-
Len Dell’Amico, left, and Jerry Garcia at a press convention for the “So Far” video in 1987. (Photograph by Susana Millman)
1 of 4
Len Dell’Amico, left, and Jerry Garcia at a press convention for the “So Far” video in 1987. (Photograph by Susana Millman)
Develop
Len Dell’Amico, the Grateful Useless’s longtime videographer, writes about his friendship with Jerry Garcia in a brand new memoir that portrays the charismatic guitarist as a Christ-like determine who achieved nice wealth and fame and but lived like a Zen monk, disdaining the trimmings of rock stardom.
In “Friend of the Devil: My Wild Ride with Jerry Garcia and Grateful Dead” Dell’Amico describes the band’s concert events as “fundamentally a spiritual experience, more like going to church than any other musical act I have ever worked with.”
In that framing, Garcia is seen because the de facto chief not solely of the Grateful Useless, but in addition as a form of excessive priest — no pun meant — of what Dell’Amico calls “a spiritual movement” with Deadhead followers as its tie-dyed congregation.
Admiring Garcia’s knowledge, intelligence and kindness, Dell’Amico describes his buddy as “the closest thing I have to a mentor,” including, “He’s not a Christian, but he follows the guidelines of Jesus.”
RELATED: Useless & Firm wrap up Weekend 1 with extra Phil Lesh tributes
A New Yorker, Dell’Amico started working for the band in 1980, on the prime of the MTV decade, the heyday of rock movies and live performance movies. Already a scorching younger director who had labored with prime acts just like the Neville Brothers and the Meters, he was employed by Garcia at a backstage assembly in a dressing room choked with pot and cigarette smoke earlier than a present on the Warfield Theater in San Francisco. In an interview this week over espresso in a San Rafael café, the 74-year-old Fairfax resident described the situation as “New York techno nerd goes right into the center of a completely weird subcultural phenomenon.”
Dell’Amico wasn’t a Deadhead earlier than popping out to Marin County and going to work for the band, however he and Garcia shared a love of flicks and filmmaking that helped cement their friendship {and professional} partnership.
“Any movie that I brought up he had seen and had an opinion about,” he stated. “He knew about filmmaking.”
It was additionally what Dell’Amico describes in his ebook as Garcia’s “positive spiritual essence” that set him other than all the opposite musicians he’d ever labored with.
For instance of Garcia’s empathetic and forgiving nature, Dell’Amico tells a narrative about overhearing a cellphone name between him and a fellow band member who wished to fireplace an worker suspected of stealing from the band.
Garcia opposed the firing, reminding his bandmate that they each had loads of cash, so why forged out a member of the Grateful Useless household who clearly wanted it greater than they did.
“In that moment, I had a revelation,” Dell’Amico writes. “He (Garcia) was not playing it for laughs. He was actually quite serious, reminding his friend in the gentlest way possible that he was one of us, invoking the ancient tribal stance of solidarity first, and also the Christian code of empathy for the weakest among us, teaching that we must take care of each other first and foremost.”
‘The Zen of Jerry’
In a chapter titled “The Zen of Jerry,” Dell’Amico describes Garcia’s ascetic way of life in the course of the time the rock icon was dwelling downstairs from his supervisor in a home within the Hepburn Heights neighborhood of San Rafael, overlooking the San Pablo Bay. As Garcia confirmed him round his lived-in digs, Dell’Amico took an off-the-cuff look inside his walk-in closet and was stunned by the humbleness of his wardrobe. The alternative of a flashy rock star, the wealthy and well-known guitarist had a handful of dark-colored T-shirts, some long-sleeve plaid flannel shirts and some pairs of pants, all on hangers.
REALTED: Grateful Useless releases completely huge 60-disc boxed set
“And that was it,” he writes, noting that the cramped house reminded him of a school dorm room. “So, the guy at the very center of this operation that generated huge amounts of money didn’t actually care at all about money.”
Uncomfortable along with his celeb, Garcia was detest to just accept the privileges that usually got here with it. Dell’Amico writes about going out to dinner with him at an expensive restaurant. On the finish of the meal, the supervisor got here out to inform him to place his bank card away, that it will be on the home. Garcia politely declined, saying he had loads of cash to pay the invoice and recommended that the restaurant give a free dinner to somebody who usually couldn’t afford to eat there. From his working-class upbringing, he understood the actual cause behind the particular remedy, and he wasn’t going together with it.
“I’ve never seen anything like that, where he confronted what was happening straight on,” Dell’Amico stated. “It was like what you really want is for me to come back so people will say they saw me here.”
Weapons and roses
Whereas Garcia and the band symbolized peace and love ethos of the ’60s, they weren’t with out their quirks and contradictions. Dell’Amico was shocked when Garcia popped open the trunk of his BMW at some point, revealing a few AK-47 assault rifles and ammo magazines mendacity haphazardly amongst his assortment of CDs. He casually defined that he had his roadie purchase the semi-automatic weapons for goal apply earlier than they turned unlawful in California.
