JJ-219

Pete Fornatale 07:24
This is an edition of Mixed Bag Radio. this is Pete Fornatel at the Museum of television and radio in New York City.

Live at the Museum of Television and Radio in New York City - Mixed Bag Radio studio.

Pete Fornatale 15:25
It's such a pared down sound, you know, totally acoustic and totally wonderful. You've been taking this contingent out on the road in various forms these days, including clubs, what's it like for you these days to play a club,

Bob Weir 15:43
Well, you know, it's intimate. People, people think that the bigger, the bigger venues hockey rink stadium and stuff like that are the more frightening .But really, the more intimate the situation is the the more you know, more, I get stage fright and stuff like that.

Pete Fornatale 16:04
That's interesting, that really is interesting. So you have to have a different mindset, depending on whether it's a club or a theater, stadium an outdoor unlimited number of people.

Bob Weir 16:17
Not that big, not that big a difference really, you know, playing, is playing, I'm gonna get warmed up, you got to get loosened up, and then just let it roll with the flow.

Pete Fornatale 17:25
Give me an example of one that you consider to have been somewhat overlooked that you wanted on here.

Bob Weir
Shade of Gray which I don't think we're going to try to do acoustically cause it

Pete Fornatale 17:38
we'll play it right from the disk. Weir: Okay. Fornatele: Oh, tell me a little about it

Weir talks about having a hard time with the Grateful Dead making STUDIO records

Bob Weir 20:32
At the time, but you know, everything is a totally fluid situation, the way we make music the way we go about it. And it's, you know, people call it making music, but actually, you're just letting it happen. And as the years went by, we we went through new levels, new plateaus, or whatever of, of learning how to let it happen. So by the time, by the time, the 80s came around, for instance, our approach, going into a studio was different than it was at the time that we made Working Man's Dead and American Beauty, stuff like that. There was just something different about it, I think it'd be hard to explain but. But right toward the end of the 80s, we we came to another sort of agreement about how to go into the studio and how to go about making a record and made a couple of good studio records back then. But in between, we were sort of at a loss in the studio, or at least I felt, working with producers and stuff like that, rather than on our own. It is, the records we made were a little unlike us.

Pete Fornatale 21:54
Well, this gives both sides of the story on this. On this desk, there is the one produced tracks and there is the one of of live tracks. Everyone in the band had their group identity and then went off and did solo things at times. The first one for you was the ACE album, which is well represented on this record five, five or six tracks started off, you still have a fondness for that. Bob Weir: Oh, yeah. Fornatele: that collection.

Bob Weir 22:23
That was when I really that was when I really first kicked into gear and started writing

Pete Fornatale 22:28
As a songwriter. That's that's your collaborations over the years have been very interesting, very varied. But the primary collaboration was with an old school friend of yours, (Weir: John Barlow.) Yeah. Tell me a little bit about that partnership, how it began and how it lasted for so long.

Bob Weir 22:49
Oh, we met when we were sophomores in high school. And we were sort of the the outcasts of the, we were the different kind of guys at the school that we were attending. And well, I got the old toe from that school. Characteristically, and he went on to become, you know, the student, student, body president and all that kind of stuff. And, but we, after that summer, I went out and stayed on his ranch, or his folks' ranch that summer, and we were just friends at that point. Then we ran into each other, then we didn't see each other for a while, two or three years, and then ran into each other in New York, on my first trip back out to New York, and and we picked up our relationship again, and just hung together for a while. And I was reading his poetry. He had a book of his poetry one time and said, I asked him if he ever considered writing lyrics for songs. And he thought that might be a cool thing to do. And so we started doing it.

Pete Fornatale 23:59
What's the working process like? Do you have to shut everything else out and enclose yourselves in a room together? Can you do it cross country? Can

Talks about the early San Francisco Beat scene pre-hippies - "poetry was part of life for us" talks about writing C Cassidy about Neal Cassidy

Bob Weir interview - talks about being " the kid" in the Dead and when he grew up! Talks about his friendship with PIG PEN and Jerry - seance with Pig Pen weegee board ! ! Talks about Jerry' Garcia' s spirit and how he rubbed off on him -how he musically still communicates with him " he's just THERE! "

Bob Weir 37:45
Well, you know, you know, the way he would influen, you know, the way friends after a long time just rub off on each other. It affects me most particularly I can explain it most particularly in, in the music when we're playing. I can more or less hear him still around the edges. I know where he's going with it. Like I with a drip with the flux of the music is, is presenting with with what's happening. I can I can hear him I know where he's going with it. And I can try to head for a complementary or a contrapuntal place that he, I know where he's going to, I know where he's going and I know kind of when he's going to get there. And I can be there with a compliment or a surprise or something like that. Just like it always was. and and you know, it's like that with the rest of life toofor me. And, you know, he's just there. I can hear him laughing. I can hear him. I can hear him being caustic whatever. Gonna go there. Now. Don't go there. That sucks, you know, and all that kind of stuff.

Pete Fornatale 39:00
I was gonna say what do you miss most about him?

Bob Weir 39:03
I miss the yucks. We we laughed our oh, we're cross crossing back American around the world. Here's his his one big quote was, somebody recently told me that they when when they they met us, and we were hanging in the what we used to call the Hacienda ,the little guitar players tent. And somebody came by and they met met him and we were we were just carrying on back there with with Steve Jerry the way we always, always did. And this person was kind of, you know, a little taken aback by what we were. We were just yucking it up. And Jerry said, Well, yeah, music is just what we do. Comedies really are a thing. We had we had some fun.

