Fare Thee Well

"Garcia's death forced instant hardships on those he left behind.""Each of the four surviving members thought that he alone had been Garcia's best friend--they had no such illusions about each other.""While the Deadheads often presumed that the band members were just like they were, the musicians had no such idea. Despite their devotion, the view from the Dead and their crew ranged from bemused confusion to thinly veiled contempt for the unwashed hippies who followed them from town to town." Joel Selvin in the book."It's not over till it's over, and it ain't over yet." Mickey Hart."Hart exaggerated. The band members weren't speaking. The Vault was gone. Ram Rod was dead. The real estate was sold. The office was closed. The sun had set on the Grateful Dead." Joel Selvin."We were not performers. We were playing for our family, in a sense. It had that feel." A quote not from this book by Jerry Garcia talking about the early days. This book begins and ends long after that seemingly ideal era.This book looks at the remaining GD band members and others in the years after Garcia's death. The main author (Joel Selvin has authored books like "Monterey Pop", "Summer of Love", and others) has used a number of sources, including Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, Steve Parish, Dennis McNally, and other GD associates, plus musicians involved with various post-Garcia bands. The book goes into some detail in each chapter dealing with the various inner-workings and twists and turns of the remaining band members, as each struggled to find a direction forward after Garcia's death. Selvin allows events to stand and speak for themselves--sometimes not putting people in the best of light.Included in the aftermath of Garcia's death are things like a GD theme park (which reached the drawing/planning stage), trying in vain to salvage enough recent studio tracks recorded before Garcia's passing for an album (there was nothing good enough), the suicide of Vince Welnick (despondent over the bands break up), The various post GD spin-off bands (Other Ones, RatDog, Furthur, etc.), what to do with the band's massive collection of live tapes (dump all of them on the internet, signing with the Rhino label), plus the continuing disagreements among those connected to Garcia (Deborah Koons' hard feelings toward Mountain Girl--just one example), along with other personal hard feelings and feuds that surfaced after Garcia's death.The authors have done their work in chronicling the difficulties of the remaining band members, (especially Phil Lesh and his wife who come away as definitely mean spirited when it came to other band members) and others tied to Garcia after his passing. Working for several years on the idea for a book like this, Selvin had time to collect viewpoints from those who consented to talk with him. Lesh and Kreutzmann declined, and while including them would've made for a more rounded, deeper look at this time period, there's still enough interesting and informative details that seem to create a pretty accurate picture of what went on post-Garcia. There's sixteen pages of b&w photos from the period covered in the book and an index.Reading this book you may find yourself smiling, shaking your head in negative wonderment, or simply sighing after digesting some of the episodes that took place in the GD camp in the two decades after Garcia's passing. But this is as close as any of us will get to the real-deal end of "what a long strange trip it's been". Peeling back the (still for some) prevailing hippie/acid-tinged/Summer of Love ideal, this book is a slap-in-the-face-dose-of-reality of the last twenty years of what remained of the Grateful Dead. And it's a long way from what many of us thought and felt about such an iconic band that could only have been born in the sixties. I still miss that (albeit short) era. But this last period of the GD story needed to be told, and Selvin has brought it to life for better or worse. But even after reading this book, if you come away slightly sad or disgusted with what happened--these are human beings with (sometimes not the best) feelings and viewpoints not unlike the rest of us it turns out--there's still the music to get lost in. In a number of ways this book will burst the bubble many people have of what the Grateful Dead stood for, but it's a riveting read on a bumpy road.

