Captain Trips: A Biography of Jerry Garcia [Paperback]

Sandy Troy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1995

Avid Dead fan and chronicler Sandy Troy probes Jerry Garcia's personal and professional life through childhood and adolescence, Summer of Love acid tests, drug busts, three marriages, a brush with death, and his comeback. Troy also traces the Dead's highs and lows and Garcia's musical relationships with songwriter Robert Hunter and other musicians in the Grateful Dead.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

What brand was Jerry Garcia's first guitar? What went wrong with the Grateful Dead's set at Woodstock? These esoterica sustain Troy's (One More Saturday Night) biography of Garcia, the Grateful Dead's famed guitarist and leader. As a celebration of the Garcia legend, Troy's book is a total success-seemingly every detail of the musician's career is catalogued. Other elements of the 52-year-old Garcia's life-such as his three marriages and four children-are given shorter shrift, reflecting perhaps the reality of life in a band renowned for its ceaseless touring. Troy has a pedestrian narrative style and the pace is often slow. Not even Garcia's diabetic coma in 1986 earns dramatic urgency. In tracing the guitarist's life, Troy does little to explore beyond his myth, but his interviews and anecdotes supply fodder to expand on it. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Just in time for the enduring, canonical Grateful Dead's 30th anniversary next year, Troy has written the first complete biography of bandleader Garcia, the only rock guitarist to have an ice cream flavor named after him. The author examines Garcia's life and career up to and including his surprisingly staid wedding this past February. Included are Garcia's adventures with Ken Kesey during the mid-Sixties, his recurring health problems and revolving drug difficulties, and his creative pursuits, both within and without the Grateful Dead. Because Troy (author of the Dead biography One More Saturday Night, LJ 5/15/91) traces not only Garcia's own musical career but the development and evolution of the Dead through the past 30 years, his book can also be considered a worthy collective biography of the band. Given the Dead's continuing popularity, their importance in 20th-century popular music, and the growing recognition of Garcia as an individual artist, this should be seriously considered for academic as well as public library music collections. [See also the review of David Shenk and Steve Silberman's Skeleton Key on page 70-Ed.]-Bill Piekarski, Southwestern Coll. Lib., Chula Vista, Cal.
--Bill Piekarski, Southwestern Coll. Lib., Chula Vista, Cal.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 325 pages
• Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press; First Edition edition (August 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560250909
• ISBN-13: 978-1560250906
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #376,594 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not the definitive work, September 27, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Captain Trips: A Biography of Jerry Garcia (Paperback)

While an interesting work and worth reading, it is not nearly the biography that Blair Jackson's "Garcia" is. Many aspects of Jerry's life are somewhat polished up it seems. Not that gory expose is desirable, but still I was left feeling that perhaps the book had a censored feel to it. This is just an opinion. Read Jackson's book, then "Dark Star", for a much more complete and well rounded view of Jerry's life.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Cursory and inadequate, October 5, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Captain Trips: A Biography of Jerry Garcia (Paperback)

I was going to recommend this to those just mildly curious about Jerry Garcia, but on second thought I can't do that. It is an inadequate look at a profoundly complex man, done in a style that, once you have read better work, you realize leaves big wedges of the pie out. Blair Jackson's biography is THE definitive work, of course, but I would also read Dark Star and even the hilarious (but occasionally innacurate) Living with the Dead by Rock Scully ahead of this. Jerry would have hated the name, too: Captain Trips...he despised all that psychadelic pop icon schmaltz, including the skulls and the Uncle Sam hat. He just wanted to play guitar, which may in the end be his most eloquent and lasting testament to all of us.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Captian Trips, January 13, 2006

By 

Coquette07 "KM" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Captain Trips: A Biography of Jerry Garcia (Paperback)

Whether or not you're a fan of the Grateful Dead of Jerry Garcia, this is a good starter book to get the general facts about Jerry's life and a little about the Grateful Dead. The information given in this book is pretty good, but it doesn't go as in depth as I would have liked to. The photographs in the book give a better idea as to what Jerry was into at that particular time. You can see what Troy was trying to describe, like his clothes and friends and his general attitude towards life comes out in the pictures. This book is definitely a good book for general knowledge.