Tom Constanten on the Grateful Dead

Sam Paddor (0:00)

Hi, I'm Sam Paddor, and I'd like to welcome Tom Constanten. Tom played keyboards with the Grateful Dead from 1968 to 1970 So welcome, Tom, how are you doing today?

Tom Constanten (0:09)

Oh, ambulatory, me to stay that way.

Sam Paddor (0:12)

Yeah, that's a big word there, right?

Tom Constanten (0:16)

Oh, you're gonna get a lot of them, look out.

Sam Paddor (0:18)

Well, as someone with extensive classical education and background, how would you say that affected your playing with the Grateful Dead?

Tom Constanten (0:25)

It was all I had. When I joined them, my background was all I had, my brother with me, and it's what I went with.

I wasn't able to tailor things or manipulate the universe that much back then. I was very young, and I did have that background, as you mentioned, and I just went with it. It's what I had. Anthem of the Sun, there's a place where I quoted the Brahms Concerto.

Sam Paddor (0:50)

Oh, wow.

Tom Constanten (0:51)

So this is the stuff that was in my hands and in my head.

Sam Paddor (0:56)

So you really studied music in school and for years before you joined the band, right?

Tom Constanten (1:03)

Oh, yes. I'd been to Europe. I studied avant-garde composition with Karl-Heinz Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez and Luciano Berio, and spent a couple of months at Henri Pousseau's electronic music studio in Brussels.

And before that, when I grew up in Las Vegas, I took advanced music lessons for the university. There was a guy who was the music director and a guy who was the music department. He was the whole department. There wasn't anybody else.

And he arranged for me to have a performance of a piano piece, combined with orchestra.

Sam Paddor (1:35)

Oh, wow.

Tom Constanten (1:36)

So this was going on quite in advance, yes.

Sam Paddor (1:41)

So that's like a lot different from like your experimental like jams with the Grateful Dead, right?

Tom Constanten (1:49)

Oh, everything is all different all the time. Although the electronic music in Europe sort of applied.

And if anything, I sort of squared up a bit to fit in.

Sam Paddor (2:01)

Really?

Tom Constanten (2:03)

Oh, yes.

Improvisation also, Steve Reich had a series of concerts in San Francisco that I joined in on, which were very improvisatory. This was in 1964

Sam Paddor (2:19)

And you joined the Grateful Dead from the Air Force, right?

Tom Constanten (2:23)

I was scared away, yes. I would have joined earlier, but I had this obligation and I didn't want to go to Canada or jail.

So I'd received a draft notice from the Army. And at the time, enlisting in the Air Force was something that they would accept as an excuse.

Sam Paddor (2:41)

Oh, wow.

Tom Constanten (2:42)

So I didn't have to show up from the Army. I want a programming computer for the Air Force at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, instead of programming a potentially malfunctioning M16 in Southeast Asia.

Sam Paddor (2:55)

Yeah, good for you there. I know with the times being in the military, I mean, in the 60s with the Vietnam War and everything, that's just, when I saw that, I was so surprised because the music community then was very like anti-military almost.

Tom Constanten (3:13)

Oh, yeah, yes. There was an oh, thank you for the service sort of thing going around when I walked into a restaurant. There are two tunes that sort of summed up the background music for that time. It was Downtown by Petula Clark, which is Let's Go Out and Have Fun, and Eve of Destruction by Barry Maguire. And both of them were very high in our minds.

But meanwhile, we were getting high in our own minds, so we compensated.

Sam Paddor (3:43)

Oh yeah, well that must have definitely affected your musical journey, right? Like LSD and all the psychedelics from, I guess, the psychedelic 60s.

Tom Constanten (3:55)

Both in listening and performing. Although we found that if there was too much, everybody became a spectator, nobody was a participator.

It was definitely great for performing. I remember hearing under the influence Sergeant Pepper or several Rolling Stones albums at the time. They worked very well. Frank Zappa worked especially well at High Altitude.

Sam Paddor (4:23)

Oh, that's funny. Yeah, I did read somewhere just a couple days ago that you and Pigpen stayed away from psychedelics more, though, right?

Tom Constanten (4:35)

At the time, yeah, I had been...

While I was sucked into the Air Force, I was sucked further into Scientology, and I wouldn't even take it over the counter headache pill.