional sense feeling everything, every sound, every tone,
(19:27):
every mood. This wasn't the rigid structure Jerry had been
used to. This was a whole other vibration entirely. This
was pig and Jerry dug it. Pig reached under his
bed and pulled out a bottle of wine, twisted off
the cab, and took a long sip. He held the
bottle out to Jerry, and Jerry grabbed it, studying the contents.
(19:49):
The wine was a clear, pale yellow. The label on
the bottle red Thunderbird, the American classic. Jerry tilted the
bottle back, the citrus flavor ring he hit the backside
of his throat and he felt the alcohol burn and
race up his sinuses. He shuddered as the liquid made
his way into his stomach and into his bloodstream, and
(20:10):
then Jerry's body began to feel warm. He wasn't much
of a drinker, and this wasn't just ordinary wine. Thunderbird
was what you called fortified. It was cheap, was strong,
It was made for one reason only, to getting funked
up real fast. Jerry passed the bottle back to pig
Pen and they both leaned their heads back in tandem.
(20:30):
Observing the buzzes of both the booze and the blues,
and the combination was transportive. They could feel the music,
Jerry said, the performer's name allowed, almost as if you
were trying to make sure he wouldn't forget it. Bobby
Blue Bland. Pig Pen grinned Jerry was a good teacher
and a good Steve pig Pen wasn't even sixteen yet,
(20:51):
and here he was giving eighteen year old Jerry Garcia
a lesson on blues music, how it was supposed to sound,
how it is supposed to feel. And even though he
was two years younger, he knew he could most certainly
drink Jerry Garcia under the table, Pigpen took two more
swigs in quick succession. He wasn't phazed in the least
the Thunderbird went down like water. He had already been
(21:13):
drinking regularly for a few years well, seeing clubs around
Paul Alto. Now the days without Thunderbird were a few
and far between. Jerry knew that besides proclivity for underage drinking,
kid had something he was wise beyond his years. When
he came to music. Jerry had heard him play. He
would take a little work to get him really good,
but what he already had was undeniable. Pig Pen had soul,
(21:37):
and that was the part you couldn't teach you. A
knock came on the door. Pigpen quickly hit the bottle
under the bed, cracked the door, and whispered something to
his mother. Then he closed it again and pulled the
bottle back out into the open. Jerry laughed. What a scene.
The next track was starting, funcky horns driving drums. What
was this one called? Jerry wanted to know, Turn on Lovely.
(22:02):
This was in the early nineteen sixties and the friendship
between Jerry Garcia and Ron McKernan had just begun. Almost
a decade later, in November, the two had gone through
the Ringer together and we're still friends, but also bandmates
and one of the most important groups in the world.
The Grateful Dead were well on their way to matching
their previous record for number of shows played in a
(22:24):
calendar year, if not surpassing it. They weren't just playing
more at this point, they were playing differently. Things changed,
but there was one thing that did not change. In
the St. Louis Hotel room, pig Pen sat in front
of a television set with an open bottle of bourbon
in his hand. He drank while some old movie played
(22:44):
on TV. He didn't even know what he was watching anymore.
The whole scenario had just become routine. The cities, the
hotel rooms, the highways, the old movies on TV. That
all started to run together. The days went on following
the same pattern for Pig, wake up with a fresh
bottle and drink, play a show or go to rehearsal,
then returned back to the hotel room for a nightcap.
(23:07):
Sometimes musicians who supported the Dead on the road would
shoin Pig would stay up half the night, cracking jokes,
singing old blue standards, and polishing off bottles. But by
the time Pig was twenty five, he had already been
a regular boozer for nearly a dozen years. He never
got drunk, he just got slower. Pigs tolerance for alcohol
was legendary, and by the time the Dead got together,
(23:30):
he was polishing off a bottle a day. And it continued,
and it was constant. It was unlikely that it would
ever not be a constant. There was also a bit
unnerving to think about what would happen if it suddenly
wasn't part of his daily routine. Pig Pennett heard the stories,
stories about people who tried to stop, the ones who
truly relied on it. They get the shakes, they saw things,
(23:51):
They crawled up into a ball and wanted to die.
And the other members of the Dead never said anything.
