M
y earliest memory of Bob was that first night playing with the band, then the next morning Bob waking me up in the closet I was sleeping in on Belvedere Street. He opened the door and was looking down at me. Must’ve seen a foot hanging out. And he said gleefully, “Welcome to the Grateful Dead.”
In the early days, Bob and I would stay after rehearsals. I was learning the music from the inside out. We would play for hours, just the two of us. He was always energetic and smiling; he was happy with the music, and you could tell. His teenage energy was contagious. Jerry [Garcia] was always smiling at him, and he loved Bob’s sense of humor, which was off the wall. His voice had an edge to it that cut through the volume of the stage that was filled with amplifiers, loud as a diesel train.
Bob was both visible and invisible while foraging for the right sounds, the right feeling, the right spirit to turn into music. We felt community early on by watching what the music did to people. He and I would drive around the Haight to see the first fan art of the Grateful Dead. When we saw it in people’s windows, we felt connected to them.
We were all his older brothers. He was the kid. We watched his back more than we watched each other. He seemed more vulnerable to the roads we were traveling on. The union of Jerry and Bob was perfect. Jerry loved Bob to begin with, loved his laid-back smoke-ring-making partner. Always a laugh and never serious, unless it was the music. Jerry was respectful of Bob’s range of sound and Bob of Jerry’s. They would give each other clues, with Bob giving cues to Jerry by way of overtones. Jerry used Bob’s higher-pitched sounds as the inspiration for much of his musical intent in the jams. Our zones would be able to change form easily, to flow into the mystic. Bob could do the normal rhythm-guitar model, but even then he would have a deviation, a new twist on it. He was a damned good acoustic rhythm guitarist when he wanted to be.
If there’s one song that truly captures Bob’s essence, it would have to be “Playing in the Band.” He had a defiance to him — we all did. And that’s what the song was about. Bob and I wrote the music together, Bob Hunter the words. This song was always special to us as it was our baby. I was studying Indian classical music with Zakir Hussain in the Diga Rhythm Band. We were playing in what might be described as unusual rhythm patterns, times. I laid down the bed of 10 beats, as opposed to eight or 12 beats per measure. Bob just ate it right up, and had the exact right rhythm. This was unusual, but Bob got it right off. He played guitar and sang, and it rocked. I think this song was a liberation for Bob, and it allowed him to fly to other places and lead to other songs, like “The Eleven,” “Estimated Prophet,” and so many others that were in unique time signatures. “If a man among you/Got no sin upon his hand/Let him cast a stone at me for playing in the band.…”
The Grateful Dead, for Bob, was freedom. It was a place for him to be Bob — his home. He had a tough time in his early life, but in the Grateful Dead everyone could be what they wanted to be, and that was freedom. It’s everything. Bob wasn’t one to talk a lot, but this was the way for all of us to fly. We all gave each other space, and at the same time, we all were supporting each other, and the music just started to flow. We all believed in the magic.
There have been lots of reports of the deep pain to Bob of losing Jerry, but we all knew the music had to carry on. And it did. When it came to Dead & Company, we’d all laugh at what Jerry would have thought of it. We all hoped he would have loved seeing everything carried forward now, 30 years after his death. I remember how it started: Bob and I went down to L.A. to see Don Was, to play him a new song I had written. Stopping at Capitol Records, Don mentioned John [Mayer] was in the building. In walks John, and that’s where it all began.
We were looking for someone just like him all along, and now here he is, and wants to take a leap, to learn this music inside out. Perfect, we thought. The gods must have arranged this fellowship. It seemed like something that had happened many times before in our Grateful Dead lives together. A door opens, and we morph to yet another form and keep on truckin’.
When I think about Bob’s legacy, I’m reminded that if he hadn’t walked down that alleyway on New Year’s Eve and heard Jerry pickin’ and asked to play some, there would be no Grateful Dead. Hell, isn’t that enough to be remembered for, for Christ’s sake?
All those nights in search of the muse, in the heat of the day, the chill of night, hail, sleet, snow, rain, bugs, and wind. Hey, that’s what musicians do. Bob was an original, not a carbon copy of anything. That makes him singular. My oldest, most trusted, and loved friend leaves this world a better place than he found it.
