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A review by duffypratt
Living with the Dead: Twenty Years on the Bus with Garcia and the Grateful Dead by David Dalton, Rock Scully
3.0
I didn't actually finish this, but not because I wasn't enjoying it. I was reading it, in part, while on a stationary cycle at the gym and I am pretty sure I left it there. It didn't get turned into the gym lost and found. So either a deadhead picked it up, or perhaps someone who decided to make maybe a buck at Half Price Books.
I've decided to review it anyway because I had just come to the end of the chapter that dealt with the making of Blues for Allah, and Scully had pronounced that the Persian heroin had just made a big reintroduction into the circle. That marks the beginning of the end, and knowing something about the decline of Garcia and Scully into addiction, I decided I didn't want to buy the book again just to read the depressing stuff.
The beginning of the book, and even up to where I lost it, was a lot of fun. I've read that much of what Scully says is unreliable. Of course it is. It's a gonzo memoir. I wouldn't read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for its factual content either. Gonzo uses exaggeration and distortion to (hopefully) reveal a larger truth. That said, Scully is no Hunter Thompson, and sometimes the attempts at overload tended instead to be overbearing or simply overdone.
Scully's attitude toward the band members is troubling. Bobby is always an incompetent, spaced-out kid. There's not a good word to be said about Phil. Bill comes across as a mostly deranged wild man. There is some sympathy for Pigpen, who is drawn more fully than the others. Garcia, on the other hand, can basically do no wrong. And Keith and Mickey are pretty much cyphers. (Keith always comes across as a cypher, and it makes me wonder if that's just how he was.)
The stories, however, are fun. And Scully is more forthcoming than any of the other books I've read. Of course, forthcoming and reliable are two separate issues. One of the things that surprised me, however, is how little of the book had to do with the business of the dead, considering that Scully managed the band for close to 20 years. With all of that, there is very little on the nuts and bolts on running the business. I would have liked it better if he had gone into some of the business dealings in the same sort of detail that he gave to many of the acid trips.
If I see the book (and maybe this copy) in Half Price Books, I will pick it up and finish it. But for now I am counting it as a sign that I lost it where I did, and that I don't have to get angry and bummed out, yet again, over Jerry's self destruction.
I've decided to review it anyway because I had just come to the end of the chapter that dealt with the making of Blues for Allah, and Scully had pronounced that the Persian heroin had just made a big reintroduction into the circle. That marks the beginning of the end, and knowing something about the decline of Garcia and Scully into addiction, I decided I didn't want to buy the book again just to read the depressing stuff.
The beginning of the book, and even up to where I lost it, was a lot of fun. I've read that much of what Scully says is unreliable. Of course it is. It's a gonzo memoir. I wouldn't read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for its factual content either. Gonzo uses exaggeration and distortion to (hopefully) reveal a larger truth. That said, Scully is no Hunter Thompson, and sometimes the attempts at overload tended instead to be overbearing or simply overdone.
Scully's attitude toward the band members is troubling. Bobby is always an incompetent, spaced-out kid. There's not a good word to be said about Phil. Bill comes across as a mostly deranged wild man. There is some sympathy for Pigpen, who is drawn more fully than the others. Garcia, on the other hand, can basically do no wrong. And Keith and Mickey are pretty much cyphers. (Keith always comes across as a cypher, and it makes me wonder if that's just how he was.)
The stories, however, are fun. And Scully is more forthcoming than any of the other books I've read. Of course, forthcoming and reliable are two separate issues. One of the things that surprised me, however, is how little of the book had to do with the business of the dead, considering that Scully managed the band for close to 20 years. With all of that, there is very little on the nuts and bolts on running the business. I would have liked it better if he had gone into some of the business dealings in the same sort of detail that he gave to many of the acid trips.
If I see the book (and maybe this copy) in Half Price Books, I will pick it up and finish it. But for now I am counting it as a sign that I lost it where I did, and that I don't have to get angry and bummed out, yet again, over Jerry's self destruction.