How could that, amongst other things, have a use of
LSD and marijuana. The growing prominence of cocaine in the
appearance of speed left the other members of the Grateful
Day without a like to stand on regarding pigs and
toxicin or choice, which happened to be the only legal
substance being abused by a band member. Besides, Pigpen wasn't
(24:15):
a stumbling, fall down drunk. He wasn't getting violently sick
or picking fights. He just enjoyed a drink. Ship businessmen
in America came home and drank half a bottle of
Scotch every night. Pig Pens habits didn't seem much different
than that. Pig mostly with drew to his hotel room,
not showing much interest in anything other than alcohol, music, cigarettes,
(24:36):
and television. When he did leave to explore whatever city
the traveling circus had stopped in that night. It was
only because he had been coaxed out of his room
by the crew or a band member. But there wasn't
much time to consider who was getting into which drug,
how much they were doing, and how often. It's a
grateful Dead's machine was taking on an inordinate amount of steam,
and there was no real way to stop it. Lenny
(24:58):
Hart Mickey Dad, who had been the band's manager, had
left the group completely fucked financially, and even two hit
records didn't diminish the need to keep on truck and
just to feed all the miles of the Dead's extended family.
Pigpen never much loved being on the road, but here
he was sitting in a hotel room alone. His girl
v was back in San Francisco, and no other woman
(25:20):
could ever fill the void she had left, and these
facts only increased pigs reliance on the bottle. Alcohol had
once been the liquid courage Pig needed to get in
front of the crowd, and then it became his tool
for getting looser on stage, allowing his performance to become
wildly entertaining for the audience. But now things were beginning
to change. Night after night, Pigpen would go take his
(25:41):
place behind the organ. He cracked a beer, and then another,
and then another. His playing, which had always been serviceable
at worst and energetically inspiring at best, was starting to
sound blander than Bobby Blue's last name. And although the
Dead were no longer noodling their way through complex jazz
time signatures and psychedelic gragas, they never stopped communicating with
(26:02):
each other through the music, the living organism that was
the Dead, spoken vibrations and rhythm and more and more.
Pig Pen just couldn't find his way into the conversation.
Maybe it was all that extracurricular time they had all
spent up in the stratosphere together on acid giving them
esp while Pigpen was down on the ground with a bottle.
(26:22):
His dream of making music for a living had become
a reality, and the booze never left the equation. But slowly,
surely and steadily Pigpen's oldest friends started to take its toll,
and then it betrayed him entirely. The lights of the
(27:04):
hospital room burned so brightly overhead they were practically blinding.
Pig Pens struggled to get comfortable on the exam table.
He scanned the sterile instruments on the walls. Walls, It
felt like they were about to close in on them.
Everything was heightened, every sound, every reflection. The ticking of
the clock on the wall sounded like a freight train
(27:26):
bearing down on Pig's head. His anxiety was growing with
each passing moment. He tried to remember the words the
doctor had said on the phone, but he couldn't. He
blocked it out. Whatever it was, it sounded bad. In
any minute now, the doc would be walking into the
room to confirm it. Either that where there be a
simple fix, some band aid the good old duck could
(27:47):
slap on and send Pig on his merry way back
to the stage. Pig Pens stared at the closed door
of the exam room. How could they keep someone waiting
like this? What had started as a simple stomach ache
had turned into so much are and now here he
sat waiting for his sentence with a lump in his
throat the size of a goddamn Cadillac. When the doctor
(28:09):
finally opened the door, he held a clipboard in his
hand and wore a somber expression on his face. The
doctor mentioned that what the previously conducted tests, had found
where pigs levels were out of normal range and what
they had ruled out. Unfortunately, though, there was one thing
they couldn't rule out, congenital biliary cirrosis CONTENTA what Pigpen
(28:33):
didn't know if he could spell it, let alone repeat
it back, it was incurable. Shockingly, this form of cirrosis
wasn't a result of pig pens one to day prescription
of jug wine and bourbon. Pigs diagnosis was all genetics
and autoimmune disease that targeted pigpens liver. However, explained the doctor,
the disease could be exacerbated by heavy drinking, and when
(28:55):
symptoms started to show up, that was a sign that
a good deal of damage had almost certainly taken place.
The doctor recommended very limited in take of alcohol, or
even none at all. Pig pens sank back shit diagnosis
explained pigs at times sluggish behavior and at times absent mindedness.
(29:16):
When Jerry get all bent out of shape, the pig
pen wasn't paying attention in the studio, was losing his
place in a jam. There was a reason it wasn't
necessarily the alcohol his body even trying to speak to
him but Pigpen wasn't listening. The doctor also mentioned something else.
Travel would only delay the chances of a healthy recovery,
so pig Pen should stop touring alltogether. Immediately, pig Pen
(29:40):
was thunderstruck. First he had watched the sound of his
pants slipped through his fingers, and then it was the
band itself. He had just managed to find his way
back to an integral role in the band, a band
that finally had a successful album in a fratuitous road
ahead of them, And here sat pig Pen, once again,
being hold that he was being sidelined. Fat fucking chance.
