Jerry Garcia And The Grateful Dead :: essays research papers fc

Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead Rock Legends of the 60s and 70s   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Jerry Garcia’s life was filled with wonderful things, many of which he never expected in the first place. After an almost fatal heroin overdose in 1986, â€Å" Garcia philosophically stated, ‘ I’m 45 years old, I’m ready for anything, I didn’t even plan on living this long so all this shit is just add-on stuff.’ † (â€Å"Garcia†) This attitude shows why Garcia did all of the things he did and even how some of them came about. Garcia, who â€Å"functioned as the preeminent pied piper of the rock era,† led a life of great artistic ability which he used in many ways(â€Å"Grateful Dead_ Rockhall†).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Jerry Garcia was born as Jerome John Garcia on 1 August, 1942 in San Francisco, California (â€Å"Garcia†/’Grateful Dead†). Garcia learned to play folk and rock & roll when he was 15 even though the third finger on his left hand was missing because of an accident as a child. In 1959 he served in the U.S. Army for a very short period of time (â€Å"Garcia†/Erlewine_). J.J. Garcia, also known as Captain Trips, was a diabetic heroine addict and was arrested on charges of heroine possession in 1985(Erlewine_/†Grateful Dead_ Rockhall†/†Garcia†). While in a Forest Knolls, California drug treatment center, Garcia died on 9 August 1995(â€Å"Grateful Dead†). Some of his ashes were scattered in the Ganges River not long after he died, and the rest were scattered into the San Francisco Bay in the second week of April 1996(â€Å"This Is the Week That Was†E7). The effect of his death was equivalent to those of J ohn F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Elvis Presley, and John Lennon. When Garcia died â€Å"The press was largely in agreement, concerning that a major talent in the world of music had passed on (either that or all the news editors on daily newspapers are all 40-something ex-hippies.)†(â€Å"Grateful Dead†) The â€Å"pied piper† was and is now no more than a legend in many people’s eyes. The band name as well went down with Jerry as a unanimous agreement among the band members(â€Å"Grateful Dead†).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Captain Trips first played with Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions who became the Warlocks in 1965 and later became the â€Å"seminal ‘60s rock & roll band the Grateful Dead† for which Garcia is most known(â€Å"Jerry Garcia_†). Grateful Dead is a name that was randomly chosen from an open copy of the Oxford English Dictionary.