Jerry Garcia, the Grateful Dead, and the Ever Looming Spectre of Politics

A comparative exploration of White Evangelicalism, the Dead, and the role of politics in art

The recent election saw a slight fracturing of our various subreddits and communities, largely along party lines, over the place of politics in our scene. Garcia was famously tight-lipped on stage, because he feared unintentionally influencing people in vulnerable psychic states, and his silence is often presented as a rejection of politics entirely. The line goes that the band were uninterested in politics, and as such discussion of politics has little to no place in the fan community. Garcia is even quoted as saying “our trip is that everyone is entitled to believe whatever they want” and “For me, the lame part of the sixties was the political part, the social part. The real part was the spiritual part”. This is only a partial picture though and the role of politics in the music and the minds of our favourite band is much more prescient than may be indicated by their usual onstage expressions.

Weir has rarely been as reserved as Garcia. On May 29th 1995 before their "Liberty" encore Weir steps to the microphone and lets the crowd know his stance: “Did I hear someone say fuck the Christian right!”. This has proved to be somewhat of a mantra for the rhythm guitar maestro over the last decade as the Christian right has strengthened its chokehold on American politics. Weir has consistently spoken out against the Trump administrations and campaigns, and supported the Democrats fairly vocally each election more or less since 1995. At Hulaween this year when playing with String Cheese Incident he said “since some people are saying we should get political” before launching into “Man Smart, Woman Smarter” which has become somewhat of an anthem to express this part of Weir’s world view and artistic mission.

Weir’s use of this song attacks the very foundations of the Christian right project, the roots of which can be traced to one Billy Graham. Not kindly concert promoter and time wizard Uncle BoBo, but the evangelical preacher who first saw the potential of connecting Christianity, traditional gender roles, and politics. “Man Smart, Woman Smarter” and its use as a political anthem for Bobby attacks this connection, and the assumption that masculine American values are the de facto norm. The full extent of Graham’s project, and how it has very consciously led to the political sphere we have now is laid bare in Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Dr. Kristin Kobes Du Mez.

Weir has seen this all unfold, often in close focus. Du Mez highlights the importance of SoCal in the early 1960s describing it as “the centre of the evangelical political resurgence” (39). In 1964 the party realignment began with many Southern conservative Democrats crossing the aisle to the Republicans in response to desegregation and the civil rights movement. The Southern California School of Anti-Communism organised a “citizen’s training program” where important figures like Ronald Reagan, John Wayne, and more warned “of communists’ devious plans to target teenagers’ rebellious nature”. Pop star Pat Boone went as far as to say “I would rather see my four girls shot and die as little girls who have faith in God than leave them to die some years later as godless, faithless, soulless Communists” (41). What these quotes aim to show is how little the narrative has changed in the 60 or so years between then and now. Still the Christian right uses social change to create fear and unease in their base, and still they use divisive rhetoric to create anger both in those who support their crusade and in their opponents. This creates endless publicity. Trump has, of course, mastered this nefarious art. Elon Musk helpfully connects this historical project and the present when he says “The woke mind virus is communism rebranded”, while himself rebranding Graham’s far-right authoritarian political ideals.

I don’t need to tell you what that school of anti-communists would have to say about the Acid Tests or the Haight-Ashbury scene, I hope. And it should follow that the animosity (or at least ambivalence) was fairly mutual. These are the people Garcia is speaking to when he says “everyone should be able to believe what they want”. This gets to the roots of the Christian right project, which has since its inception sought to force its morality on America. I’m sure there will be readers who will say “Checkmate! Today it is the wokerati left who seek to enforce their morality upon America”. Alas, this is of course exactly what was said 60 years ago too. The same things were said about the civil rights movement as is said about BLM today, and social change is consistently presented as an existential threat to traditional values.

This Chicken Little rhetoric is combined with genuine legislative restrictions on leftist expression. It was not the left who set up the House Un-American Activities Committee, nor is it the left today who ban books in great piles as we can see in Republican strongholds Florida and Texas. Even Frederick Douglass’ fearless autobiography Narrative of the Life of An American Slave is banned in Oklahoma for supposedly teaching “Critical Race Theory”. This is palpable nonsense, as CRT was not developed until the 70s, some 150 years after Fredrick Douglass escaped the yoke of race-based enslavement. This is very literally putting the cart before the horse, as Douglass could only conceivably teach CRT if CRT is at least partially right in its interpretation of Douglass’ work. To Kill a Mockingbird has had similarly baffling opposition.

The House Un-American Activities Committee blacklisted Pete Seeger’s band, The Weavers, for refusing to testify in front of them. Seeger describes the committee as a “group of American fascists”. The committee in turn feared that the band were communist, in part due to their fiercely political left wing songs, and wanted to prevent their corruptive influence from poisoning the American mind. In the vein of Woody Guthrie, The Weavers were not phased by this overtly political opposition, and sought to set up their own touring schedule in spite of their blacklisting from traditional venues. The importance of Seeger and the Weavers to our modern understanding of folk cannot be understated, while their influence on the folk revival scene and consequently Garcia is undeniable. The Dead similarly rejected the traditional understandings of how to make money in music.

In the latest episode of The Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast we can hear a clip of Jerry covering The Weavers’ controversial political anthem “Wasn’t That a Time” while in Hunter’s The Silver Snarling Trumpet him and Jerry earn their stripes hanging out in a left wing bookshop, which allowed the destitute teens to use it as a kind of library and meeting space. While Garcia may not have believed in professing his beliefs through a microphone in speech, I suggest that through his attention to the lyrics he sang and the use of the folk tradition he sought to display the shortcomings of politics in America. Check out Deadcast host Jesse Jarnow’s book “Wasn't That a Time: The Weavers, the Blacklist, and the Battle for the Soul of America” for more info on the intensely political roots of the folk revival.