(30:05):
The Grateful Dead were just weeks away from their first
real break in months. They were planning to take most
of the summer off, save for a few dates in
San Francisco and a choice trip to France for a
three day festival. If the doctor thought Pigpen was going
to miss out on his chance to experience the sights,
the sound ship the women of Paris, he had something
else coming. But the diagnosis was no joke. Pigpen had
(30:29):
to do something that he hadn't done in over a
dozen years. He had a dry up, with the vast
amount of damage already done pig really had no other choice,
so he began to wean himself off the sauce. Just
as the band was taking flight, just as everything they
could ever desire was placed within their reach, and just
as the harder drugs started to move in, Pigpen would
(30:52):
be forced to ride the straight and narrow while managing
a growing pain within him. And even then, even if
pigs stained, even if he was somehow able to maintain
a healthy routine, while the demands of the road took
their toll, there was no telling whether he'd be able
to manage the illness at all. The road, the music,
the life he knew was still beckoning to Ron pig
(31:13):
Pen mccernin The Wounded Gun Slinger, And as always, pig
Pen will put his best foot forward. This time there
was a chance what cost him his life. UM Jake
Brennan and This is the twenty seven Club Club is
(31:42):
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 at Oma,
story and copy ding by Pat Healy. Sources for this
(32:04):
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
my Twitch channel disgrace Land Talks. For more news on
your favorite podcast, follow at Double Elvis on Instagram roccar Rolla,
(32:25):
What's up here is
Double Elvis Club is a production of I Heart Radio
and Double Elvis Ron. Pigpen mccernan died at the age
of and he lived a life so loose that it
was always bound to unravel. I can give you twenty
seven reasons why that statement is true. Eighteen would be
(00:27):
the number of minutes he would get lost in the
booze soaked ecstasy of an epic love life performance with
his musical soulmate, just months before she'd be six ft under.
Another three would be the number of additional deaths that
would hang over the group like a dark cloud as
they entered the studio to record a new album, lending
a very palpable and grim feeling of mortality. Three more
(00:50):
would be the number of weeks it would take the
Grateful Dead to record that album, arguably their finest album ever,
an album pig Pen would make very real contribution too.
It would help him evolve his own sounds and taste.
It was also the last studio album he would ever
appear on. Another one would be the number of hospital
visits it would take for him to learn that his
(01:12):
years of hard living had finally caught up to him,
forcing him to make monumental lifestyle changes, and two would
be the number of years he had left on this
earth when the Dead finally hit superstardom. All totally on
This our eighth episode of season five. Booze Soaked Ecstasy,
(01:33):
Dark Clouds, Hard Living, and Ron Pigpen mccernin. I'm Jake
Brennan and this is the seven Cloth YEA m M.
(02:26):
The Euphoria Ballroom in San Rafael, California was filled with smoke.
The Grateful Dead had just wrapped up Candy Man, a
song they were close to perfecting and hadn't yet been released,
but it was sounding damn good. They were sounding damn good.
Working Man's Dead had rekindled an elusive spark for the band.
(02:47):
There was some sort of musical and spiritual revival going on.
They could feel it. Crowd and Euphoria could definitely feel it.
A Roady ran out implanted an additional microphone stand in
the middle of the stage, just at had pointed to
the front row of the audience, trying to coax someone
to the stage. Not just any audience member, A good
(03:07):
old friend of the good old Grateful Dead, a friend
who could let up a stage like no other, A
friend who by that point in the summer of nine
seventy was a certified superstar. Janis Joplin ashtra cigarette down,
the contents of the paper cup in her head and
climbed on stage. She was smiling. Ron Pigpen mccernin, standing
(03:29):
center stage, wearing the cowboy hat that now seemed to
go wherever he went, was waiting for her, he granted.
When Janison pig get together, it was as if no
time at all had passed, and they were transported back
to the outdoor jams of olden Polly back to playing
blues tunes all night long and Pigpen shack La Nina's
back to spinning records while sipping soco in the back
(03:50):
room of seven ten Ashbury. The energy between the two
was undeniable. Two old flames, two children of the blues
to show stoppers together. The Dead began to groove in
the background as Janison Pigpen looked into each other's eyes.
The crowd began to clap along. The energy was in intoxicating.
The Dead pumped out the first bars off Turn On
(04:12):
Your Love Life, and Janice grabbed the mic and addressed
the crowd, you know what this is about. Don't you.
