A Conversation with Jerry Miller (continued)

PM: Back then, or in the years that followed, were you very friendly with other members of the San Francisco psychedelic band seen, the Airplane or the Dead, or any of those? Was there much co-mingling back then?

JM: Just Jerry, yeah, pretty much.

PM: He was a pretty friendly guy.

JM: Yeah, he was really friendly. I think that was one of the big charms of the Grateful Dead, was Jerry Garcia's amiability.

PM: Yeah, and such a musical soul. He really liked to jam and liked to play and liked to hang out.

JM: Yes, he did. He was a really good guy. He was basically responsible for us staying in California.

PM: How so?

JM: Well, we went down to a place called Hunters Inn in Santa Maria, and it was '64 or '65--probably '65. And we finished a gig down there, and we didn't have anything left to do, so we were headed back up to Washington. And we had an old Corvair and a trailer. And we stopped at this place just out of nowhere in Belmont called Inn Room, and the Warlocks were playing.

PM: Wow!

JM: And we just stopped in to have something to eat, and we heard this band playing. And we went in there. And I started talking to Garcia. We said, "We're headed on our way home." And he said, "No, you're not."

[laughter]

PM: "No you're not"!

JM: So I think I got home in '95.

[laughter]

JM: So, yeah, we stayed at this beautiful Victorian, all of us lived there, on Ralston Street in Belmont with these bartenders. And we'd go up to the Inn Ranch and jam. Had a lot of cool people around. There was Neal Cassady.

PM: Wow.

JM: We got to meet everybody. We still hadn't gotten the bar scene out of our craw yet, so we were doing the Dragon-a-Go-Go. Then we got wind of what was going on at the Avalon and Longshoreman's and the Fillmore. And we said, "Okay, well, that's enough of that." So we just partied for a little while and the organ player went home up to Seattle. And we kept the sax player with us for a while, and we started doing a few more clubs. But slowly but surely we got--me and Don, who were in the Frantics, got Mosley. We heard him play, and he was playing with Joel Scott Hill. And we got him, then he took off for a while and met Peter. And he came back up and we all met Skip, and kaboom!

PM: Wow.

JM: Yeah. It was Garcia's fault.

PM: All his fault. That's amazing.

JM: Yeah.

PM: Have you ever considered, or have you ever started writing a book about this colorful life you've led?

JM: Yes, I have. As a matter of fact, I like to turn on my little recorder and just sit there and tell stories. I think it would go over pretty good. As long as I don't tell the whole truth.

PM: Yeah. Some version thereof.

JM: I have to keep it down a little bit for the Santa Cruz days.

PM: Yeah, because I mean, you're a survivor, not only of the band's crazy years, but many of the later years were equally wild, since I was on the West Coast in the '80s when everybody was going nuts.

JM: Oh, the '70s were even nuttier. But it was a lot more fun than now. I mean, what can you do. Now they have your name and address, man, and they look up your name and address all the time. We even have, believe it or not, the lawn police here.

PM: The lawn police?

JM: Absolutely. Oh, they tell you you got to keep your lawn under seven inches--

PM: --and you can't have any pink flamingoes on your lawn and stuff.

JM: And see if you're up at night.

PM: And see if you're up at night?

JM: Yeah, anything suspicious.

PM: Oh, man, that sounds way worse than it is here. I mean, here they try to tell you what color to paint your house, but they don't give a damn if you're up at night.

JM: Yeah, well, I may be a little suspicious, because I am up half the night.

PM: Yeah, right, of course.

JM: But if they're going to be over looking at your lawn and stuff, what's next.

PM: Yeah, looking in your window.

JM: Yeah. And if your car is up to date.

PM: Wow. The people in my neighborhood flipped out because of this kind of stuff, and they all started putting pink flamingoes on their lawn, like sometimes up to 20 or 30 of them.

JM: You know what? That's a good idea. You just opened the door to something.

PM: [laughs] It looks really funny when you ride by.

JM: Yeah. Well, doggone it, that's what I'm going to do. And I'm going to tell my friends, too. 

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