The Dead’s catalogue, and particularly Garcia/Hunter songs, often seek to challenge and overcome traditional interpretations of masculinity, while simultaneously Graham and Reagan were seeking to solidify them. In “Stagger Lee” Hunter changes the focus of the song entirely. He throws away the intense and sometimes even sexually aggressive masculinity seen in versions like Nick Caves’ or Snatch and the Poontangs' in favour of centring Billy DeLion’s widow. Hunter goes as far as to have Deliah DeLion literally emasculate Stagger Lee, shooting him in the balls and removing any suggestion of his behaviour as manly. When covering the traditional murder ballad “Cold Rain and Snow”, Garcia changes any references to the murder itself. In Dillard Chandler's version he sings “I shot her through the head/and I laid her on the bed/and I trembled to my knees with cold fear”. Obrey Ramsey, who Garcia learned the song from, sings “Well she came in the room/where she met her fatal doom/And I'm not gonna treated this a-way”. Garcia has chosen to remove the male violence from the song, and replaced it with a much more suggestive lyric “where she sang her fateful tune”. This phonetically nods to the origins of the song, but opens up more peaceful interpretations. The first section of “Terrapin Station” is a retelling of “The Lady of Carlisle” in which the central character is empowered and enriched. In the traditional song upon arriving at the lions’ den we are told that “for the space of one long hour,/She lay speechless on the ground”. This is in stark contrast to Hunter’s rendition of the song:

Eyes alight with glowing hair
All that fancy paints as fair
She takes her fan and throws it
In the lions' den

"Which of you to gain me, tell
Will risk uncertain pains of hell?
I will not forgive you
If you will not take the chance"

Again we see the change of focus from the masculinity of the men in the songs to the empowerment of women who were historically overlooked. It is these sorts of changes and challenges to traditional narratives that the right regularly pull their hair out over today, whether it be the changing of race in movies and tv, the removal of slurs from classic works, or the inclusion of LGBT narratives in media generally. Stories change and grow and are repurposed again and again, and ignoring that is like trying to ignore the tide. People will use traditional stories to tell contemporary stories, and that’s a perfectly natural thing too. There were no Muppets in Dickens' Christmas Carol.

Nowhere is the Grateful Dead’s opaque political ideology more translucent than in “Uncle John's Band”. In the foreword to David Dodd’s Annotated lyrics book Hunter writes that “UJB is a celebration of folk themes played ‘down by the riverside’”, and most of the song follows this idyllic idea, apart from one verse which sticks out:

Goddamn well I declare,
Have you seen the like?
Their walls are made of cannonballs
Their motto is don't tread on me

This is about as clear a rejection of isolationism and nationalist American politics as one can hope for. This reading of the verse is underpinned by a quote from Garcia in “A Signpost to a New Space”: “The whole security trip that Americans are obsessed with is just a misplaced, poor understanding of death. Basically all security trips are a fear of death”.

Billy Graham began his career at the start of the cold war, just as Russia first successfully tested their atomic bomb. He harnessed that fear, that feeling of insecurity, and began a theocratic political project that sought to connect Christianity with capital to ensure the endurance of both. He sought to expand the influence of his firebrand theocratic ideas, and ensure that evangelical christianity moved away from the Jesus of the Gospels towards a more authoritarian understanding of both American politics and Christianity. The Grateful Dead offered a much more egalitarian approach to religion and spirituality, exploring their Christian influences while also engaging with Eastern religions and philosophies, and even playing “Blues for Allah”, inshallah. The centrality of their rejection of dogmatic thinking alone puts them in opposition to this particular brand of American politics, as Graham's ideas seek to entrench Evangelical dogma legally, as we can see today in the banning of books deemed “degenerate” by Evangelical morality or the repealing of abortion rights.

While the Grateful Dead weren’t leading any marches or writing any manifestos, it’s clear that they by definition exist in opposition to the authoritarian Christian politics of Graham, Wayne, Reagan, Nixon, and today Trump. Their universe presents an America that is gentler, kinder, and critically aware of the dangers of American dogmatism, than it ever has been in reality. Through presenting this universe the Dead show us what they believe to be possible and their hope for America. Garcia says “For me, the lame part of the sixties was the political part, the social part. The real part was the spiritual part”; but the openness of the spiritual part was in direct opposition to the project to close down the openness of the Christian faith and politicise it.

It’s possible to enjoy the Dead without ever thinking about politics, but to say that their body of work lacks any political sentiment at all is simply wrong. It stands in opposition to much of what drives conservative America, both in the 60s and today, and it directly opposes much of the ideology around gender roles that still seek to reduce women to nothing more than accessories for men.

Today Trump threatens media outlets with reprisals for not supporting him, suggests that the constitution needs to be changed or suspended, uses his Presidential Office to rent overpriced rooms to secret service at Mar-a-Lago, and seeks to further enshrine Evangelical morality into law. The idea that the Grateful Dead, or Garcia, were so apolitical that they wouldn’t have a clear and coherent opinion on that is frankly laughable. It’s time to tear down those walls of cannonballs, reject the dogma that sought to shut down the social and spiritual projects of the 60s, and come together by the riverside.

I'll leave you with one of those Weavers political bangers: