01/18/2025
David Crosby Remembers Jerry Garcia: ‘He Did Not Play for Money - He Was Chasing the Notes’
“Of all of the people that I can think of that I’ve really loved as musicians - and then there are some stunners in there that I miss; I miss (Jimi) Hendrix, I miss Janis (Joplin), I miss my friend Cass (Elliott), I miss a lot of people that I lost - yeah, I probably miss him the most. If I had had to pick somebody to represent musicians to the world and to the universe, I would have picked him. He cared about the right things. I don’t know how to explain it really well, but we’ve got to try. The most valuable thing in the world to him other than his family was the music, and he wanted it all the time. He would walk in the room and, yeah, he would talk to you about regular s**t and he could be a regular guy and you could go have a meal or a beer. But what he really wanted to do was pick up the guitar. And the minute he and I started to play anything, it got good, right away, immediately - which is not possible, all the time. But every single time that I sat down with him to play anything, it got magical. And you can’t ignore a thing like that, if it happens right in front of you over and over again. .. I just was entranced by that.
I loved the guy. He was a sweet guy and he was funny as s**t. And he was very, very bright and curious and interested in science and in the world and in people. But above all, man, he was a musician. Above all.
He had a very realistic view of himself. But we affected each other, man. You know, people started this whole thing about how the Grateful Dead learned how to sing harmony from Crosby, Stills and Nash. Bulls**t. We didn’t teach them how to sing harmony. They knew already. What happened was, we listened to their music and it affected us. We realized that we could get a lot looser than we were. They listened to our music and they realized they could get a lot more organized than they were, vocally.
