Customer Reviews

Living With the Dead: Twenty Years on the Bus With Garcia and the Grateful Dead

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If you are wanting to read the "back story" behind the music and are just now starting your homework, let me suggest you start here. Why? Why here, when this is obviously a flawed, overly subjective work seen through a prism of chemical distortions, bringing us what are probably broken and incorrectly reassembled memories? Because this is a book you will finish. You will read this from cover to cover and most likely love it, and because this book is (more than any other out there) about the FUN of the Grateful Dead. That part gets left out - a lot.

Other reviewers are not wrong - the last half of this book is largely about Scully and Garcia's drug addiction. But it isn't, as is made clear, like everyone else was a health food nut. (Well, Bobby was, but that's beside the point.) And there is also a ton of history going on during this time, too. (For one thing, we learn some of the reasons that Bob Dylan was so devoted to Jerry and said such gracious things about him later.) But what made it all work, the glue that held it together, was the fact that this music was just so much more fun than anything else going on. This book is about that fun, and this book is fun to read. There aren't many books that have made me laugh harder.

Where you go after this is your own business: if you want to read a superb biography and perhaps the most important book of the whole genre, read the Garcia biography. "Dark Star" is heartbreaking but very insightful, and much of it makes "Living With The Dead" seem tame by comparison, as it is all first person interviews of persons involved. The McNally book is probably the completest, but is often as dry as toast and completely disengaged from the joy this band dispensed. So start here for fun, and to get a taste for what the life was like, and put a little color in the cheeks of all those black and white photographs.

And as to why this book doesn't get much into the music, it's because no book could get in to the music and talk about anthing else. Scully was not a Dead head - he would probably rather have seen a Stones concert any night. He worked for the band, he didn't follow them for love of the music. If you want to get inside the actual music, that's a whole separate library you need to read. We aren't talking about the songs, we're talking about the band, and this is as good a place as any to meet them, and better than most.

I've read a ton of books on the Dead and this is my favorite so far in that it's more about the band than Garcia. Granted, there's a lot more about Garcia, but it's not as bad as some of the other books. I was thinking that I'd love to see a book written by Donna -- or any of the other members of the Dead. Hell, a quick essay by Tom Constantine would be great too! Scully tends to write more about the party atmosphere of the Grateful Dead. Great anecdotes and personal stories that you don't really find anywhere else. Things like "The Bobby Problem" had me giggling as I read... it's funny and chock full of good info. I definitely recommend it. The only thing this book is missing is more discussion of the music. Blair Jackson's "Garcia" handles this better, but there's still room for improvement. Overall, I've loved reading this book. A real pleasure for any fan of the Dead

This is an immensely readable swashbuckling tale by the first mate on the good ship Grateful Dead for some years at least. The reader is transfixed by the gory tales of drug use and abuse of sex and life on the rock 'n' rollroad. You are mesmerized by tales of dosing everyone who came within reach with LSD and standing back and watching the reactions. With each page there is new excess and with every other page the narrator recounts some contact with the authorities or other and escapades of derring-do and close shaves.

What a long, strange trip indeed. Of course, the writers' credibility must be in question to some degree. Given his early confession of consuming many tabs of acid much of which of the strength and purity that only Owsley Stanley could muster, the exact occurrences must have some dubious quality about them.

As Joni Mitchell has pointed out sex sells along with lurid tales of goings on in the rock and roll universe. In this case the many references to under age sex with band members throughout the book are some of the obvious sensationalist traps used to entice the unwary reader.

The trouble is that it is so easy to read dammit and so many of us want to know more about what our anti-heroes get up to. And it must be true too because, you know, he was there when it all went down. Well there is that side of things but then how can you believe everything that you read?

My fascination with the Grateful Dead came about through listening to their music, on record and in performance. Whether I got to know anything about their private lives really had nothing to do with my enjoying their sounds. Sure they became celebrities and they got big and sure they as musicians were exposed to things that most people do not. But there is nothing new in that and they were not the first or will be the last to meet ferryman through drug use. The fact remains that most of the people who enjoyed the Dead enjoyed their music first and foremost even if they did like to party to it.

When I finally put this down I felt revulsion about how someone so close to his hero Jerry Garcia could lay bare his humanity so cruelly for all the world to see. Garcia may not have been a saint but did he have to see his dignity destroyed by one who purported to be his friend.

What is missing most from this book is the music and the relationships involved. If you want sensationalist stories dripping with lurid day-glo details then get this book now. If you want to know more about the man, men and their music read something else.

Rock Scully was an integral part of the Grateful Dead organisation for a long time. It is a pity that he did not do the justice to everyone in that organisation that they deserved.