It's about getting it on man, And she looked over
to the side and pig who was standing ready at
his mic. Then she let it rip in her gravelly,
bourbon silk voice implored Pigpen to turn it on over
and over. Then pig did just that, a raucous call
(04:36):
and response at the crowd of hollering. With each passing moment,
the euphoria was turning into a hockey talk. Janice once
again asked Pigpen if you knew what the song was about,
pounding him for the answer, telling him it was easy.
It was the easiest dancer ever. She wanted to hear
him saying, the pig Pen played it cool, you know
what it's about. I think you made it look so good.
(05:00):
Janice laughed that laugh, the one that could make the
world stop from spinning. She was driving pig crazy and
she liked it. They turned it on for six minutes straight,
each other the audience that love light, and then Pigpen
brought the energy down real smooth and started to wrap.
What they all needed was to stand beside someone like Janice,
(05:22):
or has someone like Janis stand next to them, and
Janice felt loose and free. She walked in the front
of the stage. Pigpen followed. The entire band dropped out
except Bill Kritzman. He kept the rhythm steady on the drums.
Billy thundered on the beat, still gaining steam, not letting up.
Janison pig implored the crowd and raised their hands to
(05:42):
get out of their seats to join the ancient dances.
Billy's backbeat echoed through the room, and then the Dead
all kicked back in again, louder, and then louder again,
and louder still. Janison Pigpen whipped the place into a frenzy,
empowered through another twelve intoxicating minutes of love light. It
was everything music could be, everything it was supposed to be, cathartic, inspiring,
(06:05):
a moment that takes over your brain and your body,
a moment that you experience along with a room full
of strangers who were all on the same trip. And
now it's pig Pen. That moment was just a memory.
It was three months later, and instead of turning on
a love light, he was turning on his keyboard, once again.
(06:27):
Relegated to the side of the stage. The Dead were
on stage at winter Land in San Francisco, grinding through
Uncle John's band, half in frustration and half an anger,
not inspired in the least. Rendition was passible, but the
mind of each band member was somewhere else Entirely this time.
It wasn't because they were in the midst of some
(06:48):
sort of psychedelic journey. The vocal mix was off, the
energy in the room was off. It was all just off.
Pigpen studied the eyes and the crowd throughout that night.
Set of people look shaken up, others seem more oblivious.
He kept turning over the words he heard just before
the Dead walked on stage, turning them over like an
engine that wouldn't start. He couldn't pour himself into the music.
(07:11):
He couldn't think of anything else besides that one dark thought.
Was it true? That was the question, not the pig
Pen couldn't believe it was. Of course it could be true.
It would be foolish not to assume that that one
could maintain a reckless cruising speed without a crash. So yeah,
it could be true. Pig Pen just didn't want it
to be true. The Dead slogged through the final few
(07:34):
chords of the song and thanked the audience, and there
wouldn't be an encore, not on an off night like this.
They didn't have the heart for it, because once they
stepped off the stage, there stood their manager, Rock Scully,
with a sullen look on his face, and they wouldn't
have the heart for it. Once Rock uttered those two
words nearly under his breath, She's gone. The unconfirmed news
(07:57):
that was floating around before the grateful Dead to the
stage was now confirmed. Janice Joplin had been found on
the floor of a room at the Landmark Hotel in Hollywood.
It was October four. The band fell into the furniture
backstage and sat in a meditative silence. Pigpenk cracked the
bottle of bourbon and drank to his fallen comrade. But
(08:20):
this wasn't just about Janice. It was all becoming too much.
The programs for the Winter Land Show featured a backpage
tribute to the recently deceased Jimmie Hendricks. Jimmy turned up
dead in London just weeks earlier, and the dead only
had passing interactions with the man, but it was a
blow nonetheless, just like the news of Brian Jones's passing
(08:41):
have been the year prior, Janice Jimmy, Brian, They're all
just twenty seven years old. The cold hand of the
grim Reaper and made its way into the dead's inner
circle as well. Jerry Garcia's mother passed away just weeks
before Janice, the victim of a car crash. Jerry left
(09:01):
the studio to be with her as she left the world,
and in turn left Jerry without closure. It would have
been a lifelong, complicated relationship. A few months before that,
Phil Lesh spent many days driving back and forth to
a hospital near his home, comforting his own father as
he slowly lost about with cancer. It was during these
(09:21):
trips that he started working out the beautiful and weighty
Box of Rain. A heavy, dark cloud hung over the group.
As always, the good times were imbued with very heavy vibes.
Time didn't stop. Many of the band members were approaching
thirty years old. Those cold hands of death could close
in on any of them at any time. Any of
(09:44):
them could be next. But who, when would they go
and how would they go? Thoughts like those were dark,
no doubt, but they were also inescapable. Pig Pen took
another long pull from his bottle, knowing he never share
another one with his friend, but at the train keep rolling.
