I played songs and talked to the audience. I guess they figured I was a sympathetic kindred spirit and was there for them. They were clearly looking for comfort wherever they could find it. Maybe some people saw that this guy who had had a relationship with the group was going to be appearing at this place. Because it had just happened, the Grateful Dead world was in complete mourning. That day I flew from Houston to Boston and played at a Borders Books in Newton, Massachusetts, which turned into a de facto wake. My Hot House record was coming out at the time, and I was on tour, shilling for the record. You almost couldn’t be less surprised in this situation. And of course, it was a shock, but it wasn’t a surprise. I was in Houston that morning and someone from my management called me and said, “Have you heard?” I had not. We had a good, solid talk for about 45 minutes.
He mentioned some projects he had in mind that he wanted me to be on. I had just worked with Ornette Coleman and he’d worked with him too, so we were comparing notes about that. But he’s regaling me with stories about his couple weeks at Betty Ford, meeting some guy who knew Django Reinhardt and about the upcoming fall tour. He’d left the center early, but he was in good spirits. Two weeks after that, the end of July, early August, I called out there just to get a progress report. He was supposed to be there for a month or five weeks, I think. And here’s Jerry.” So we get on the phone and talk for just a little bit because they were pretty much ready to go down the road. Steve Parish answered the phone and said, “Your timing is pretty good because we’re taking Jerry to Betty Ford. Like everyone else in the Grateful Dead universe, I was worried about him. But that’s the way it seemed to me.Ī couple of weeks after their summer tour ended, I called him to see what was going on. I was a tangential part of their scene at that point. I think all the guys felt that, that nobody could really help him. But he was haggard and always sweaty, and you had a helpless feeling. During the soundcheck, I was getting used to the piano, and he comes out from his tent and leans on the piano and started talking to me: It was, “Why don’t you let me play on that song?” We were just bantering and having fun. He looked like he was seriously struggling. I remember the shows being pretty damn strong, and Jerry was pretty much there and engaged.
Then they asked me to do it again in the summer, when they were playing RFK Stadium for two nights. They always felt I did that when I was there, but I don’t know what effect it had. The Dead camp called me up in March of ’95 and said, “Hey, if we get a piano for you, would you fly down here to the Charlotte Coliseum?” I said, “You caught me at a pretty good time, and I can do that.” They thought Jerry was fairly listless and uninvolved, and they thought that maybe I could give him a pickup. The last year-plus of his life, Jerry was really struggling with his addiction.
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