The Solo Career That Was Never About Fame
From Grateful Dead Sleep Stories · 00:14:15
Show by GD Sleep Strories
Bob Weir got fired from the Grateful Dead at twenty. But he was already running the show. Ace, Kingfish, Bobby and the Midnites, RatDog: a 27-year campaign.In 1968, Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh told Bob Weir he didn't count. Rock Scully put it plain: the weight was on four cats, not six. Weir was twenty years old, standing in a construction ditch on his birthday with rainwater up to his ankles. What he did next — and what the Grateful Dead spent the next three decades refusing to acknowledge — is one of the stranger power struggles in rock history.This isn't a musician biography. It's a story about creative control, band politics, and what happens when one member of a democracy keeps getting told no. From the Tom Sawyer routine that produced Ace in 1972, to the Bobby and the Midnites lineup that included Billy Cobham and Alphonso Johnson, to the June 1982 show where Jerry Garcia voluntarily opened for Weir's side band — the solo career was never about the spotlight. It was about finding a room where nobody told him to eat their shorts.When Garcia died in 1995, RatDog was already running. Brent Mydland had been scouted from Weir's solo project. The boss had been ready for years.CHAPTERS:0:00 The Night He Turned Twenty-One1:30 The Usual Story About Bobby Weir Is Wrong3:00 Ace: The Tom Sawyer Routine5:00 Kingfish and the Problem With Half-Measures6:30 Heaven Help the Fool Finds Brent Mydland8:00 Bobby and the Midnites: Mr. Show-Biz Unchained10:30 Garcia Voluntarily Opens for Bob Weir12:30 1995: The Boss Outlasts EveryoneSources:— Dennis McNally, A Long Strange Trip (2002)— David Gans, Conversations with the Dead (1991)— Ace (album): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ace_(album)— Bobby and the Midnites: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_and_the_Midnites— Internet Archive — Grateful Dead Collection: https://archive.org/details/GratefulDead— Grateful Dead Archive Online: https://gdao.orgThe Shakedown Archives covers the history, mythology, and documented reality behind the Grateful Dead — for Deadheads who want to argue, not just remember.#GratefulDead #BobWeir #Deadhead
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