Jack Kerouac-Jerry Garcia legacy

Subject: RE: Jack Kerouac-Jerry Garcia legacy
From: GUEST,Doug Saum
Date: 08 May 11 - 04:17 PM

Wally Hedrick is a key link/mentor for JG to the beats. JG did read Kerouac, though this isn't unusual for young rebels at the time. As to a personal connection? No, Kerouac's brand of alcohol-drenched Catholic guilt would not have suited anarchistic JG in the least. Now, Neil Cassady is a different story and, perhaps, a different thread, though he is the personal link between JG and JK (Cassady being an important influence to both of them). The official biography of JG GARCIA: AN AMERICAN LIFE by Blair Jackson (1999) does not give Kerouac a mention as an index topic.

Doug Saum

Subject: RE: Jack Kerouac-Jerry Garcia legacy
From: GUEST
Date: 08 May 11 - 01:24 AM

acutally yes, he did feel connected to kerouacs writings

A germinal moment for me was back when I was in high school going to the San Francisco Art Institute on weekends, just when the words "beat generation" began hitting the papers. We asked my teacher, Wally Hedrick, about the phrase, and he said, 'Well, there's this book, On the Road, and it's all in there.' I was an impressionable San Franciscan, really taken with the North Beach scene, and this stuff began to surface.

Then in the next couple of years I read Kerouac, and I recall in '59 hanging out with a friend who had a Kerouac record, and I remember being impressed—I'd read this stuff, but I hadn't heard it, the cadences, the flow, the kind of endlessness of the prose, the way it just poured off. It was really stunning to me. His way of perceiving music—the way he wrote about music and America—and the road, the romance of the American highway, it struck me. It struck a primal chord. It felt familiar, something I wanted to join in. It wasn't like a club, it was a way of seeing. It became so much a part of me that it's hard to measure; I can't separate who I am now from what I got from Kerouac. I don't know if I would ever have had the courage or the vision to do something outside with my life—or even suspected the possibilities existed—if it weren't for Kerouac opening those doors."

-Jerry Garcia, 1989

Subject: RE: Jack Kerouac-Jerry Garcia legacy
From: GUEST,Rev
Date: 08 Aug 06 - 12:25 AM

i think that their primary connection was Neal Cassady. I'm sure that Garcia read Keroac, but I've never heard of him saying that he felt that any sort of torch had been passed to him from Kerouac. Garcia wasn't a lyricist, so there's no connection there. It's possible that Robert Hunter, who wrote most of Garcia's lyrics, felt some connection to Kerouac, but I don't know.
I recommend the official Grateful Dead history, Long Strange Trip, by their publicist Dennis McNally, who also happens to have written a book on Kerouac and the Beats (called "Desolate Angel")

Subject: RE: Jack Kerouac-Jerry Garcia legacy
From: GUEST,van lingle
Date: 07 Aug 06 - 10:20 PM

Hey Art, what you been smakin'? :0)

Subject: RE: Jack Kerouac-Jerry Garcia legacy
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 07 Aug 06 - 09:34 PM

Many were the imes that Garcia had smaked enough weed when, I'm sure, he could manage to find a mysyic link between the two of them.

Subject: RE: Jack Kerouac-Jerry Garcia legacy
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 07 Aug 06 - 07:05 PM

They could have both had Ben and Jerry ice creams named after them

Cherry Garcia and Dharma Plums, or Black Cherrouac, or Coffee Bean Moriarty......

but they didn't.
haven't got a clue - give up!
what's the answer?

Subject: RE: Jack Kerouac-Jerry Garcia legacy
From: Amergin
Date: 07 Aug 06 - 02:49 PM

Well, Kerouac didn't much care for the Merry Pranksters....he accused them of being communists...

Subject: RE: Jack Kerouac-Jerry Garcia legacy
From: woodsie
Date: 07 Aug 06 - 10:57 AM

Jack Kerouac said that he got the beat prose thing from the music of Charlie Parker.

Subject: Info please: Jack Kerouac-Jerry Garcia legacy?
From: Elmer Fudd
Date: 07 Aug 06 - 12:46 AM

Does anyone know anything about the connection Jerry Garcia had/felt to the writings of Jack Kerouac? I've heard vague rumblings about Garcia's appreciation the rhythm of Kerouac's writing, and perhaps feeling that a cultural torch of some sort had been passed to him from Kerouac. There was certainly a bridge between Kerouac and Garcia in the form of Neal Cassady, but I'm wondering if anyone has any other information about a music or lyrics legacy.

Elmer