Customer Reviews

Home Before Daylight: My Life on the Road with the Grateful Dead

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Steve Parrish has been a justifiaby much-loved member of the Grateful Dead circle for decades, and this is why his book has been so anticipated. More than most, Parrish has earned the right to speak his peace. He's just a real, plain-spoken big-hearted fella - and it's this approach to writing his book (with Joe Layden) - as to why Parrish's book succeeds. Parrish manages to write with honesty but with compassion. For this reason many readers may prefer this simpler work over McNally's and Skully's books.

No, Steve Parish does not write with the sophistication and finesse of, say, Blair Jackson (still the best writer on the GD scene), it's the emotional directness that separates this book from many of the rest. True, there are a few minor inaccuracies with times and dates (believe me, you've seen worse). But it's the overall emotional quality of Parrish's stories and insights, for me at least, that I found more compelling than some of the other, more polished works that have come out. And don't let the plain-spoken nature of this book fool you: There are numerous observations, anecdotes and insights (I wish there were more), that only Steve Parrish could deliver (the meeting with Garcia and Sinatra is a riot).

So for those of us who loved the Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia, Phil, Bobby and the rest of the crew, and for whom the emotional quality of the band mattered (and matters) more than anything else, Parrish's effort is one of the better ones there at this time. Recommended.

As an avid reader of all Dead-related literature, I was pleasantly surprised to find this book in a big chain bookstore in NYC. Talk about no publicity. The people who were supposed to be marketing this book should be fired because none of the Deadheads I know had ever heard of it (for proof just note that this is the first Amazon review after more than a year in print).

While there are a number of cool stories about life on the road with the band, this is just as much a book about the author's life, and frankly, who cares? It's very poorly written, even with a ghost writer. Parish provides endless details about how many groupies he and the rest of the crew consumed and equally endless details about how much pot and other drugs they ingested. Don't get me wrong, I actually like reading that kind of stuff, but I kept hoping for deeper insight and it never came.

This is a guy who spent 30 years with the most creative musical genius (Garcia) and band (the Dead) ever to come down the rock and roll road, yet strangley there isn't a single story about the MUSIC itself, and what made it so special, or about the creative activities of the band as they made songs and uplifted several generations of fans. I think there may be only one song title mentioned. Perhaps he smoked so much pot that he forgot a lot of the good that happened.

It's better than Rock Scully's turd, but only because it came from a place of real love for Garcia. At the end it was a sad feeling that it left with this reader.

Having said all that, Deadheads will find it worth reading, it's just not a book about the thing that really mattered: the music. Fortunately, the music survived, and the spirit carries on.

I think the major problem with this book is that readers will buy the book to learn new insights about Garcia & the Dead. What they will get is few new insights that haven't already been written about but plenty of info on Parish's life as a roadie and his sexcapades. Who really cares about that. We all know that every band and roadie has drank to oblivion, partied harder than most, slept with groupies in multiple combinations. What we want to know is interesting stories about Garcia and the DeAD. While there are some good stories and insights, they are few and far between.

I too have read every book about the band and was looking foward to reading this book for months. I read the entire book in 2 days. There was some new insight into what a great guy Weir is. How Weir hated the Hells Angels. How Mickey was the most difficult memeber of the band. There is also some more sad confirmation of what a Heroin addict Garcia was for most of the last 25 years of his life. From Parish's inside position with Garcia and the band there could have been another 300 pages of good stories. Don't blame Parish for how poorly written this book is though, blame his co-author Joe Layden who wrote the Chuck Zito Hells Angels book. Another piece of quickly written but entertaining trash.

I found this book to be a deep, insightful look into the world of rock and roll from a very different and very personal perspective. This is not, nor does it purport to be another "Grateful Dead history".

Steve was uniquely situated to both participate in and observe the Grateful Dead as a band and as an institution. His perspective allows us to catch glimpses of the real action behind the scene that was often the basis for the magic (or sometimes lack of it)in the on-stage performances.

