The Untold Truth Of Jerry Garcia

In August 1995, the world lost a psychedelic musical giant when Jerry Garcia passed in his sleep at the Serenity Knolls treatment center in California. Born in San Francisco during WWII, Garcia grew up in various parts of northern California, excelling at both art and guitar (per Allmusic.com). He and his friends formed the Grateful Dead in 1965, and they immediately took the psychedelic scene by storm. They performed at Woodstock and became one of the defining bands of 1960s counterculture. The band itself is legendary for its devoted cadre of fans, known colloquially as Deadheads, and Garcia found himself center stage for all the attention as the singer, main lyricist, and lead guitarist in the band.

Today, he is remembered for his incredible musical contributions to rock and roll and is one of the most recognized American recording artists of the 20th century. He died at the age of just 53, a stifling end to one of the brightest flames in Americana lore. Though he was one of the most charismatic performers in rock history, his personal life was plagued by drug addiction and the constant deaths of his close friends. This is the untold truth of Jerry Garcia.

While Jerry Garcia is primarily known for his contributions to the music world, he was also a successful artist by the late 1980s, and he had created the beginnings of a fashion empire. An LA Times article published just months before his death in 1995 detailed the heights his empire had already reached by then. His artwork had been transposed onto a number of different mediums, including ties and wetsuits, and even more zany ideas came, too. The Beverly Prescott Hotel in Los Angeles spent $18,000 creating a room themed around his artwork, and they charged guests an extra $50 per night to stay in it. The article noted plans for the future were only increasing, with his clothing line to be extended to include women's wear, formal wear, items made of silk fabrics, and more water-wear items.

Garcia's art career spanned his entire life. He attended the San Francisco Art Institute when he was young and created over 2,000 pieces of art throughout his career (per Rolling Stone). Though he was successful during his life, since his death, his paintings and other works have reached incredible new heights. In 1995, the LA Times estimated his lithographs sold for $250-$600, but today they routinely price in the multiple thousands of dollars at brokerages. In a sign of the times, in 2021 his work was offered for the first time in the form of non-fungible tokens, or NFTs.

In one of the most tragic and heart wrenching moments of Jerry Garcia's life, he lost his close friend Paul Speegle when he was just 19 years old. In late February 1961, Garcia, Speegle, and a couple of friends were driving around East Palo Alto trying to score some marijuana (per "A Long Strange Trip"). The car was being driven by the manager of their rooming house, a man named Lee Adams, who had a penchant for speed. At one point, Adams got the car up to nearly 100 mph before crashing into a sharp turn near the Menlo Park Veterans Hospital. The car rolled and all the passengers were ejected, except Speegle, who died in the wreck. Garcia was himself thrown through the windshield and suffered a broken collarbone and likely a concussion, as he was unable to remember the events of what had happened.

In the book, "Captain Trips: A Biography of Jerry Garcia," Sandy Troy writes that the accident had a profound effect on the rest of Garcia's life. He had switched places with Speegle just moments before the crash had happened, and he constantly talked about the traumatic event in the months afterwards. The crash fueled Garcia to focus his life on music, and he immediately started playing folk music with his friends Robert Hunter and Marshall Leicester.

During Jerry Garcia's life, he was married a total of four times and had countless other girlfriends and mistresses. In "Dark Star: An Oral Biography of Jerry Garcia," Robert Greenfield relays how Garcia met his first wife, Sara Ruppenthal. Ruppenthal was a folk singer and student at Stanford University at the time when she saw Garcia playing at a bar called Kepler's. They locked eyes in the crowd and immediately fell in love. They got married in April 1963 and had a daughter that December, but within three years they had both started new relationships, and they finally separated in 1966.

His other marriages included Deborah Koons, Carolyn "Mountain Girl" Adams (pictured above), and Manasha Matheson (per the LA Times). He had met Adams during his time with the Merry Pranksters, of whom Adams was one, and they also had three kids together in the 1970s. He had another daughter with Matheson in 1987, and the LA Times article also noted another woman was suing for paternity of a sixth child. After he died, his ex-wives got into a heated legal debate that pitted them and their kids against each other. Eventually, the estate was settled, but not before Koons had distributed part of his ashes in India, without inviting his brother, any of his children, or other ex-wives to the ceremony (per SFGate).

It might come as a surprise to those who do not know much about Jerry Garcia prior to his days in the Grateful Dead, but he was actually a member of the U.S. Army in the 1960s during the very early years of the Vietnam War. According to his U.S. Army personnel file, he enlisted in the army in February of 1960. Since Garcia was only 17 at the time, he needed his mother to sign off for him to join, which she did. He completed basic training that September at the San Francisco Air Army Defense School at Fort Winfield Scott. Yet, by that December, his superiors were already recommending he be discharged from the army. Among many other issues, they cited a "defective attitude" and an "unwillingness to accept authority." 

In a 1972 interview with Rolling Stone, Garcia claimed to have smuggled his guitar into the army so he could keep playing. He said he joined the army because he was at a point in his life where he felt lost and unsure of what to do. He also for some reason claimed his family didn't know he was in the army, even though it was his mother who had originally signed off allowing him to enlist at age 17.

By the 1980s, Jerry Garcia's incessant drug use was starting to spiral out of control. By the fall of 1984, Phil Lesh had noticed a considerable drop off in his live performances. Garcia had become inattentive and isolated onstage, and his performances were becoming dreadful. In early 1985, the band went over to his apartment and had a heartfelt intervention with him. They gave him an ultimatum: either keep using the drugs or keep playing in the band. Garcia chose the Dead. They immediately took him to rehab, where he signed up to come back at a later date, but in the interim he was arrested for possession of cocaine in Golden Gate Park. He eventually got clean for a while as part of a drug diversion treatment program, and started to develop hobbies like building R.C. race cars and teaching his cat new tricks, much to Phil Lesh's shock.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Dead lyricist Robert Hunter claimed that when they initially went over to Garcia's house, he tried to shut the door and yelled at them to leave. It pained him to describe Garcia at that point as a "junkie," a term he felt was only reserved for the most helpless and hopeless of drug addicts.

If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

In 1968, at the height of the counterculture movement and during the run-up to the presidential election, candidate Richard Nixon created a campaign ad that featured Jerry Garcia's likeness (pictured above). Garcia's image was only on screen for a few seconds, but it was shown along with pictures and videos of other "hippies" who were seen performing music or smiling. These images were shown accompanying a music background full of heavy distortion and harsh tones, and were contrasted by pictures of professional looking young adults featured with upbeat and calm sounding music. The theme of the commercial was Nixon's faith in the non-counterculture, traditional youth of America and their impact for the future.

A few years later, Garcia and the band's continued antics only made the Nixon Administration dislike them more. In "Garcia: An American Life," Blair Jackson notes that in 1970, the Dead song "Casey Jones" would run afoul of the Nixon administration due to its chorus that featured a character repeatedly using cocaine. According to Jackson, radio stations refused to play the song because they were worried about upsetting Nixon's appointees at the FCC. Jackson also notes, though, that the band never considered themselves political and never overtly endorsed any official political agenda.