(10:31):
The assistant engineer quickly got the studio in order, three
microphones in the center of the room, mic stands, flanked
by two sets of drums a box keyboard. He moved
back into the booth, where he stretched his arms and yawned. Coffee.
He needed coffee, the biggest, most bottomless cup fucking coffee.
(10:52):
Stephen Barncard was burning the candle at both ends. David
Crosby showed up at the studio at seven pm the
night before, and now the Grateful Dead would do to
roll in any minute. He'd heard all about the let's
say complexity of the band's relationship with studio engineers and
producers and label executives. That whole thick air request where
the band insisted on using separate tracks on the tape
(11:14):
to record ambient noises from the desert in the city
and drove a producer to quit. It was one of
those crazy recording stories that was passed on from studio
the studio. Stephen, who had worked not just with Crosby,
Stills and Nash, but also with Steve Miller and Jefferson Airplane,
had also heard the stories about the Dead jamming pennies
and the pianos and destroying a dozen microphones for a
(11:36):
few seconds of audio. But when they showed up, they
brought none of that crazy baggage with her, and they
were ready to work. And it was just the band.
No hangers on, no managers with their own creative input,
no really enthusiastic sound man looking to crowd the kitchen
with too many cooks. It was just the band and
Steve and Barncard and the studio. In the summer nineteen
(12:01):
seventies sessions were a revelation for Steven. The Dead were
continuing the thread they'd begun to weave with working man Stead.
The new songs were simple and straightforward, and he had
to admit they sounded like instant classics. The Grateful Dead
weren't interested in crafting a musical essay of an album.
The Dead weren't looking to funk around with studio trickery,
(12:21):
and they weren't hammering sections over and over again until
something felt right. Everything already felt right, and the Grateful
Dead were still after that holy grail of all holy
grills to translate their live sound onto wax, and they
were getting real close. The vibes were loose and Feeling
Light and It's the Dead were under any pressure to
push out an album, it didn't show. Shortly after they
(12:46):
arrived at the studio, they were already cooking up another
take off Operator, a song that marked pig pens first
writing contribution in nearly three years, and it was more
than just a writing credit. Operator was a country blues
throw down, in a clear indication that Pigpen was not
only interested in the direction the band was headed, but
that he could actively contribute to the new sound, something
(13:07):
that seemed impossible during The Dead Psychedelic Turn just a
couple of years before. As the Dead banged out the
first few bars of their fourth take, pig Pen had
a momentary lapse and stepped away from the mic. He
rolled his shoulders around his neck, and then he rolled
him around again, and he asked the band to start
it up once again. This wasn't a new pig Pen
(13:30):
had been randomly slipping up like this more and more.
But whereas in the past, Jerry might breake Pick forrehating
the bottle too hard, this time the band just barked
out the name of the song to him, and pig
Pen played right along Operator. Yeah, that was it. The
Dead didn't question of Pig's abilities, his choices, or his commitment,
and it has called him a piece of ship out
(13:52):
of love, of course, and Pigman laughed it off and
faked a fart into the microphone. The Dead were having
fun in the studio and included pig Pan. The funing,
the fussing, the frustration, and the past recording experiences went
completely out. The Window Operator was the perfect song for
the recalibrated mood. It incorporated pig Pen and the Dead's
(14:14):
original influences, taking lyrical and musical nods from old time
Appalachian music, blues and R and B, and rock and
roll from the nineteen fifties. It was the story of
a man looking for a phone number, trying to find
some old love that he had lost. It could have
been about pig Pen himself searching for that place to belong,
searching for the center of his original musical inspirations, searching
(14:36):
for his niche, his place in the dead. Pig had
taken the writing pages and pages of music. He had
big ideas about how his personal sound and style was developing.
He was recording his own reels of music. He wasn't
just singing heartbreaking blues anymore, but insightful, uplifting tunes and
pig Pens optimism mirrored that kind, good natured soul of his.
(14:58):
He was looking forward to the future. Operator also could
have been about the grateful Dead as a whole. They've
been through the fire and the flames, the turbulence of
the nineteen sixties, the head first dive into the counterculture.
Whereas once they were jamming themselves into boxes to satisfy
the search for a specific sound, now they were cutting
their second consecutive album that defied any mood or vibration
(15:21):
that wasn't completely natural. Pigpin didn't know where they were going.
