A good email buddy, Doug Corkhill, posted the piece below to a private email list and I was so moved by it, I asked him if I would post it here on my blog and he agreed. So without further adieu...xTony
I Miss Jerry
By Doug Corkhill
I am presently suffering from a red wine induced coma, so to speak. This is what I have managed to produce. God (only capitalized because it is the first word of the sentence), I miss Jerry.
I turned on the radio tonight, and the Grateful Dead hour was on. This is a syndicated radio show distributed across the country that plays various Grateful Dead concert excerpts. The first half of tonight's show was from Golden Gate Park in San Francisco on August 13, 1995; the memorial service, as it was, following the death of Jerry Garcia four days earlier.
I miss Jerry; that I cannot deny. Those who are not Deadheads just simply cannot understand and comprehend, and thus the rest of this epistle will probably just not make much sense. But bear with me, if you will.
I became a Deadhead in 1977 by playing one side of a Grateful Dead album that was recommended by the guy behind the counter of the independent record store across the street from the campus where I was going to college. I got it, pure and simple. A year later I saw the Dead for the first time, and saw the Dead 70 or 80 times (I lost count) before Jerry died in 1995.
I was out of town when Jerry died. I was at the beach, in one of those wonderfully, idyllic vacations where you don't watch TV, don't read the newspaper, have no internet access, and life revolved around the sun going up and down. It was a wonderful week, until a friend came to visit that Friday. I can still hear her voice in my head; "Oh Doug, you don't know."
And then she told me Jerry was dead. Jerry had just about died a few years before, when my good friend John and I had tickets to the third decadenal Springfield Creamery benefit in Oregon and the shows were cancelled because Jerry was in a cocaine induced coma. It wasn't like Jerry's death was unexpected, but of course it was. Jerry was dead. For a Deadhead that bears repeating; there were twenty some odd pink "While you were out" notes waiting for me at the office when I returned related to Jerry's death.
That was thirteen years ago. Unlucky thirteen. There have been various and sundry tours since then, several amalgamations of various personnel comporting to be various incantations of the band. For a year or two the surviving (what a droll term) members toured as "The Dead." It was significant that they weren't Grateful, although all they played were Grateful Dead songs.
But there was no replacement for Jerry. Jimmy Herring sat in on a couple of tours, and did a fairly decent job replicating, insinuating, almost duplicating Jerry's finger work and style. Of all the guitarists, and one tour had three onstage at once attempting to replace Jerry, Jimmy was the best.
Jerry had a style unique to any guitarist I have ever heard. And I'm talking about before Jerry discovered the MIDI and played trumpet, trombone and oboe in concert. Jerry's sound was melodious; it was like Luke Skywalker hitting whomp rats in the desert; he could veer back and forth within a groove while all the time keeping his focus dead ahead.
And if you don't understand that, that's okay. The Dead would play these long jams that to the casual observer were an exercise in futility. To Deadheads they were concise readings of musical exquisiosity. Jerry would weave passages in and out of the rhythm with his guitar that we all could follow, with our hands, with our minds, with our souls. To Deadheads reading this I offer as exhibit A: Fire on the Mountain.
Listening to shows of the remnants the last four or five years; Bob Weir and Ratdog, Phil and Friends, there is something missing. Duh. There isn't and perhaps won't ever be another guitarist with the feather light touch that Garcia gave to the guitar. Others emulate, admirably, but they aren't Jerry.
"I know you rider, gonna miss you when I'm gone," goes the song the Dead covered. Like the headlight of a northbound train, I miss you, Jerry, now that you are gone. Safe travels.
~Doug Corkhill 8/14/2008
