Read Joan Didion’s Lost Interview With the Grateful Dead: ‘We’re on Our Own Trip’

It would seem that even an archive as thoroughly curated as that of the late, legendary novelist-essayist-screenwriter Joan Didion still bears some surprises.

In 1967, the Saturday Evening Post assigned Didion to interview the Grateful Dead in their Bay Area rehearsal space at the height of the Summer of Love (with which the group was already disilluioned). She watched a rehearsal and then interviewed the band — then comprised of Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan and Bill Kreutzmann — minus Pigpen, who had mysteriously disappeared after the rehearsal.

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A brief segment of the interview was published in Didion’s classic essay collection “Slouching Toward Bethlehem,” but the full three-page draft was recently uncovered at the New York Public Library in the archive of Didion and husband John Gregory Dunne and published in full in music writer Geoff Weiss’ substack Passion of the Weiss.

It’s a brief but fascinating time capsule of the band, their scene, and perhaps most of all the hippie-era slang they used, with references to scenes, trips, bags and, in one case, what would now be considered a racial slur (although clearly not intended as one).

As Weiss notes, Didion found “the boys” to be “very engaging and very unpretentious” — a brief excerpt appears below; read the full draft at PassionOfTheWeiss.

The Dead have been together 2 years, but they all knew each other before that, playing in different rock and roll groups around the area.

“We play at Davis, someplace like that—– they’re not really alive there. We got a dead curtain behind us. They bring us up because they hear that’s what’s happening. Not even their minds are moving. We can pick it up – it’s like playing to a brick wall, except worse, because this brick wall expects something and you don’t know what.” (Garcia.) “It’s horror,” somebody adds.

“If they get on this scene about if – they – do – it – in – the – Panhandle – then – we’ll – do – it – in – the – Park, we should get together with [Janis Joplin and Big Brother & the Holding Company] and say fuck you, we’ll play together.”

“That’s right, it’s our trip, not these hippie merchants.”

“I think of it (he means the Park scene) as a gift of the bands to the people for supporting us the rest of the time –– they pay a lot of money at the Fillmore and Avalon.”

What they are objecting to here really is the plan of the Council for A Summer of Love (“the highest echelon of the power structure,” they call it) to have a program in the Park all summer. “Why should they program the Park?” “It’s like why should there be a musicians’ union, stuff like that.”

“In the Park there are always about 20 or 30 people below the stand, ready to direct the crowd for their own uses, ready to take them on some militant trip.” “Yeah,” laughed another. “Militant peace.” Garcia again: “Always ready to make some political pronouncement — we don’t want to direct the crowd, we just want to have a good time.”