He didn't care where they had been long as they've
been doing it right American beauty. He wasn't turning out
to be just a set of quality tunes or meditation
on a specific type of sound. It was turning out
to be an experience. But this wasn't the manufactured experience
(15:42):
the Dead had sought out before. This was just them,
the closest they had ever come to capturing their live
sound in the studio, months on the road, perfecting the
tunes in front of audiences and communicating with each other
within those performances allowed for a breezy, freewheeling ten track
album containing the best music the Grateful Dead had ever
pressed onto vinyl, and it took just three weeks to complete.
(16:06):
The album is a masterpiece Box of Rain, Friend of
the Devil, Sugar Magnolia, and that's just the first three tracks.
This is the one with Ripple In, Candy Man and
of course Trucking, a song that not only coined the
long Strange trip line, but at number sixty four, was
the highest charting Grateful Dead single for seventeen years until
(16:26):
Touch of Gray put The Grateful Dead and the long
elusive top ten American Beauty perfectly represented the Grateful Dead's
diverse style, attitude, and personality. The album didn't only sound
good and achieved overwhelming critical success and peaked at number
thirty on the nineteen weeks day on the Billboard two
D chart. Against all odds, the Grateful Dead found themselves
(16:48):
a household name, a designation that came with money and fame,
and naturally, the Grateful Dead's delightful Devil May Care Pleasure
Crews would not be without its downside, There were the
more disturbing quote unquote fans the ones that Jerry Garcia
referred to as vampires. He'd long noticed them hanging around
bigger acts, always looking for a handout, looking to ride
(17:11):
the coattails of the artists, taking to success like sharks
to fresh blood. The Dead had minimal exposure to such trappings,
but they would soon become unavoidable. Drugs had always been around,
but now at every backstage of every show there would
be at least one dealer present. The candy man wasn't
just moving acid and grass either. More unsavory characters would
(17:32):
make their presence felt as well, businessmen, con artists, and groupies,
hoping that members of the Dead's entourage should be fixing
to solicit their services for the evening. Gone were the
days of free shows of goodwill and casual engagements. The
record industry was changing, rock and roll was becoming industrialized
and commercialized, and the grateful Dead were directly in the
(17:54):
center of it. And word was getting out. And while
the rest of the Dead may have had their own
views on their new on fame and fortune, neither were
ever pig pens Bag. He didn't care about success in
the least. All he cared about was playing in the
band We'll be right back after this word word word.
(18:22):
Jerry Garcia sat on the floor of pig Pens room,
quietly plucking out some basic twelve bar blues on a guitar.
Place was a mess, random pieces of clothing and empty
cigarette boxes scattered haphazardly around, but there was one thing
that was in some kind of order though. Pig was
thumbing through his impressive collection of LPs and forty five
(18:43):
looking for the right record to set the mood. It's
all about the mood, all about the vibe, and the
right record was paramount to the mood. Something he picked
up from Phil mccurrnin a K A Cool Breeze, his
disc jockey father. Pig pulled an album and flashed to Jerry,
cover red, here's the man Dynamic Bobby Land. Someone had
scribbled meticulous notes all over it. He placed the record
(19:05):
on the turntable and dropped The needle, crackled like it
was coming to life, and then a wall of horns
hit Jerry's ears. Jerry grinned this was where a pig
got it. Flipping through his father's record collection, analyzing the
music in real time, not in a technical sense, but
in an emotional sense feeling everything, every sound, every tone,
(19:27):
every mood. This wasn't the rigid structure Jerry had been
used to. This was a whole other vibration entirely. This
was pig and Jerry dug it. Pig reached under his
bed and pulled out a bottle of wine, twisted off
the cab, and took a long sip. He held the
bottle out to Jerry, and Jerry grabbed it, studying the contents.
(19:49):
The wine was a clear, pale yellow. The label on
the bottle red Thunderbird, the American classic. Jerry tilted the
bottle back, the citrus flavor ring he hit the backside
of his throat and he felt the alcohol burn and
race up his sinuses. He shuddered as the liquid made
his way into his stomach and into his bloodstream, and
(20:10):
then Jerry's body began to feel warm. He wasn't much
of a drinker, and this wasn't just ordinary wine. Thunderbird
was what you called fortified. It was cheap, was strong,
It was made for one reason only, to getting funked
up real fast. Jerry passed the bottle back to pig
Pen and they both leaned their heads back in tandem.
