Garcia: An American Life
An American Life
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
He was there when Dylan went electric, when a generation danced naked at Woodstock, and when Ken Kesey started experimenting with acid. Jerry Garcia was one of the most gifted musicians of all time, and he was a member of one of the most worshiped rock 'n' roll bands in history. Now, Blair Jackson, who covered the Grateful Dead for twenty-five years, gives us an unparalleled portrait of Garcia--the musical genius, the brilliant songwriter, and ultimately, the tortured soul plagued by his own addiction. With more than forty photographs, many of them previously unpublished, Garcia: An American Life is the ultimate tribute to the man who, Bob Dylan said, "had no equal."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As the front man for the Grateful Dead, the band that epitomized the '60s hippie counterculture, Jerry Garcia's place in music history is assured. Yet, Jackson asserts in this detailed biography, Garcia's genius as a guitarist and songwriter has often been overlooked. Garcia began as a folk and bluegrass banjo player in such bands as the Sleepy Hollow Hog Stompers and the Thunder Mountain Tub Thumpers before embracing electric blues and rock and roll with the Warlocks, an early incarnation of the Dead. In the mid-'60s, the Dead became the house band for Ken Kesey's now legendary drug and music free-for-alls. During concerts the band could, in Garcia's words, "visit highly experimental places under the influence of highly experimental chemicals before a highly experimental audience." In the Dead's 30-year run barnstorming the nation as one of the country's most popular touring acts, Garcia always sought to expand his musical horizons, engaging in side projects from playing pedal steel guitar in New Riders of the Purple Sage to launching a low-profile solo career with the Jerry Garcia Band. Dogged by cocaine and then heroin addiction (brought on at least in part, according to Jackson, by the pressures of celebrity and of dealing with the unwieldy bureaucracy of the Grateful Dead's profitable business ventures), Garcia died of a heart attack in 1995 at the age of 53. Jackson, former editor of the Dead zine The Golden Road, narrates this exhaustive biography with the unabashed ardor of a hard-core Deadhead, but even those readers who have kept a distance from the band's recordings and epic concerts will appreciate the generation-defining artistic and personal history of this musical giant.
