My first true love was bright orange and had an insatiable appetite for 9 volt batteries.Like myself, I considered that device to be indestructible- but it wasn't.
During a crappy club gig , one of the pitchers of beer that we were being paid with spilled onto my DS-1 pedal, drowning it, and it finally died. On stage.
If you know your EQ settings, you can look at the pic here and see what kind of music I was playing at the time. That heavy sound is impossible to get using a clean Fender Twin, but we went ahead and played anyway,
bringing the tempo down a bit and playing a set of what I
have since termed "Folk-Metal".
Because the songs were all originals, the audience didn't know that the tunes were not played the same way as we rehearsed them, but I sure did.
Without the safety net of my Boss buddy, I had to be very careful with my chords and notes. I learned a lot in that 45 minutes, and it was useful, if a bit humiliating.
It changed my whole approach to music. Before my pedal died, it would never have occurred to me to write a song that didn't use distortion throughout- everything was fast, furious and screaming loud.
I was very young and in a phase of punk rock rebellion against the Grateful Dead.
Earlier that year,I had been to a Dead concert stone sober and it was a musically traumatic experience.
As a kid, I'd seen dozens of Dead shows and I was tripping balls every time, but a few years had passed; I'd given up acid and switched to guitar as my drug of choice -I hadn't moved on to booze and cocaine yet.
No one had any weed that summer, so my pal Stick and I went to the show with no smoke. Stick was dosed on acid, but I was sober and fully aware- a terrible state to be in, considering where I was.
Holy shit...are they tuning up on stage or are they playing a song?, I wondered, listening to some wet, noodly envelope-filtered guitar blippage and erratic cymbal-tapping.
It must be a song, people are wiggle-dancing, I decided, looking around me. Stick was tripping so his opinion was useless.
Bob Weir started singing...oh, hell, they are playing Gloria and the crowd is going noodleshit crazy... "G-O-L-R-I-A"...
Golria? Did he just spell Golria? That sounds like a monster that Godzilla would fight: Godzilla vs. Golria, the Space Tyrant...maybe I imagined that he spelled that, here it comes around again...
"G-O-L-R-I-A", followed by twenty minutes of blappy, meandering guitar masturbation.
Yes, I know Garcia was a great player, but by this point in his sad life he was held in place by nothing and you could hear that emptiness. It wasn't until years later that I myself reached the place where Jerry was then.
Today, I understand.
Back then, I just wanted to go home and break my Dead records.
Fuck. Either they suck so bad that they can't play Gloria, or they are fucking up on purpose because they can- after all, who would notice?
The drugged audience was the Dead's safety net.
That was to be my last Dead show. A few years later, the Dead tours became the province of tragedy; audiences crushed to death, Garcia's ugly demise; things I wish had never happened. I did enjoy those earlier days and I hated to see it end like that.
In any case, after I was forced to play without my own safety net, I started paying more attention to what I was doing musically. I discovered the 'OFF' button on my FX and noticed that having some 'OFF' made the 'ON' really stand up and be heard.
Holy dualistic dynamics, Batman! I was onto something.
So when the old pedal died, I went looking for something more. Something with range and power. A weapon.
I did find what I needed, but I found it for the wrong reasons. I found it because I was angry and bitter , feeling betrayed by my childhood hero.
Jerry, I thought, you have chosen to suck and I hate you for it.
Today, those thoughts shame me.
The utter lack of empathy and compassion that I felt made it almost inevitable that I would fall into some serious traps- the same ones that Garcia fell into.
It doesn't matter how smart or talented you are, if you follow your demons instead of your dreams you will always succeed in catching them.
They catch you too, but they don't break your fall- they just break you.
If you let them.
I was changing my music, it was maturing and growing, but I was not. I was disintegrating slowly, a process visible through a time-lapse lens, but not in real-time. Eventually, I was wholly undone and by then it was nearly too late.
But I returned. When I did, I found my weapon waiting for me, only it wasn't a weapon any longer. The violence and the ability to hurt had left, making me wonder if they were ever really there- they were- and all that was left was my tone.
As complex and exciting as space travel and as simple and satisfying as a stack of really good buttery flapjacks. Tone!
I doubt if I'll ever perform live again, I don't have that drive anymore. It was powerful and I used it as best I could, but it never really worked out and after I returned to the world of the living, I found that words had become my main passion and my guitar playing had become less important...I mean, I had surgery on my left arm and couldn't even play for two years- I almost sold everything! It's a minor miracle of that I can even tie my shoes, much less play power chords.
But I can.
Funny thing is, now that I no longer care about being a hot-shot guitarist rocking some shithole club scene and I play only for myself, I play better than I ever have before.
It sounds good to me.
I have tone.
I've always had it.
The settings didn't alway match the music, just as my actions in life didn't always match my best interests, but the potential was always there. Still is.
Now, the sounds I need are only a few buttons away. Whatever my mood, I can find the tone that suits it, but I almost never record it anymore. I just check in with it to make sure it's still there, much in the way that good friends keep in touch between infrequent visits.
I have to wonder what would have happened to me if I found myself in Jerry Garcia's sandals? Would I have been able to give everyone everything that they expected from me and still hold on to myself? I doubt it.
Who wants to be worshipped?
Jerry didn't and he was. It killed him.
I did and I wasn't and it almost killed me.
Mistakes were made.
Today I want warmth. I want love and I want tone.
I don't need an audience. This isn't a concert.
This is a serenade.
