In the first and second installments of our exclusive interview with the Grateful Dead’s Bill Kreutzmann, we touched on a number of recent activities (you’ll have to read the installments for details).
For our third installment, we go back a bit, first catching up with the Rhythm Devils, then even further back to the 60s and 70s. Kreutzmann speaks benevolently about working on Jerry Garcia’s first solo album. He also expresses his views about two of the most talked-about and controversial events in rock and roll — Altamont and Woodstock.
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I recently received the Rhythm Devils' Concert Experience DVD you did with Mike Gordon and Steve Kimock a couple years ago.
That was a really nice project.
Anything over the horizon for more Rhythm Devils projects like this?
Mickey and I are probably going to get together and plan some Rhythm Devils for 2010. This is between you and me in a way because I haven’t talked to Mickey about it yet, but I’d like to use my trio as sort of the backbone. And I’d to love have Joan Osborne — this is my dream band — on vocals too.
I remember seeing her perform with you a few years ago.
I love Joan Osborne. I thought she did really well with the band. I’ve ran into her since and she’d love to play with my trio, so I think we should just combine them. We have a lot of material that we worked out from the first Rhythm Devils. Those songs are good; they just need to be redone.
I’ve always found it interesting with you and Mickey Hart where he provides the color and embellishments, and you more or less drive the train. How did that develop?
It’s just in our personalities. We each have completely different personalities. I think it developed that way. We just kept playing. That’s more the way I like to play and he plays the way he likes to play. We got away from doubling the drum set because we thought that was so redundant. Why have two drum sets? There’s potential for so many sounds. For this last Dead tour, we really got down on that.
We would go to rehearsal at ten in the morning and rehearse until at least twelve or one — just Mickey and I on Rhythm Devils stuff. The rest of the band would come in at around one or so and we’d go until about six. We spent a lot of days in there and that really helps. We define who’s going to play what part so that it’s complimentary instead painting so many colors until it turns black.
There were times when you were the only drummer in the Grateful Dead. Did you have to radically adjust your style?
I did. The first gig (without Mickey Hart) — and they released that show (editor’s note: the February 19, 1971 show at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, NY gig was released in 2007 as the double CD Three From The Vault ) — I was hearing another drummer who wasn’t there right then and I had to fill it out more. That’s when I played by myself in the early 70s and then the band took a complete break. Then Mickey and I got back together again.
That’s really when the concept of the Rhythm Devils took shape.
Yeah. We got tighter and we got better. We got away from just having two drummers playing the same thing. That never works. It doesn’t make it a better sound, to have two identical drummers playing. So we tried to be different and be complimentary.
During the early 70s, the Grateful Dead were extremely active in the recording studio. I could spend all day asking you about the sessions, but…
…I wouldn’t remember them all anyway (laughs).
One record that stands out has just you and Jerry Garcia, which was his first solo album (Garcia). Do you remember anything in particular about making that one?
I do. It was really fun and free. He would just have a few musical ideas — he would be on the piano and I was in an isolated drum booth. We talked back and forth. He’d start an idea and I would just come up with a rhythm for it. The whole time we’re doing this in the studio — we did this for a few days, coming up with original ideas of his and working them out — Hunter would be in the control room writing words and verses. We wrote some of the best Grateful Dead tunes during those sessions with just Jerry, me and Hunter. Garcia even played bass on it (laughs). I got a really great, big drum sound and it was fun.
I just listened to the remaster this morning and it’s a beautiful record.
Isn’t it fun? It’s amazing, it still sounds good to me too. That’s the thing about music — it can hold its gem-like quality if it’s good upfront.
I was watching the DVD that came with the recent reissue of the Rolling Stones’ Get Yer Ya’s Ya’s Out!, and at the very end, there’s a clip of you and Garcia chatting with Mick Jagger.
You’re kidding me...really?
It looks like you’re at a heliport of some kind, probably in San Francisco.
You know what that is, that’s Altamont.
Yeah, that’s what I thought. Just before the Stones flew to Altamont?
They were going to fly in before us, and then we were going to fly in.
Had you canceled at that point?
We hadn’t canceled anything yet. Jagger hadn’t gone to the show yet and we were just sitting there talking. Then he got on the helicopter with his guys and they went over there. We went afterward and saw all the horribleness going on. We said, “We can’t do this.” After the guy got killed, I was in such a bad place.
We were playing the Carousel Ballroom (aka Fillmore West) for three nights. We had just played one night before that — that (Altamont) was an afternoon thing. We were to come back for a show that night, Saturday night, and then Sunday night. I called (Bill) Graham and said, “I’m canceling.” And he said, “Oh you can’t do that to me” and gave us hell. He pry didn’t pay us for the three days; we pry had to argue about that a lot.
It was really an emotional event. When we were sitting there at the heliport after Mick left to do his thing with the Stones, the drummer Mike Shrieve (from Santana) got off the helicopter and he’s got blood from his nose. Different musicians were coming back and it had turned into a street fight, not a musical event.
Do you think if the Dead had played Altamont, things might have turned out differently?
I don’t think things would have turned out differently. I think we could have been involved in a worse event. What really goes down in life is this energy that exists in certain places. The way that gig started off was with the ex-road manager (Sam Cutler) from the Rolling Stones, to get them to play and all that stuff. It was never done with upfrontness. The vibe of that was really bad for some reason. All of the stuff leading up to it was like, “don’t do this gig,” you know? Male egos being what they are, you know, “keep going, keep going, keep going…damn, if it ain’t a miserable trip…” It was just a bad thing from the very beginning. And it culminated in that guy’s death.
Four months before Altamont, you played Woodstock. Portions of your performance have finally been released, but everything I’ve read and heard says it was a disastrous gig for the Dead.
We had a really hard time playing there. Our sound guy was just crazy. The wiring wasn’t right. We were getting shocks off the microphones. It was just really hard. We had a lot of things that were facing us. But it was just good to be there and relate to people, off-stage even. It didn’t matter how the gig went particularly. It was the togetherness of everybody being there.
In the Woodstock movie, you see Justin my son, who is now a filmmaker, being carried off by my wife at the time to the helicopter. He’s just this little bundle of joy in her arms. And it’s 1969.
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For the fourth and final installment of our exclusive interview with Bill Kreutzmann, we talk about Neal Cassady, jam bands, life in Hawaii and the drummer's involvement with various causes and movements to protect the world's oceans.
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