Find out what happened behind the scenes! The spark that existed in the early Grateful Dead was drugged and dragged down! It was not all light and airy as - it seems to me - many seem to think. Jerry was in serious trouble and on heavy drugs. Know the truth in what was going on. This book explains the difference in the early, (1960's), Grateful Dead and the clearly more sluggish Grateful Dead of the last years. Apparently, Jerry just continued to play to provide money - support for his life-lifestyle -- which was about serious drug use. Jerry, an experience with you and your group changed my life 30 years ago -- Rest in Peace.

I listened to an audiobook version, which at only 2 tapes in length I assume to be a drastic abridgement; my comments are therefore qualified. In general, this was a fun and revealing narrative, a very human depiction of artists who have been merchandized and iconified beyond all recognition. Of course (as another reviewer commented) the focus was 90% on Jerry, so the insight into band dynamics is by no means complete. But I especially enjoyed learning about the early years in the Haight, and about their earliest recording experiences, before the Grateful Dead arena-rock machine really got rolling. I came away very sad for Jerry, who began as such an outgoing, intellectually curious soul, and ended up with an utterly reduced life: hibernating in hotel rooms, doing drugs and watching TV.

I also have to comment on Scully's smug superiority when describing any encounters with 'straight' society. I always thought the hippie ideal was about peaceful coexistence among diverse people, respectful tolerance and courtesy for others, and healthy disregard for the arbitrary prohibitions against victimless behavior. So far so good, I'm there. So why is it funny when Jerry ties up the only airplane lavatory for an hour, doing his Persian, while fellow passengers suffer? Why so much contempt for the 'ratf..k' hotel clerk who had the audacity to charge material damages when Jerry flooded and torched his room? Is this kind of self-centeredness OK simply because you're hippies? I think I may have briefly entertained this perspective when I was 13, but thankfully outgrew it. Scully's Us and Them attitude was way over the top, and certainly no credit to the better ideals of a counterculture.

Although I don't doubt the extent of some of the issues discussed in this book (ie, the moral decay from sex, drugs and rock and roll), clearly it's very subjective and has a rash or two of self indulgent embellishment. According to Scully, Jerry is the musical genius who captained the good ship Grateful Dead, while the rest of the unworthy (in particular Bob, who apparently still to this day doesn't know basic cord changes let alone how to tune his guitar) merely sat on his coattails and enjoyed the trip. Of most interest is Scully's apparent ability to relay pages of quoted, and quite critical, dialogue from over thirty-five years, most of which were spent in self induced medicated states. I don't know about you, but most days I have trouble remembering what I had for lunch yesterday, let alone conversations I had in my younger days while drinking "funny Kool Aid" (unless of course he was writing everything down).

It's in the title. Implied in the title - MY living with the Dead. Written from and centered around Rock Scully's point of view. Still a decent read if you are into the Dead, or want to get into the Dead. But also check out McNally's newer book - Long Strange Trip, also sold at this site, which is more of the
history of the band, in detail. Personally, I like historical stuff, I enjoy the details, and McNally's tome is really good.
So take your choice, Scully's view and/or the fly on the wall view.

Written in a Hunter Tompson gonzo journalism style,I found the book to be very witty and funny.This is fear and loathing meets rock n roll.Even though everything in it has to be taken with a grain of salt,I did get a feeling of live on the road with the Dead.Being a recovering addict myself I did get a sense of the problems drugs cause, and towards the end of the book, I think Scully did a good job of potraying this.I feel even though some people seem upset at the potrayal of some of the other band members I was equally upset at the way in which he was cast out of the band after 20 years of service.Scully admits in the book about resentment issues,but I feel he has dealt with them quite nicely.His comments about the band are really quite funny and not really malicous.In general,Scully is a great story teller and a twisted,funny, witty man.I would like to thank him for the book,and if the other Grateful Dead members will not thank you for your services ,I will.Iam sure Jerry would of.

It's well-written. Scully presents his "trip" through 20 years with the Dead as a narrative, with momentum. His thoughts on band members' contributions and personalities do emerge over time, during the flow of events.

It's all here, the good the bad and the ugly. You get a real sense as to why the Dead were important to people. You get a real sense of Owsley's role (the LSD manufacturer who served as their "patron" for years). You get a sense of Garcia's personality and why people were/are attracted to him. You get a sense of the whole thing losing direction, the train coming off the tracks. You get a sense of abuse of power, and of the 70's dissolving.

For me, the most disturbing and disheartening description is Scully's remembrance of Altamount, when the Dead were too scared to play and took off in their helecopter, leaving the Rolling Stones by themselves to cope with the violent crowd and volatile situation.

The book draws a detailed picture of a complicated band, and it's an easy read.

This story is by turns wonderful (especially early on), depressing (especially toward the end), and hilarious (pretty much throughout), but always fascinating. Years of distance from the events allows Scully be as critical of himself as anyone else, and this gives the book an authentic quality. I only know the Dead's best-known songs, and I knew almost nothing about the band or Garcia before reading this book, yet it was a page-turner for me. Other musicians and cultural figures of the era make interesting appearances too.