Grateful Dead front man dies at 53
By Jonathan Graham
Staff Writer
Jerry Garcia was a driving force in American culture. After founding the band that would come to be known as the Grateful Dead, and gathering thousands of faithful fans, he passed away Aug. 9, 1995 in Marin County, Calif.
Jerome John Garcia was born on Aug. 1, 1942 in San Francisco, Calif. After witnessing the death of his father Jose Garcia, a bandleader, and being raised by his mother for most of his life, he became interested in playing the guitar at age 15.
“When I first heard electric guitar, when I was fifteen, that's what I wanted to play. I petitioned my mom to get me one, so she finally did for my birthday,” said Garcia in a 1993 interview with Rolling Stone Magazine, “I started banging away on it without having the slightest idea of . . . anything. I didn't know how to tune it up, I had no idea,” Garcia was a devoted fan of writer Jack Kerouac, who was famous for writing the influential novel “On The Road” in 1957. After one year, Garcia quit high school and worked as a salesman and teacher for a while until he eventually joined the Army. He received an early discharge and began taking classes at what is now known as the San Francisco Art Institute.
At the age of 23 he created the Warlocks, a rock group that consisted of members Garcia himself, Bob Weir, Ron McKernan, Phil Lesh, and Bill Kreutzman. After finding out the name Warlocks was already taken, the name of the band was changed to the Grateful Dead.
The band gained widespread popularity over the next 31 years, and collected a devoted group of followers, known as “deadheads,” who followed them from show to show around the country.
"If I knew what made us popular, I'd bottle it. Whatever it is, it invented us, we didn't invent it. The audience thinks we're providing more than music, but we don't let on what we're providing, intentionally,” Garcia said in a 1991 New York Times interview.
Garcia suffered from health problems throughout his life, from diabetes to drug use. He was an admitted user of heroin and psychedelic drugs. In the last few years of his life he had committed to stop smoking and using drugs, and had hired a personal trainer.
According to the Marin County sheriff’s office, Garcia died of a heart attack he suffered while in his bed at Serenity Knolls, a treatment center for drug addiction he was residing in at the time.
He is survived by his wife, Deborah Koons Garcia, and four daughters: Heather, Annabelle, Teresa, and Keelin. Funeral arrangements are undecided at this time.
“Ideally I would just like to disappear gracefully and not leave behind any legacy to hang people up,” Garcia said in a 1993 interview with KROG-FM, “I don’t want people to agonizing over who or what I was when I was here when I’m not here anymore. I would like to be thought of as a competent musician. That would be good. I’d like that.”
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So, I finally got around to reading these past few entries. Not too bad! I don't know if you want a critique or not, lol. Some of the quotes integrated into the test sounded a little bit awkward, like maybe the sentences were too long. I'm guilty of the same thing, sooo dunno how to fix that. Also, some of the details added into it seemed to disrupt the flow of the whole thing. For instance, talking about the details of the minor injuries the firemen had seemed a little overdone; you could have probably gotten by with just mentioning that one fireman had a broken arm.
Despite those two things, the articles actually sounded awesome. The gamertag tale was funneh, I never realized that much thought was put into a gamertag, hahaha. The obituary and article sounded just fine, and if you're just starting off with those and you're going to be getting better and faster (lawl) then you should be well on track to writing for a magazine or some such thing no problem. Sweeet. Whenever you score big and start writing for a big gaming company, I'll buy a subscription and read your articles :)
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