Of far greater impact to me, however, was Steve's willingness to share his personal travails, passions, successes and failures over the past 30 years. He reveals one very involved, very sensitive and very insightful man's interaction with the power and impact of rock and roll on people in and around the scene, both the famous and sometimes the infamous. In telling his own story, Steve often challenges conventional and traditional assumptions about who are really "good guys" and who are "bad".

He shows us the humanity that drove the unfortunately unrealistic desire of Jerry and others to make it only "all about the music". Through his unparallelled access Steve is able to the efforts of those in and around the Band to enjoy normal lives and meaningful interpersonal relationships while fending off, or all too often sucumbing to the dangers of hard drugs, greed and the many other down-sides of "fame" in 20th Century America.

He accomplishes all of this with humility and well-placed humor. I have read many rock and roll biographies of both individuals and bands, and I strongly recommend Steve's book as offfering a truly "one of a kind" perspective.

Great outstanding, finally a book from a real insider. I've been in the dead scene for over thirty years, and like most deadheads can't get enough. I especially liked the stories about the odd happenings on the road that only a true roadie would know. Terrific stories, told in an exciting and humerous way. I read it in one sitting and finished it just before daylight.

There are loads of books filled with facts about the Grateful Dead, but none of them comes as close to the truth as this one. It takes wisdom to recognize the truth, and courage to tell it. Steve Parish has both. Jerry would have been proud. This one gets it right.

I have read every book written on the band and while some of the things in Steves book I had never seen before, and indeed found very insightful, those moments were few and far between. He seemed to take the easy way out by not really letting us in on anything of substance that went on behind the scenes, as if he were afraid to offend those hands that still feed him. You can't blame him for this, but then why go through the excersise at all. Some of his stories were nice, but do we really care how the members of the Hells Angles died over the course of his tenure with the Dead? I'd rather get more details of why Vince never really fit in. Finally, how could he write only 200+ pages on this subject??? I have worked as the Controller for a boring Manhattan publisher for 18 years and could come up with 200 pages of somewhat interesting stories. As the right-hand man to the leader of the most intersting band of this century this book should have no less then 600 pages. With that said, I still recommend the book. Its a nice easy read, and like I said, there are some things in there that I have never heard or read before.

I picked this book up at the Barnes and Noble bargain book section for like 4 or 5 bucks.

It was a very pleasurable and fun read. The other reviewers are right; the book is about Steve Parish and his life and his experiences, he just happened to be a groupie and apparently an integral part of the GD scene. His life revolved around the Grateful Dead it seemed, so you got a fair bit of that.

People keep saying it was horribly written. I can read and write and maybe it wasn't technically fancy, but it did the job for me. Everything was easy to understand and there were no holes. It didn't jump around too much.

I thought this book really paints a picture of how important drugs were to the whole scene. It gave a decent feeling of what the 60s might be like. Whether that portrait is true or not, it is Steve's Portrait.

I'm not a deadhead a hippy or a stoner and I really enjoyed this book, you might too.

I generally don't read much fiction I mostly read nonfiction, and I thought this book read like a novel, except most of the stuff was probably true.

I was amazed at all the raunchy details that are in this book, it is probably not for kids.

I am not and never have been a deadhead but I was very entertained by these road stories. Initially it was very hard for me to read as I am a little too close to the author... but as I continued reading I distanced myself and found I could not put this book down. What an unusual life this guy had - I laughed, I cried, then I kissed the author. Enjoy it, it's quite a ride.

One of the better Dead books I've read. Parish (with assist from Layden) surely has a lot of stories to tell and he does it in an affable manner - even when his own behavior is less than stellar. Learned a lot about Jerry Garcia, but little about the rest of the band. Though that's understandable since Parish was by far closest to Garcia.

In reading this back to back with the books by Rock Scully, Dennis McNally, and the Garcia oral history "Dark Star," there is a bit of Grateful Dead "Rashomon." That is, all three books sometimes cover the same people/events, but all with a slightly different take. And the "hero" in one version can be the "villain" in another. Still, an indispensable tome for both hardcore and casual Deadheads.