Hart Beat

John Werner

Mickey Hart returns with
new band, new CD

By Alan Sculley

WHEN JERRY GARCIA, the leader of the Grateful Dead, died in 1995, it may have appeared that drummer Mickey Hart had not been affected very deeply by Garcia’s death and the end of his much-beloved band. After all, immediately after Garcia’s passing, Hart entered the studio to work on what would become his vocal/percussion project, Mystery Box.

But don’t let appearances fool you–Hart was devastated. Diving right into a musical project was simply one way he could deal with his grief. “There’s nothing like music to relieve the soul and uplift it,” says Hart, a west county resident, explaining his decision to immerse himself in the studio. “As soon as Jerry went, that very day, the day after, I was in the studio. Yeah, I went right into the music.

“I was grieving real hard,” he adds. “Jerry was my best friend, you know, and he was the voice. He was always in my ear. That was the music I grew up with my whole adult life. That was the main lead sound. So it was a giant hole. It was ripped away from me.”

The depth of the loss Hart and the surviving members of the Grateful Dead felt was obvious as Hart spoke while taking a break from rehearsals with the Other Ones, a new group that brings together three of the four remaining members of the Grateful Dead–Hart, bassist Phil Lesh, and guitarist Bob Weir (drummer Bill Kreutzmann has retired). The new band, which also includes North Bay guitarist Steve Kimock of Zero, keyboardist Bruce Hornsby, Dave Ellis, Stan Franks, and John Molo, headlined this summer’s Furthur Festival, an annual tour that has served in part as a touring vehicle for such Grateful Dead side projects as Hart’s Mystery Box and Weir’s band Ratdog.

The Furthur Festival marked the first time Hart, Lesh, and Weir have played extensive selections of Grateful Dead material publicly since Garcia’s death.

Hart, in particular, had difficulty revisiting the Dead’s music. “I just gave it up, I hung it up,” he explains. “I didn’t want to hear any more Grateful Dead songs, not after Jerry died. And then Paul McCartney sent me a note and a little video of us back in the ’60s that he and [his late wife] Linda had done. Linda had shot us once at 710 Ashbury [the San Francisco row house where the Grateful Dead first lived together].

“McCartney took the stills and put our music to [the video]. He sent me a beautiful note. It was about a year ago, because I hadn’t listened to Grateful Dead music in almost two years. It was just not played in the house. I just couldn’t hear it. It was just too painful for me, mourning Jerry and everything. And one lifetime I thought was enough. We put the video on in the kitchen and we all danced around. We thought it was beautiful, and the music sounded great, and so that’s when it all started for me again.

“It brought the music back into my home.”

When Hart, Lesh, and Weir got together last Christmas, they took the next step by forming the Other Ones. Hart was clearly excited about how the group sounded in rehearsals. “It’s a different slant,” he says. “The songs sound the same, but they’re different. I mean, you’re going to recognize the songs because we’re going to be playing the signature songs, but the improvisation is completely different.”

In fact, Hart feels the new group has recaptured something the Grateful Dead had lost as the group moved from the ’80s into the ’90s–the spirit of musical adventure. For all of Hart’s respect and fondness for Garcia and the other members of the Dead, he isn’t sentimental about the group’s music and their successes and failings. “I thought the ’60s was the most exciting time and the most vital music, and we were really together as one mind then,” Hart says. “Then afterwards, the songs and the bad drugs, that took its toll. I thought once we started playing songs and not improvising so much that the spirit of the Grateful Dead was muted. … I thought ’93, it was pretty well close to the end.

“I thought the energy was pretty well sapped by then.”

By the early ’90s, the Grateful Dead–if they weren’t as musically vital–were an institution that had become a one-of-a-kind phenomenon. Formed in 1965 as the San Francisco music scene was leading rock into a bold new age of musical experimentation and counterculture lifestyles, the Grateful Dead grew to be much more than a band. For the group’s loyal fans–the Deadheads–Grateful Dead concerts provided a sense of community, a place where they found emotional and spiritual nourishment. By the late 1980s, the Dead had grown into the biggest cult band in rock history, with their tours playing stadiums that held 50,000 or more fans–many of whom continued to follow the band from city to city.

In Hart’s eyes, this huge success, though, didn’t do the Grateful Dead any favors on a musical level. “Every time we released a record, I was always praying that it wouldn’t sell,” Hart said. “I never wanted a hit single, ever. I thought as soon as we stopped becoming hungry, we wouldn’t play hungry. And that’s what happened. The places started getting bigger and bigger and we played stadiums. Nobody was hungry. Everybody had money in the bank. We had cars and houses and we had families and everybody got soft in a way. We weren’t hungry anymore. We weren’t on the edge.”

HART FOUND that edge by stepping outside of the Grateful Dead for side projects during that band’s latter years. He did–and continues to do–extensive research into world music, producing two compilations of rainforest music along the way.

