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The Grateful Dead was a carnival centered on musical talent, full of joy, unpredictability, silliness (and in one incident, even a drunken barnyard animal). It was a canny business organization run with foresight and a clear vision, and it was also a little like a religion, with a devoted following and an ethos shared among the organization and its fans.
All these things can be true, according to filmmaker Len Dell’Amico in his memoir “Friend of the Devil: My Wild Ride with the Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia.” His book suggests that such contradictions coexisting in one organization added up to the Grateful Dead’s secret recipe that continues attracting fans to this day. The book sits easily with these contradictions, illustrated by personal recollections of Dell’Amico’s time with the band and Garcia himself.
He will discuss “Friend of the Devil” at Kepler’s Books on Aug. 17, a fitting venue as Garcia and frequent Dead collaborator Robert Hunter are known to have hung out at the progressive bookstore in the early 1960s when it was located at 825 El Camino Real, not far from its current location. Dell’Amico will appear with author Jim Newton, whose new book “Here Beside the Rising Tide,” offers a “history of the Grateful Dead that explores the American counterculture through the life of iconoclastic frontman Jerry Garcia, and his merry band,” according to an event description. The event will be moderated by band historian David Gans.
Dell’Amico got a unique perspective on the second half of the Grateful Dead’s 30-year existence as both a creative insider and a friend, particularly of Garcia. Working as the band’s “film and video guy,” from 1980 through the early ‘90s, Dell’Amico shepherded several high-stakes projects, filmed more than 60 concerts, created videos for some of their songs, and on a personal level, was on hand for many inspiring, funny and revealing personal moments.
Outside of his work with the Dead, he has directed and produced concert films and music videos with artists who include Sarah Vaughan, Herbie Hancock, the Allman Brothers Band, Linda Ronstadt, Ray Charles, Blues Traveler, The Neville Brothers, Carlos Santana, Reuben Blades and Bonnie Raitt. His most recent feature film is “Welcome to Dopeland.”
“I always knew that I would have to write this book, even before (Garcia) died 30 years ago and because professionally, I got so much out of my working relationship with the Dead, … he was basically my point guy and I learned the whole approach to work (from him), which was unique in show business and uniquely successful. It’s mind-boggling how big this thing is,” he said in an interview with this publication.
Garcia died on Aug. 9, 1995, and this year is also the Grateful Dead’s 60th anniversary.
Dell’Amico described writing the memoir as the “hardest thing I’ve ever done” largely because the work was far more solitary than he’s accustomed to as a filmmaker. His appreciation for creative collaboration, and in particular, what he sees as a formative experience working with the Grateful Dead, is borne out in the book.
“The most striking thing was that the Dead were a democracy,” Dell’Amico said. “I quickly learned that if they had managers, I didn’t know who they were. A real manager makes decisions on behalf of the band. You talk to the manager, and whatever happens between the manager and the band is not my business. I would meet with the six guys. Jerry was in charge of film, television, but for important stuff, he would gather the whole band with me, and we would talk it all out and get agreement.”
Unusually, the band did everything in-house, he said, from lighting and sound design to ticket sales and merch.
“Jerry had this, not so much a hippie vision, as socially minded. So their ‘family’ was actually a family. Everybody there made good money. They made sure that we had plenty,” he said.
Prior to his work with the band, Dell’Amico was based in New York, filming bands’ performances to project onto screens to offer audiences a closer perspective. Sometimes called video reinforcement, it’s a standard practice at larger venues now, but was in its infancy as Dell’Amico was launching his career.
He filmed big name acts including the Dead for video reinforcement, and speculates that this work got Garcia’s attention, landing him a job interview in a pot smoke-filled room backstage at The Warfield in San Francisco in 1980. Garcia wanted to talk about filming the band for a groundbreaking pay-per-view concert, to be broadcast from Radio City Music Hall into 25 movie theaters nationwide on Halloween 1980, a version of livestreaming before what we know as livestreaming existed, Dell’Amico points out.
Dell’Amico mentions a few times during our conversation and also notes in his book that a lot of the Dead’s shows and other filmed events are available on YouTube. It reinforces what Dell’Amico describes as Garcia’s wisdom in seeking a way to document the band on film, though Garcia died just as the web as we know it was becoming widespread. That legacy on film, making the band accessible to audiences in a new way, built on another unique practice the band encouraged, which was allowing audiences to record audio of their concerts.