(20:30):
Observing the buzzes of both the booze and the blues,
and the combination was transportive. They could feel the music,
Jerry said, the performer's name allowed, almost as if you
were trying to make sure he wouldn't forget it. Bobby
Blue Bland. Pig Pen grinned Jerry was a good teacher
and a good Steve pig Pen wasn't even sixteen yet,
(20:51):
and here he was giving eighteen year old Jerry Garcia
a lesson on blues music, how it was supposed to sound,
how it is supposed to feel. And even though he
was two years younger, he knew he could most certainly
drink Jerry Garcia under the table, Pigpen took two more
swigs in quick succession. He wasn't phazed in the least
the Thunderbird went down like water. He had already been
(21:13):
drinking regularly for a few years well, seeing clubs around
Paul Alto. Now the days without Thunderbird were a few
and far between. Jerry knew that besides proclivity for underage drinking,
kid had something he was wise beyond his years. When
he came to music. Jerry had heard him play. He
would take a little work to get him really good,
but what he already had was undeniable. Pig Pen had soul,
(21:37):
and that was the part you couldn't teach you. A
knock came on the door. Pigpen quickly hit the bottle
under the bed, cracked the door, and whispered something to
his mother. Then he closed it again and pulled the
bottle back out into the open. Jerry laughed. What a scene.
The next track was starting, funcky horns driving drums. What
was this one called? Jerry wanted to know, Turn on Lovely.
(22:02):
This was in the early nineteen sixties and the friendship
between Jerry Garcia and Ron McKernan had just begun. Almost
a decade later, in November, the two had gone through
the Ringer together and we're still friends, but also bandmates
and one of the most important groups in the world.
The Grateful Dead were well on their way to matching
their previous record for number of shows played in a
(22:24):
calendar year, if not surpassing it. They weren't just playing
more at this point, they were playing differently. Things changed,
but there was one thing that did not change. In
the St. Louis Hotel room, pig Pen sat in front
of a television set with an open bottle of bourbon
in his hand. He drank while some old movie played
(22:44):
on TV. He didn't even know what he was watching anymore.
The whole scenario had just become routine. The cities, the
hotel rooms, the highways, the old movies on TV. That
all started to run together. The days went on following
the same pattern for Pig, wake up with a fresh
bottle and drink, play a show or go to rehearsal,
then returned back to the hotel room for a nightcap.
(23:07):
Sometimes musicians who supported the Dead on the road would
shoin Pig would stay up half the night, cracking jokes,
singing old blue standards, and polishing off bottles. But by
the time Pig was twenty five, he had already been
a regular boozer for nearly a dozen years. He never
got drunk, he just got slower. Pigs tolerance for alcohol
was legendary, and by the time the Dead got together,
(23:30):
he was polishing off a bottle a day. And it continued,
and it was constant. It was unlikely that it would
ever not be a constant. There was also a bit
unnerving to think about what would happen if it suddenly
wasn't part of his daily routine. Pig Pennett heard the stories,
stories about people who tried to stop, the ones who
truly relied on it. They get the shakes, they saw things,
(23:51):
They crawled up into a ball and wanted to die.
And the other members of the Dead never said anything.
How could that, amongst other things, have a use of
LSD and marijuana. The growing prominence of cocaine in the
appearance of speed left the other members of the Grateful
Day without a like to stand on regarding pigs and
toxicin or choice, which happened to be the only legal
substance being abused by a band member. Besides, Pigpen wasn't
(24:15):
a stumbling, fall down drunk. He wasn't getting violently sick
or picking fights. He just enjoyed a drink. Ship businessmen
in America came home and drank half a bottle of
Scotch every night. Pig Pens habits didn't seem much different
than that. Pig mostly with drew to his hotel room,
not showing much interest in anything other than alcohol, music, cigarettes,
(24:36):
and television. When he did leave to explore whatever city
the traveling circus had stopped in that night. It was
only because he had been coaxed out of his room
by the crew or a band member. But there wasn't
much time to consider who was getting into which drug,
how much they were doing, and how often. It's a
grateful Dead's machine was taking on an inordinate amount of steam,
and there was no real way to stop it. Lenny
(24:58):
Hart Mickey Dad, who had been the band's manager, had
left the group completely fucked financially, and even two hit
records didn't diminish the need to keep on truck and
just to feed all the miles of the Dead's extended family.
Pigpen never much loved being on the road, but here
he was sitting in a hotel room alone. His girl
v was back in San Francisco, and no other woman
(25:20):
could ever fill the void she had left, and these
facts only increased pigs reliance on the bottle. Alcohol had
once been the liquid courage Pig needed to get in
front of the crowd, and then it became his tool
for getting looser on stage, allowing his performance to become
wildly entertaining for the audience. But now things were beginning
to change. Night after night, Pigpen would go take his
(25:41):
place behind the organ. He cracked a beer, and then another,
and then another. His playing, which had always been serviceable
at worst and energetically inspiring at best, was starting to
sound blander than Bobby Blue's last name. And although the
Dead were no longer noodling their way through complex jazz
time signatures and psychedelic gragas, they never stopped communicating with
(26:02):
each other through the music, the living organism that was
the Dead, spoken vibrations and rhythm and more and more.
