Of everyone we talked to when making our Jerry Garcia feature, Curt Kirkwood of the visionary punk-psychedelic-country Meat Puppets probably had the most illuminating insights. For real. But, for the tweakers, here is an amazing Grateful Dead drug story from him.
I once got pulled over coming out of a Grateful Dead show and I was on so many different drugs. I was on everything except shooting up dope. I was driving my friend’s Volkswagen and there were about 10 people in this Volkswagen Bug. The cop pulled me over as soon as I came out of the parking lot, they were pulling everyone over. I opened the door and stepped out of the vehicle and a Black Flag poster—the [Police Story] one that said “Make Me Come Faggot!” with a picture of cop with a gun in his mouth—falls out of this chick’s car. It wasn’t mine, it was my friend Lisa Wheeler’s fucking Volkswagen and her fucking “Make Me Come Faggot!” poster. The cop was like, “Oh, you want to pick up your sticker there or whatever it is.” Then I beat his drunk walk after all of that. I don’t know how. That is proof that after a good Dead show that you’d be floating. You couldn’t bring me down.