Weir is asked about his influences and the Deads' - jazz influence and where it came from - Talks about piano man Johnny Johnson - chuck berry pianist - how Weir got him in the post- Garcia Dead for a short time

Pete Fornatale 44:23
I'll tell you why I asked there is a version of Truckin' on the Live Set from Weir Here and at the point where you're doing the lyric ,if you've got a warrant, I guess you're going to come in, you crack up. You laugh out loud. And I'm just wondering if you remember what made you laugh?

Bob Weir
No idea.

Pete Fornatale 44:44
Well, I'll tell you what, let's listen to the track and see if we could figure it out on Mixed Bag Radio. You know, if you had six versions to pick from, and five of them didn't have the laugh on it. You know, I was just trying to figure out why you would go with that one, when to an engineer that might be considered a flub, not a flub, but you know, it's not perfection. But that's the one you chose to put on.

Bob Weir 45:14
Well, it just really, you know, we were listening to the music to the, to the, the performance of the song. Okay, and that one had a little spark. In fact, Jerry's blazing away on that one.

Pete Fornatale 48:04
Yeah, yeah, he was on he was on this show a couple of months ago. Full, not a, not a, not a bitter bone in his body. (Weir: No, no, no, he's a wonderful guy). And you know, just full of life and spirit and almost delight and wonderment that that all of this has happened in his lifetime. You know what let's play that tribute let's play Johnny Be Good for Johnny. The Grateful Dead their live version of Johnny be good from Fillmore The Last Days. Pete Fornatele on Mixed Bag Radio. more with Bob Weir in just a minute. We're into the last segment. When we get to it, I'll ask you for that last last closing number. Dennis. Are we okay? We're we're okay. Okay.

Pete Fornatale 49:00
Pete Fornatele back with you on Mixed Bag Radio with my special guest today, Bob Weir,.Bob, when you go out and do a solo project, is there some way or do you feel on some level like you're competing with this magical mystical legend called the Grateful Dead? Where have you come to terms with that?

Bob Weir 49:21
Not so much competing, I want to try to do is work up a meaningful complementary line. Just just like we do inthe music, you know, we try to come up with complementary lines or or either that are aligned that juxtaposes what's going on. That's a surprise. And that's, that's really all I'm trying to do. I'm winging it.

Pete Fornatale 52:24
It has always been thus, and so at a certain point, the Grateful Dead became a corporation. What were those board meetings? Like?

Bob Weir
Oh, they were chaos. We were pretty raw because we yucked our way through them.

Pete Fornatale 52:40
Do they, do they still occur? Do you still have to do stuff like that on a regular basis?

Bob Weir 52:44
Every now and again. Yeah, there's band meetings are inescapable facts of life for musicians.

Pete Fornatale 52:51
And, you know, the Dead were pioneers in disseminating their music in a different way than the rest of the industry was doing it. And that certainly has much larger implications and ramifications in this new century with the internet and downloading, etc. What's your take on all of that Bob?

Bob Weir 53:13
Well, I'm not, I'm not as into free music, as, as some of the more liberal element in that in that argument, because I think the musicians writers particularly have to get has to be able to make a living doing that. And if if you can't make a living making music, our culture is going to is going to suck pretty quick. And you know, I think what it all boils down to is you got to honor what you love, if you're, if you're going to if you're, if you're going to play a song, then buy it. And that way, the writers and stuff in the people involved in making that music will be able to make a living and they won't have to go back and groceries or go back to school and learn to be accountants or whatever. Well said, and you know, I don't get the I don't get the argument. Music should be free for anybody who wants it all the time. You know, when I asked them, how is that going to? How is that going to? How is that going to work for the musicians? How is that going to make it so the musicians can make a living? And all I ever get is but don't you see? And I don't I can't see that? Yes, I wish I could. So until I do, I'm gonna have to say that. Come on, if you honor what you love.

Talks about the first versions of ME AND MY BONNIE McGEE with Janis Joplin and how the versions developed Festival Express jamming with Janis

Bob Weir 58:41
Well, let me back, do that one backwards. What we learned from him is to to revere the mystery. What do you learn from us? You're gonna have to ask him. I wouldn't I wouldn't venture a guess. Somebody did an interview with me for Rolling Stone about him. And I regretted having done it since I, because the morning after I did the interview, all the real, all the real stuff that I had to recollect about, about Dylan came to me. I was sort of, you know, I, I would have done the interview over if I had my. And the deal there is, if I had gotten the chance to do the interview over then the next one the same thing would have happened. I'm quite sure. You know, Dylan is, you know, he's tapped into some sort of endless source of mystery. And there's, you know, there's a cohesiveness to that to that mystery that I find, I find just, you know, it's, it's amazing to me, more than that, really.

Pete Fornatale 59:50
One last thing Bob. For some, a retrospective like this is an end parenthesis. You've already labeled it volume one so we know that It's clearly not the case for you, but you tell a wonderful story about the late Count Basie. Would you mind telling it to close out this visit?

Bob Weir 1:00:09
Sur. you know, I guess it was 15 20 years ago something like that. I went, Count Basie was playing in town at the at the Fairmont Hotel in the Venetian room.It's a very, you know, elegant setting. and I dressed up and took a friend and and we went to check out the Count Basie show. And the band was wonderful as ever, they three of the four original guys in the Quartet were still there you know, they'd been playing together 50 Some years and most of the guys in the band had been in the band for 30 some years and they swung like angels . Uh the Count you know that he was there was nothing slowing him down or anything like that. And the show was over, he said a whole a quick hello to a few to a few old friends of his that were in town. I watched him do that and then he went on backstage. The next morning he went home to his place in Florida and within a couple of days he put his feet up and checked out . And that you know, when I when I read that he had checked out in the in the in the paper that week I realized okay, well there's there's my hero that guy you know he had nothing better to do than to keep doing what he was doing. Spreading that music, spreading that joy, spreading that whatever it is that music, does you know I've got I've got a got some footsteps to follow her