The Other One: The Long, Strange Trip of Bob Weir Page #3

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are everywhere.

Everywhere.

I just, you know,

I followed my bliss right onto the bus.

I have the whole thing

all grooved out.

And there was Kesey.

Mr. Kesey, do you feel

that you have the right to do what

you want, whatever you want?

I feel a man has the right to be as big

as he feels it in him to be.

And then there was

this other guy on the bus

who seemed to be his grand vizier,

who just chattered and spoke...

quite often in rhymes.

Fourth dimension.

We are actually fourth dimensional beings

in a third dimensional body

inhabiting a second dimensional world.

That was Neal Cassady.

We are an Intrepid Trips production.

But the Intrepid Trips production,

at the moment, is the Acid Test.

Acid Test.

So Ken Kesey and

the Merry Pranksters come along

and they want to spread the word

about this amazing new drug, LSD.

And so they start having these parties

called the Acid Test.

The Acid Tests were permissive bedlam.

They were large rooms

in which numbers of stoned people

were singing, f***ing,

chirping, imitating animals.

Anything that you could possibly imagine

was going on at the Acid Test.

I think they charged a buck at the door.

There was LSD in the Kool-Aid

and everybody got a cup of Kool-Aid for

a buck and got to go into the party.

It was a big success.

It was a big, monster party,

but there wasn't any music.

We brought our equipment and took LSD,

and we plugged in and we played.

We all had Prankster names like,

Phil was Reddy Kilowatt.

Billy was Bill the Drummer.

Jerry's was Captain Trips.

I was the Kid.

It was impossibly fun.

When you take LSD,

your awareness is greatly expanded.

At the same time,

you're profoundly disoriented.

Yeah, you've got your hands

and you know how to play a few chords

and you know how to play rhythmically,

but when the guitar's

turned into some snake-like critter,

and you're watching notes in lines...

in color go by...

You know,

it's hard to relate to all this stuff.

"What is the deal here?"

And still you got a gig,

you got to play.

There were a few times when we'd take acid

and we'd walk out and try to play

and couldn't make sense of anything.

We'd just throw up our hands and flee.

But then we'd come back together

and we'd play like demons.

We'd take a song and at the end,

we'd just, rather than ending it,

let's just stretch it out.

Play with the rhythm,

play with the texture.

That's kind of how we learned

to extend and improvise.

"I'm gonna work

this chord change for a while.

I've heard the jazz guys do it,

and I'm gonna try my hand at it."

There was a lot of extrasensory

communication going on.

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