Thirteen years after Bruce Hornsby saw his first Grateful Dead show in 1973, at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, the singer-songwriter-pianist and his band the Range opened for the Dead at Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey County—that same night, the “Touch of Grey” video (see below) was shot.
Following keyboardist Brent Mydland's 1990 death, Hornsby appeared with the Dead in a reoccurring role on keys, and inducted the group into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. Hornsby shared some of his thoughts about Garcia with Rolling Stone:
I miss him so much. He was such a deep soul, but also a really funny guy. He [was always] ready to laugh and had the sharpest wit and just a great recall. Great memory, great knowledge of the world. He was a great hang.
Garcia’s legacy is that the amazing body of music he created. “Black Muddy River,” “Ramble On Rose,” “Brokedown Palace”—you could keep naming them for the next 20 minutes. Dead & Company are carrying the torch in a beautiful way with these songs, which I consider to be the hymns of the lives of the fans. And the young people who come to those shows now, the uninitiated, sense something very deep and moving. It gets under their skin, and they become fans for life.
NBA legend and longtime Deadhead Bill Walton remembers Garcia:
Jerry was a rare and different dude, Walton told Variety. He was a creative genius and a supremely powerful force of nature. He could do, and he did, a lot of things for a lot of people.
He was a member of the team. I’m a team guy. The whole team, and the rise, the fall, the recovery. It’s the story of life, it’s the story of so much of the music. The powerful emotions, and the songs, and the music, and the lights and the sounds. The flesh-eating low-end, and it just comes right through you, and it fills you with light, hope and dreams. It fills you with life. It gives you a reason to fight for tomorrow.
It's difficult to imagine L.A. punk rockers Jane's Addiction connecting with the Grateful Dead, which makes the group's take on "Ripple" (see below) an unexpected treat. Frontman Perry Farrell's thoughts on Garcia:
[Garcia] had one of the sweetest voices that I think we’ve ever heard. And within that sweetness, there was a wisdom that made him a natural leader.
How he led was not by stomping his fist on the podium. Instead, I think his message was that we all can transform our lives through music, experimentation, rites of passage, through nonviolent action, because his sound was beautiful and it was sweet and it was encouraging and it was like listening to music in the Garden of Eden.
Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart does the same thing every year on this anniversary. When Garcia died, Hart planted three blue redwoods—a rare species—one for each decade, on his property. They’ve grown a lot in the last 25 years, currently reaching about 40 feet high.
"That’s Jerry’s place, and that’s where we go to celebrate him," Hart told Rolling Stone. "We have a barbecue and have some of the old friends over and tell jokes."
Hart added, "If you take music seriously, you know Jerry Garcia. And as long as the songs are played, he’ll be remembered. That’s the bottom line."
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