Seeking revelation at the Grateful Dead’s farewell tour
While waiting outside Chicago’s Soldier Field for a miracle ticket this July 4 weekend, a writer ruminates on the nexus of Judaism and jam bands
CHICAGO — If being a Deadhead or a Phish Phan represents a faith of sorts, then this weekend’s Grateful Dead farewell concerts in Chicago would be their High Holidays.
There was a full-scale invasion blowing through the Windy City from July 3-5 as largely geriatric revelers threw off the shackles of their everyday lives and embraced their Grateful Dead selves. Visitors to Soldier’s Field, the massive football stadium where the shows were held, passed by an almost two-mile long gauntlet of hippies splayed out on the grass holding up fingers indicating how many tickets to the night’s show they were seeking, or used signs indicating that they were more than willing to trade drugs, glassware, rides, and their girlfriend’s sexual services in exchange for tickets.
As for this intrepid writer heading down to the show to explore the relationship between Judaism and jam band fandom, just like on Rosh Hashana, I too did not have a ticket.
The Grateful Dead began in California in 1965 and toured consistently until the 1995 death of frontman Jerry Garcia. The band’s founding members, called the “pioneering Godfathers of the jam band world,” influenced generations of bands, foremost among them Phish. For this final 50th anniversary “Fare Thee Well” five-show tour, Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio joined the surviving “core four” Grateful Dead members.
Everywhere you looked ahead of the Chicago shows, people held signs desperately calling out to the universe for a “miracle,” that much ballyhooed ticket that magically appears at just the right time for a Deadhead who has traveled, possibly a great distance, to attend a show they could not afford. This belief in miracles — in the beneficence of the universe, despite all evidence to the contrary, is spiritual in nature. If you believe hard enough, the show gods will deliver.
In the parking lot for the show, the faithful appeared in droves. The ubiquity of those signs and cries suggested that if, in fact, the universe invariably provides miracles for the worthy, it was certainly taking its sweet time in delivering that $400 ticket. A carnivalesque atmosphere reigned and countercultural cliches roared to pungent life as random drum circles broke out, long-haired, dreadlocked shirtless young men with tattoos played acoustic guitars, Hacky sacks were punted about in a circular fashion, and travelers stole tokes from joints and pipes.
Talking to fans about the commonalities between Judaism and the strange quasi-faith of Deadheads and Phans, I encountered two distinct types of people. There were fans who found questions about religion and music strange and didn’t seem particularly interested in analyzing the things that gave them pleasure. For these fans, the disproportionate number of Jews who have historically flocked to The Grateful Dead scene and then, later, the Phish scene, their fandom is largely a matter of geography or culture.
Phish came up in the East coast college scene and there are a lot of Jews going to college on the East Coast. It also doesn’t hurt that half of Phish’s line-up (drummer Jon Fishman and bassist Mike Gordon) are Jewish.
Only one member of The Grateful Dead, Mickey Hart, is Jewish, and its Bay area home base is less traditionally Jewish than the East Coast, but The Grateful Dead’s journey touches upon many of the cornerstones of Judaism, from its roots in the 1960s counterculture in which Jews played such a central role, to its inveterate wandering. The Jews have historically been a migratory people, always on the move, always looking ahead. The same is true of Deadheads.
I also talked to people who seemed to have been waiting for someone to ask them about the relationship between Judaism and jam bands, and have ruminated and meditated over the connection extensively. This eagerness to really delve into the things that give us pleasure struck me as a decidedly Jewish quality, the sense that the intellect is not the enemy of pleasure or joy, but a facilitator for them, and that thinking long and hard about what makes us happy is a form of enjoyment in itself.
That was certainly true of an intense middle-aged man with a white yarmulke named Michael Wachs who attended his first concert forty years ago and vividly recalls being “transported” to “a different universe, beyond this physical space” by the experience. For Wachs, the factor that united everyone at the show was a search for “truth” and the “exalted self” that can be found in Judaism, but that also finds a vessel in the not quite as ancient, but still sacred rituals of Deadheads and Phish phans.
For Carla, a director of a Chicago-area Jewish preschool, the commonalities between Judaism and Grateful Dead fandom are legion. They are both focused on being part of a tribe, a family and a community, “something bigger than you are” and embracing passion and joy.
For Jews who have historically been outsiders in the larger culture, Grateful Dead/Phish fandom offers a sense of belonging, of identity. It’s a way to both assert your individuality and join a group of like-minded souls, she said.
Carla was at the show in a wheelchair but she wasn’t about to let a bad foot keep her from being part of the end of something that has meant so much to her through the decades.
Aaron Finestone, a Chicago-area Grateful Dead and Phish obsessive missed the shows because he was at a different musical festival out of town. He discovered The Grateful Dead while a counselor at a Jewish summer camp.
Finestone’s comments reminded me of the late, dearly missed Jewish comedian, writer and Phish super-fan Harris Wittels, who on his podcast Analyze Phish talked about working on his Phish fandom diligently every day the same way a Torah scholar would study scripture everyday.
Finestone discovered, like countless music obsessives before him, that the more invested he was in Phish and Grateful Dead, the more he got out of them. Like religious faith, obsessive Phish or Grateful Dead fandom requires patience, belief and a willingness to put in time and work for the possibility of transcendence. For Finestone, it’s about finding your place within an established tradition, something that goes for music fandom and religious devotion, and seeking transcendence and freedom from the hang-ups, anxieties, and insecurities of everyday life.
I know that when I started going to Phish shows I responded to the freedom from the self-consciousness, shame, and anxiety that seem to be endemic parts of my Jewish character and sensibility. I felt liberated from the need to look cool or be cool; I could exist in the moment, forget my old self and be reborn anew.
For fans like myself and Finestone, a truly transcendent Grateful Dead or Phish show is all about freedom. I have heard that, for the Chosen People who got to attend the Fare Thee Well shows, they were an epiphany.
I will have to take their word for it. I did not get my miracle those nights. For this broke Jew as well as thousands of other folks rich in spirit, but poor in cash, revelation was just not in the cards.
Nathan Rabin is the author of the 2013 book, “You Don’t Know Me but You Don’t Like Me: Phish, Insane Clown Posse, and My Misadventures with Two of Music’s Most Maligned Tribes.”
