Ethan Miller (former frontman for Comets on Fire/current leader of the equally impressive Howlin’ Rain) and I sat down a few afternoons ago and talked about The Grateful Dead. You got a problem with that, ya punk rock sissy?
VICE: So were The Grateful Dead a band that you liked from an early age, or did you get into them in an ass backwards punk rock way like me?
Ethan Miller: They were highly, highly illegal in my punk rock upbringing. I grew up in Humboldt County and came up in the punk scene there. When I say punk rock, I mean Black Flag or the Misfits; I never had a Mohawk and was never into The Exploited or shit like that. We lived in Eureka, which was the punk rock town in Humboldt. Seven miles down the road was Arcata, and that was where all the Grateful Dead shit was going on and we were just like “No fucking way!” There were all these hippies knitting hemp bracelets in the town plaza; it was disgusting. Then early on in Comets on Fire’s existence, I checked out the Allman Brothers—because you actually made a reference to them when you wrote about us in Blastitude—and that led to the Dead. And I think since the Dead were such a taboo in the scene I came from, it really made it a thrilling thing to discover.
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It was the same with me. When I actually started to like them, I felt like I’d broken down some huge wall or something. And since it totally pissed off all my old hardcore buddies, it made it even better to put on Live/Dead when they’d come into the record store I worked at and sorta stare at them like, “what?”
When I started getting into them, some of those guys in Comets were like “Fuck no! That’s weak ass shit! Someone get those whack ass motherfuckers a fuzz pedal!” And to this day I’m conflicted about my feelings on them. On one hand, I’m in complete awe of the music they made, but sometimes I have no patience for what they do. When you listen to them, you really have to sign on. You’re taken into their world one hundred percent and they do not alter it for anyone. You know, sometimes you don’t have 45 minutes to listen to whatever version of Dark Star there is. But if you do sit through the whole thing, you hear some parts where they’re singing real off-key because they’re so fucked up, and then you hear some real beautiful parts and you get to take it all in. It’s all a part of the trip, and once you accept that, I think you can get into them.
The business model they’ve managed to create for themselves is sort of insane.
They’re legendary for creating this fringe universe where they have this whole world of bikers and outlaws and hippies and Earth mammas and junkies and children and dogs and shit that follow them around. It’s their whole world and the Dead created it. At the same time, they have also set up this real powerful corporate model beyond what even Kiss has ever done.
I agree. It’s just not as crassly presented as Kiss. You’re not going to see a Grateful Dead casket. But, yeah, it’s basically the same thing, just shot through a different tunnel to a different group of people.
That’s the genius of it. We think of them as the opposite of crass, money hungry assholes. The duality and paradoxes of the whole thing is fascinating. Look at Jerry Garcia; he’s the icon of this cutesy teddy bear stuff. But Jerry was the darkest of dark mother fuckers. He struggled with the dope all his life until it overcame him.
Where I live on Long Island it’s total old Dead-head types who are obsessed with money and status and shit—and that fascinates me. I just wonder if one day they woke up and were like, “Oh man… if I want to keep this carefree party going, I gotta make a lot of money.”
I don’t know if stuff like that is all about the music, you know? The Dead let out this cultural reverberation into America that’s beyond people knowing the tunes. I think people like that are just into the culture of it.
I don’t know. It’s not unusual out here to meet some older dude who will really break it down when it comes to the Dead and then he’ll ask you what you do for a living and how much it pays and what your retirement plan is and all that. At the end of the day, I think I have more respect for the guy who’s been selling fake acid in the parking lot of Dead shows for the past 40 years.
They’re all about cheap hustlers playing dice in a corner of the room, and they’re also all about financial conquest—it all meets on a real profound scale. It might not be on the t-shirt or the poster, but it’s all about getting over by any means necessary when it comes to financial conquest. Those guys are total musicians though, and that’s the heart of it all, man. I saw Chris Robinson play with Further a few years ago and they played for five fuckin’ hours. The fire marshal had to drag Phil Lesh off the stage so they wouldn’t have to pay a fine for playing past 2 AM. Doing something like that isn’t a money thing. It’s to support Chris and just to be like little kids playing music. Fuck, their whole thing is totally paradoxical.
Man, I love the Dead.
They’re not one of my favorites or anything…
Howlin’ Rain’s latest album The Russian Wilds is very damn impressive and available now.