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Grateful Dead lyricist John Barlow, in a foreword to the indispensable handbook Skeleton Key: A Dictionary for Deadheads, describes the fans' playful ardor as "a religion without beliefs." That sounds about right. For most Deadheads, a concert was a church they attended not so much for the gospel as for the communion and community, the hymns and the incense. A giant mushroom cloud of hallucinogenics would lay over the crowd like a fuzzy blanket.
Once, Dead was God; now God is dead. With rock stars, such news is a shock but not a surprise. Garcia, whose private funeral service was held Friday (the guest of honor attired in black T shirt and sweats), was the fourth Dead member to die. Three keyboard players preceded him: Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, in 1973 of cirrhosis of the liver; Keith Godchaux, in 1980 after a car crash; and Brent Mydland, in 1990 after shooting a speedball--cocaine and morphine.
Garcia too was a suicidal adventurer. He did coke the way some people drink the stuff, and romanced heroin to the end. He was in and out of hospitals and rehab centers; in 1986 he fell into a coma. Last year he collapsed at his home and promised to reform. But that was not in his nature. "You're out there on the edge," Kesey says, "where it's beyond dangerous to your life--it's dangerous to your soul. And Garcia was on that edge for 30 years. It's like when the King asked Mozart why he drank so much, and Wolfgang said, 'Rock 'n' roll is hot, dry work.' Who are we to argue with such an artist? It's like arguing with Picasso because he was horny."
It is the mundane task of the living to bury and praise the dead, and to keep on living. Weir, the Dead's pro tem leader, has not said whether the band will tour as scheduled this fall. Their fans hope they do, if only as the best of all possible wakes.
And what will true Deadheads do? "These are people who've dedicated their lives to the nomadic existence of following the Dead," says Andrew Behar, whose Deadhead docufilm Tie-Died opens in theaters next month. "A lot of them have raised and taught their children in the back of school buses. With Garcia's death they may become like the Travellers in England, or Gypsies. But I don't think they'll just say goodbye to this spirit."
Most Dead fans have not turned themselves into career pilgrims. They go to Dead shows for good music and a great time. The older among them were kids of Garcia's generation, and in the '60s they enjoyed watching him living out their adolescent dream of cool: playing guitar, traveling the world, doing dope. Then, as these Boomers faced up to middle age--working hard and working out, with only the occasional nostalgic joint at a Dead show--they could also see Garcia mature and decay. They were Dorian Gray, and he was the picture. His belly ballooned; his skin was looser; his hair turned a ratty touch of gray. He looked as if he existed on peanut butter and peyote buttons.
If life is indeed a song, then Garcia and most of his older fans played it in different styles: studio version and free-form concert improv. Because the fans learned to play life straight, they will get by. Because he saw life as a long jam session leading to harmony or anarchy, he died--long after he might have, long before he should have. But as a force for good music and good vibes, Garcia can go to heaven and keep on truckin'. Like the song says, he will survive.