In fact, Garcia’s vision was something that came better into focus for Dell’Amico after he completed writing his book.
“I finished the book, then I read it, and then I figured out what Garcia was doing. It was kind of mind-blowing. He had a vision for his band and his work, because he wrote the music to interact with electronic media and film, television and what was coming — and he knew what was coming because he was well read and talked to scientists and movers and shakers in the entertainment business, etcetera. So when we met in 1980 he wanted the Dead to be the first band to electronically distribute a live show across America,” Dell’Amico said.
“Friend of the Devil” details how Dell’Amico, with just a matter of weeks to plan, pulls together the pay-per-view show, with help from “Saturday Night Live” writers Al Franken and Tom Davis, who created comic interludes for the broadcast. These comic breaks were meant to give audiences in theaters something to watch during breaks between sets.
“If you’re in the crowd, you kill time by smoking weed, talking to the person next to you, partying all the time. But if you’re at home, you better give them something to watch, some music. So we would film stuff with band members and comedy and stuff like that,” Dell’Amico said.
It was the start of a creative collaboration that would also include, among many other projects, the creation of the Grateful Dead concert film “So Far.” The film, released in 1987, brought together intimate rehearsal sessions with the band and their live performances with striking special effects and computer graphics that were cutting-edge at the time.
The film came together slowly, compiled from about three different shoots, with progress halted when Garcia fell into a diabetic coma in 1985. When work resumed following his recovery, the film’s rough cut was about two hours in length. During a band meeting to discuss the film, Dell’Amico recalls that Garcia suggested cutting about half the film due to the fact that its primary audience would be television/home video viewers, rather than a theatrical audience.
“Now when I I look at the outtakes — the hour that we cut out — it’s so right, beautiful,” he said.
Also in 1987, Dell’Amico filmed what would become one of the band’s most iconic videos, “Hell in a Bucket,” with a cast that featured numerous animals, including a duck and a tiger. Filmed in downtown San Rafael (“the same terrain George Lucas used for ‘American Graffiti,'” Dell’Amico notes in the book), the video sees singer Bob Weir in a dive bar, a “brothel” and finally in a vintage car driven by devils, accompanied by a duck, who it turns out, had a little too much fun on set, drinking from a champagne flute that Weir was holding.
“The (duck’s) trainer called me, and he’s like, ‘ you got my duck drunk.’ He was drunk. There was no alcohol on the set. When you’re shooting a movie in a bar, everyone knows you have to clear it out, you can’t have drunk people on the set so you have fake booze. Everyone knew the rule. Plus Bobby had just gotten out of rehab, I didn’t want to be responsible for anything, yeah, but he smuggled some real champagne into the car,” Dell’Amico recalled.
It’s the kind of event that fits with Dell’Amico’s description in the book of the band as not really the hippies they were often stereotyped as.
“The actual guys in the band and the crew surrounding them, were maybe far more like pirates,” he wrote.
But Dell’Amico writes about the band and particularly Garcia with a mix of respect, affection and some reverence, highlighting the frontman’s musical talents, business acumen and vision alongside his kindness and down-to-earth demeanor.
He describes memorable creative moments, big and seemingly small, such as when he’s in the studio with Garcia when Hunter drops by with newly written lyrics for what would become a song on their 1987 album “In the Dark.”
Dell’Amico shares his rising anxiety as he white-knuckles a night out with Garcia following the musician’s recovery from a diabetic coma, as he tries his best to honor a promise to Garcia’s wife, Carolyn (AKA Mountain Girl), to keep the evening short and low-key.
The memoir recalls moments that show how relatable Garcia was — even if the particular circumstances might not be something you’d encounter every day.
That’s why Dell’Amico points out that his book’s title, taken from a Grateful Dead song, invokes the “trickster” aspect of the devil, rather than the more traditional king of hell incarnation.
“There’s an afterword explaining the title, because (Garcia’s) not a devil, but he’s devilish, yeah?” Dell’Amico said. “He’s a trickster, and the trickster is an ancient icon, a mythological thing that resonates over different societies forever.”
Aug. 17, 4-5 p.m., at Kepler’s Books, 1010 El Camino Real, Menlo Park; $11.49-$21.99 (admission without book)/$45.09 (admission and 1 copy of the book); keplers.org. For more information about Len Dell’Amico and his work, visit lendellamico.com.
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