Pig Pen just couldn't find his way into the conversation.
Maybe it was all that extracurricular time they had all
spent up in the stratosphere together on acid giving them
esp while Pigpen was down on the ground with a bottle.
(26:22):
His dream of making music for a living had become
a reality, and the booze never left the equation. But slowly,
surely and steadily Pigpen's oldest friends started to take its toll,
and then it betrayed him entirely. The lights of the
(27:04):
hospital room burned so brightly overhead they were practically blinding.
Pig Pens struggled to get comfortable on the exam table.
He scanned the sterile instruments on the walls. Walls, It
felt like they were about to close in on them.
Everything was heightened, every sound, every reflection. The ticking of
the clock on the wall sounded like a freight train
(27:26):
bearing down on Pig's head. His anxiety was growing with
each passing moment. He tried to remember the words the
doctor had said on the phone, but he couldn't. He
blocked it out. Whatever it was, it sounded bad. In
any minute now, the doc would be walking into the
room to confirm it. Either that where there be a
simple fix, some band aid the good old duck could
(27:47):
slap on and send Pig on his merry way back
to the stage. Pig Pens stared at the closed door
of the exam room. How could they keep someone waiting
like this? What had started as a simple stomach ache
had turned into so much are and now here he
sat waiting for his sentence with a lump in his
throat the size of a goddamn Cadillac. When the doctor
(28:09):
finally opened the door, he held a clipboard in his
hand and wore a somber expression on his face. The
doctor mentioned that what the previously conducted tests, had found
where pigs levels were out of normal range and what
they had ruled out. Unfortunately, though, there was one thing
they couldn't rule out, congenital biliary cirrosis CONTENTA what Pigpen
(28:33):
didn't know if he could spell it, let alone repeat
it back, it was incurable. Shockingly, this form of cirrosis
wasn't a result of pig pens one to day prescription
of jug wine and bourbon. Pigs diagnosis was all genetics
and autoimmune disease that targeted pigpens liver. However, explained the doctor,
the disease could be exacerbated by heavy drinking, and when
(28:55):
symptoms started to show up, that was a sign that
a good deal of damage had almost certainly taken place.
The doctor recommended very limited in take of alcohol, or
even none at all. Pig pens sank back shit diagnosis
explained pigs at times sluggish behavior and at times absent mindedness.
(29:16):
When Jerry get all bent out of shape, the pig
pen wasn't paying attention in the studio, was losing his
place in a jam. There was a reason it wasn't
necessarily the alcohol his body even trying to speak to
him but Pigpen wasn't listening. The doctor also mentioned something else.
Travel would only delay the chances of a healthy recovery,
so pig Pen should stop touring alltogether. Immediately, pig Pen
(29:40):
was thunderstruck. First he had watched the sound of his
pants slipped through his fingers, and then it was the
band itself. He had just managed to find his way
back to an integral role in the band, a band
that finally had a successful album in a fratuitous road
ahead of them, And here sat pig Pen, once again,
being hold that he was being sidelined. Fat fucking chance.
(30:05):
The Grateful Dead were just weeks away from their first
real break in months. They were planning to take most
of the summer off, save for a few dates in
San Francisco and a choice trip to France for a
three day festival. If the doctor thought Pigpen was going
to miss out on his chance to experience the sights,
the sound ship the women of Paris, he had something
else coming. But the diagnosis was no joke. Pigpen had
(30:29):
to do something that he hadn't done in over a
dozen years. He had a dry up, with the vast
amount of damage already done pig really had no other choice,
so he began to wean himself off the sauce. Just
as the band was taking flight, just as everything they
could ever desire was placed within their reach, and just
as the harder drugs started to move in, Pigpen would
(30:52):
be forced to ride the straight and narrow while managing
a growing pain within him. And even then, even if
pigs stained, even if he was somehow able to maintain
a healthy routine, while the demands of the road took
their toll, there was no telling whether he'd be able
to manage the illness at all. The road, the music,
the life he knew was still beckoning to Ron pig
(31:13):
Pen mccernin The Wounded Gun Slinger, And as always, pig
Pen will put his best foot forward. This time there
was a chance what cost him his life. UM Jake
Brennan and This is the twenty seven Club Club is
(31:42):
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 at Oma,
story and copy ding by Pat Healy. Sources for this
(32:04):
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
my Twitch channel disgrace Land Talks. For more news on
your favorite podcast, follow at Double Elvis on Instagram roccar Rolla,
(32:25):
What's up here is
Host
Jake Brennan
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