Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead

Justin Richmond (0:08)

Pushkin.

Hey y'all, it's Justin Richmond here. Just want to let everyone know that this episode of Broken Record was recorded and produced long before the coronavirus outbreak. It's with Bob Weir from The Grateful Dead. And since we recorded this episode, his Wolf Bros Tour has been postponed. Hopefully it doesn't also wind up affecting this summer's dead-in-company dates. We'll have to wait and see. But we do plan to keep putting out episodes of the podcast that'll hopefully be a bit of a reprieve for everyone who's either continuing to work or practicing social distancing. We hope everyone out there stays safe and stays healthy. And we hope you enjoy Rick's conversation with The Grateful Dead's Bob Weir.

Out of all the original members of The Grateful Dead, Bob Weir has had the longest and most productive trip of all. The dead formed in the Bay Area in the mid-60s, toying relentlessly until Jerry Garcia's death in 95 They were able to keep their audience on their toes throughout their 30-year career with experimental improvised live sets that stretched on for hours at a time. Every show was designed to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. As we'll hear in Bob's conversation with Rick Rubin, the band was never focused on making studio albums or writing perfect songs. It was always about playing live and seeing where the music would take them. It's an objective that has served them well. There's a rapid selection of deadheads who trade recordings of live shows to this day, a tradition the band started fostering decades ago. As a result, Bob credits the band with creating viral marketing long before the internet. In addition to The Grateful Dead, Bob has also toured with a number of offshoot bands, including Dead in Company with John Mayer and his latest project, Wolf Bros with Don Was, who are on tour now. If there's anyone keeping the dead alive, it's Bob Weir. And after all these years, he's still just playing in the band. Bob starts off by telling Rick about a recent dream where his old friend Jerry visits him with a song that materializes into a giant playful sheepdog. It's super trippy, but what else would you expect?

This is Broken Record, liner notes for the digital age. I'm Justin Richmond.

Here's Bob Weir in conversation with Rick Rubin from Shangri-La.

Rick Rubin (2:22)

Do you write songs all the time? What's your process like?

Bob Weir (2:27)

There's stuff going on in my head all the time. And right now I'm kind of writing all the time, yeah.

Rick Rubin (2:37)

Yeah, it's nice.

Bob Weir (2:38)

You know, it comes out very, very slowly, slower than a slug in a trance, but, you know, I keep at it.

Rick Rubin (2:49)

In the past, you worked a lot with a lyricist, and I understand he passed away.

Bob Weir (2:52)

Yeah.

Rick Rubin (2:53)

Is that, how do you fill that gap, or how do you imagine it working going forward?

Bob Weir (2:59)

Well, I've always, you know, I was working with John Barlow, the lyricist, but I always wrote like half of the lyrics, or usually wrote half of the lyrics.

Rick Rubin (3:08)

Would your half come first and he would finish them?

Bob Weir (3:10)

Generally speaking, yeah. Generally speaking, I would come up with whatever it was that married that lyric to that music.

Rick Rubin (3:17)

Understood. And you would have already the framework melodically of the phrasing.

Bob Weir (3:23)

Yeah. Or, you know, some big notion of that. Yes.

Rick Rubin (3:30)

How often would a song change from the initial spirit when writing it?

Bob Weir (3:37)

Sometimes not at all, and sometimes it would get way different.

You know, a song is...

I'm going to dive right in here. A song is a life form. It's, you know, an alien life form. It's organic.

Actually, I had a dream a few weeks back. My old pal Jerry came to me in the dream and introduced to me a song. And the song came in, and it was kind of... It looked kind of like a great big room-sized ethereal sheepdog. It was big and friendly and came up and sniffed me, and I batted it a little bit, and it came back at me. It was interactive. And then we started playing and singing the song, and then we were in it. We were in the song. Part of it. We were part of that functioning organism. And the dream sort of trailed off into wherever dreams go. But that just confirmed my notion that I've held for the longest time, that a song is a life form, and it comes and visits us, and it comes through certain people for whatever its reasons are, or whatever its attractions are.