For some reason I have recently been catching up on Dead (and Hunter) shows and it got me to wondering what really happened after Garcia died- Selvin does a fairly thorough job filling in the blanks and corroborated many of my impressions throughout the years. I wanted to know WTF happened and Selvin's recounting seems authentic and real. I have read just about all of the memoirs that have come down over the years and for me, none seem to give much depth in telling the real story as this one. (His blow-by-blow, tune-by-tune calls of the Final Tour have to be read to believed). Still, though they are likely to be totally lost on anyone not already acquainted with the music of the Dead, they showcase his deep understanding of the band and their music.I have been reading Selvin's work (as well as that of John Wasserman and Ralph J. Gleason, to be fair) since I began growing up alongside of, then finally attending and following the Bay Area music scene a really long time ago; while I disagreed at the time with a lot of his reviews of shows I saw, in retrospect I'd have to admit he was probably right.I don't really know what sort of a personal relationship he had with the band members, his impressions may seem skewed but I believe for the most part accurate, far as I can tell just from observing over the years. Answered a lot of lingering questions, scratched some itches, and redirected my attention to a lot of good music and video I missed after '90 due to negligence and ennui of the whole scene.I did not intend to review this book, but reading other reviews stirred me to try to offset some of the GD loyalist bashers- I can start, if I may, by quoting another review I found buried below.."Having worked for Grateful Dead Productions from February 1983 until March 1996 as Manager of Grateful Dead Ticket Sales (GDTS.) I was there. Joel got it right...in my personal experience I can vouch for this book. Nobody will ever get the story 100% right, but this close... " . Says it all and refutes so much of the aggressive defensiveness found in reviews written by die-hard Heads that miss the point entirely. Lest those among you who may feel so inclined (and are bothering to read this) check out the Rolling Stone review as well as, well, take your pick.Selvin has had a storied career as one of SF's most prolific pop reporters and while elements of his book seemed rather lopsided concerning certain personalities and band interpersonal dynamics, I too felt like he got it right. I "was not there" except via attending shows from 1973 to 1991, so it's not too much of a stretch to realize Selvin, truthfully as he can, has filled in a lot of the blanks. I continually had an "I thought so" reaction while reading along. I realize much has changed since this book came out, but If you too lost interest after The Coma - or even before when the inescapable realities of heroin use began to manifest- and feel as if you want to catch up to at least the publication date (2018), this is a good place to start.

This is the GD book for people who say they can never read another GD book again because they all cover the same territory.This one doesn't; it's the first book to cover the post-Jerry years.But be warned: this is a largely negative account of all the infighting between the surviving members, primarily Phil vs. the others.And Phil and his wife Jill are the "villains" here, portrayed as just horrible human beings: scheming, nasty, money-and-ego-above-everything.Author Selvin though, ends the book on a high note: all the petty differences put aside (temporarily at least) to stage the triumphant Fare Thee Well shows..Despite the largely tawdry, very UN-hippie portrayal of the four surviving members, I tore through this fascinating book in record time. Could not put it down.If this portrayal is to be believed, you'll never quite look at the surviving members the same again. Then again, this is just the author's view of them, and other, more positive sides of these very three-dimensional people who have given me soooooooo much joy for 50 years are not emphasized as much.Keep that in mind if you read Fare Thee Well.And if you simply don't want your bubble burst, avoid this book.I knocked off one star from my review just because Selvin re-creates soooooo many meetings and incidents and conversations that he obviously didn't witness, using unnamed sources instead, that I wonder about the veracity of at least some of them. Then again, Selvin IS a seasoned, highly-respected journalist..P.S. - As a professional journalist myself, I just HAVE to point out the fairly large number of typos throughout the book: whoever proof-read Fare Thee Well simply did not do a very good job.

Great Book. The Right Sequel after having read through Blair Jackson‘s Garcia book. Am not a diehard Dead fanatic but enjoy reading about them and am a total Garcia enthusiast.

Good read

What an eventful read.the inner workings of the grateful dead main players.my god the lesh egos inflated is an understatement.yee gods.i had them on a pedestal and an old friend said if you really knew them you probably wouldn't like them.so true but hey now the music never stopped.

Jerry Garcia didn’t like to see himself in a leadership role in relation to the Grateful Dead. But once he was gone, so too was any group unity. Author Joel Selvin portrays a fascinating depiction of the post-Garcia factions which emerged in the GD world. It is, by turns, saddening and promising - and always suspenseful - as the remaining Core Four orbit each other in alternating moods of recrimination and reconciliation. The saving grace of Fare Thee Well - and perhaps the Dead scene itself - is that it remains centred on the will of the Deadheads to honour the past and future of the music. Dead & Company prove that there can be an ongoing forum for the music, and online Deadhead communities prove that interpersonal bickering is but a minor element of the Dead’s ongoing legacy.

A fairly depressing read. Phil and his wife take a beating, but I'm on Phil's team. Weir is boring AF.