“He was nonchalant about it,” Dell’Amico stated, “but I had to recover and say to myself, ‘Len, you’re not in Kansas anymore.’ It’s funny, but I think the guys in the band were more like pirates than hippies.”
Apart from random issues like assault rifles, Garcia had few extravagances, the exceptions being his huge, luxurious, top-of-the line BMW, and, notoriously, his medicine.
RELATED: A misplaced manuscript explores the origins of the Grateful Useless
After listening to gossip that his buddy was affected by a severe dependancy that was worrying his household, bandmates and associates, Dell’Amico determined to ask him immediately about it.
Garcia was remarkably open with him, explaining that he was getting excessive on what he known as “Persian smoking powder,” a mixture of heroin and cocaine. When Dell’Amico pressed for particulars, Garcia introduced out his pipe and paraphernalia, his “works,” and demonstrated the way it was finished, lighting the pipe and inhaling the smoke proper in entrance of him, even providing him successful, which Dell’Amico politely declined.
“He was open with me because I asked him about it, and most people don’t do that,” he stated. “But I had to. I needed to know because he was my friend.”
In July 1986, Garcia was hospitalized after falling right into a diabetic coma that almost killed him. After three weeks, he regained consciousness and underwent in depth rehabilitation, together with relearning how you can play guitar. Dell’Amico occurred to be within the hospital room when Garcia’s spouse, Carolyn “Mountain Girl” Garcia, the mom of two of his daughters, introduced an acoustic guitar to his bedside for the primary time.
“He was like, ‘What’s this?’” Dell’Amico remembered. “Somebody must have told him, ‘By the way, you’re one of the greatest guitar players in the world.’ Really? Somebody show me.”
That anyone turned out to be keyboardist Merl Saunders, who patiently labored with him as he regained his extraordinary expertise and the distinctive, lyrical model that made him one of many few immediately recognizable guitarists in rock.
In on a regular basis he knew him, proper up till his loss of life in 1995, Dell’Amico says he by no means heard Garcia complain, even underneath the pressures of tour after exhausting tour, taking part in impersonal sports activities stadiums all around the nation, not as a result of he loved it, however as a result of it was probably the most profitable option to help the Grateful Useless group and its household of staff, who relied on him for his or her livelihood.
Not a diva
“I’ve been around a lot of stars, and some of them are divas, but he never complained about anything. Ever,” Dell’Amico stated.
With one exception. As the author of such traditional Grateful songs as “Ripple,” “Terrapin Station” and “Stella Blue” with lyricist Robert Hunter, the one factor he resented, he informed Dell’Amico, was that he was by no means given sufficient recognition as a songwriter.
Over the course of 11 years, till he stopped working for the band in 1991, Dell’Amico collaborated with Garcia on quite a few initiatives, together with “So Far,” a bestselling, award-winning residence video launched in 1997 that took three and a half years to complete.
Additionally they produced the primary nationwide pay-per-view broadcast: a Grateful Useless present from Radio Metropolis Music Corridor in New York in 1980, in addition to two music movies, “Hell in a Bucket” and “Throwing Stones,” each singles from the band’s hit album “In the Dark,” recorded reside on the Marin Veterans’ Memorial Auditorium in 1987.
Throughout his decade-long tenure with the Useless, Dell’Amico recorded 60 concert events in high-end, multi-camera video shoots.
“The proudest things in my life are those 60 shows I put in the vault,” he stated. “They’ll be there forever.”
After surviving the coma, Garcia tried to scrub up his act, however a lifetime of smoking, unhealthy food plan, struggles with weight problems and drug dependancy had taken their toll. On Aug. 9, 1995, eight days after his 53rd birthday, he died of a coronary heart assault in his sleep at Serenity Knolls, a remedy middle not removed from the San Geronimo Valley camp the place the Grateful Useless lived in 1966, after they had been younger and simply getting began as a band.
Thirty-five years after his decade with the Useless, Dell’Amico continues to work as a contract screenwriter, producer and director with an curiosity within the surroundings and sustainability. His 2011 characteristic movie, the darkish comedy “Welcome to Dopeland,” is on the market on streaming platforms.
He says he wrote his memoir in gratitude for all the things Garcia taught him in his quick however full life. Whereas he feels his buddy’s loss to at the present time, he refuses to think about his loss of life as tragic, because it has usually been portrayed.
“People die all the time and it is not necessarily a tragedy,” he stated. “Jerry was not a tragic figure. He was full of humor and life.”
• Particulars: Len Dell’Amico will talk about “Friend of the Devil: My Wild Ride with Jerry Garcia and Grateful Dead” (Weldon Owen, April 15, $35 hardcover) with Blair Jackson at 6 p.m. April 11 at E-book Passage at 51 Tamal Vista Blvd. in Corte Madera. Admission is free. Extra info at bookpassage.com.
Contact Paul Liberatore at p.liberatore@comcast.internet