Meanwhile, Planet Drum, Hart’s Grammy-winning group that plays percussion-based, non-vocal music, remains a going concern. The group’s second CD, Supralingua (Rykodisc), featuring an all-star lineup of world music greats, was released last month. “The first Planet Drum [conceived by African drumming master Babatunde Olatunji] was a beautiful record,” Hart says. “This new one is much more advanced, technologically speaking, the grooves are better, it’s just the next step. It’s hard for me to say. They’re all my children. I say this one is better than the last one, always the current one is better. You have to understand, let me qualify this, it’s not to slight the first one. And that was 28 weeks at No. 1 [on the world music charts] and it won a Grammy, so it couldn’t be too bad.

“So if we do as good with this one I will be happy.”

As for future projects for the Other Ones, Hart offers no predictions. But he knows one Grateful Dead member who would endorse the Other Ones’ efforts. “I think he’s riding shotgun with us,” Hart says of Garcia. “I know if we could talk to him he’d be saying, ‘Good going, guys. This is just what I want you to do.’ “

Mickey Hart will discuss Supralingua Wednesday, Sept. 9 at Copperfield’s Books at Montgomery Village in Santa Rosa, and will perform on Sept. 30 with the nine-member Planet Drum ensemble at the Luther Burbank Center, 50 Mark West Springs Road, Santa Rosa. Tickets are $25. 546-3600.

From the September 3-9, 1998 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.

Solid Rock

Tobi Corney

Ian Anderson keeps Jethro Tull classically rolling along

By David Templeton

IAN ANDERSON is a talker. The legendary force behind the equally legendary rock band Jethro Tull–after 30 years, still recording, still touring, still twisting, and still tweaking its eclectic musical style–had agreed to chat by phone from his home in the south of England. A limit of 20 minutes was set (he’s got a lot going on this week, it turns out). Yet Anderson, after chatting amiably for over 40 minutes on what he describes as “this warm English evening in a sparkling English summer,” still has plenty to say.

He’s already given his opinion of “classic rock” radio, the leading format on American airwaves: “The good thing is that classic rock is probably the only place you’ll hear Led Zeppelin, Elton John, Rod Stewart, and, of course, Jethro Tull. The awful thing is that you only hear the same five songs from each artist. I’ve been in some classic-rock stations where I’m amazed that the entire collection is contained on one wall. I have a larger collection of CDs than some classic-rock stations.”

Reissued Jethro Tull.

Anderson also discourses on the lack of attention radio gives to Tull’s newer works: “Listening to the radio, you’d think Jethro Tull had stopped recording in 1977. Our biggest competition when we release a new album isn’t Pearl Jam or Oasis or the Spice Girls–it’s our own back catalog. Though that’s not really something to complain about, I suppose. It’s something to celebrate. It’s really very nice and very flattering to have a bunch of records and a bunch of old songs that people still want to buy.

“It’s just that we aren’t dead yet,” he adds with a chuckle. “We are still making music.”

Indeed. Anderson has recently completed studio work on a new solo album, a follow-up to 1995’s Divinities: Twelve Dances with God. Jethro Tull–named for an 18th-century agriculturist and inventor, the 31-year-old band also includes Martin Barre and Dave Pegg–have been consistently putting out albums, hitting the studio every few years or so since 1969. The group’s last album was 1997’s Roots to Branches, and they will be taking to the studio again this fall, with plans to release a new album next spring. At that time, Jethro Tull–best known for such classic-rock-station standards as “Aqualung,” “Thick as a Brick,” “Locomotive Breath,” “Bungle in the Jungle,” and “Too Old to Rock and Roll, Too Young to Die”–will take to the road on another of the major, high-energy world tours for which they are renowned.

The band swings through Konocti Harbor Spa and Resort on Sept. 3.

Though few know it, and he does little to call attention to it, Anderson keeps himself busy with a number of side businesses, including a fish farm.

For the last 17 years, the rock-and-roller has owned and operated four salmon hatcheries in the highlands of Scotland, making him the third-largest supplier of smoked salmon in the United Kingdom.

“Today’s not a good day to ask about that,” he politely remarks, going on to describe a fire that, just last weekend, burned one of the factories to the ground. “I just received official permission this afternoon to have the remains demolished,” he says. “It’ll take four to six months to rebuild it. On one level, hey, it was just a building, right? But on another level, 160 people were employed there on Friday who on Monday will no longer have jobs.”

As he talks, Anderson hardly sounds like the wild flute-playing madman once known for his outrageous onstage shenanigans–the frantic gestures and airborne leaps, the outrageous neo-Elizabethan costumes with exaggerated codpieces. This Anderson seems, well, proper. And he is.

But in spite of his respectable side, the Anderson audiences love still shows up, though the 51-year-old doesn’t leap quite as high as he once did. “Our shows still have elaborate music,” he remarks, “though the staging is not so elaborate as it once was. No rockets and smoke bombs and crazy costumes. I think people come to hear the music nowadays, to see a real musician on stage doing a real man’s job, not some fellow prancing about in tights and a codpiece.

“Though I can still do that,” he adds, “if the money’s right.”

Jethro Tull performs Thursday, Sept. 3, at 6:30 p.m. at Konocti Field in Kelseyville. Tickets are $29, $39, and $49. Call 800/762-BASS.

From the August 27-September 2, 1998 issue of the Sonoma County Independent.

© Metro Publishing Inc.