Watch Jerry Garcia Discuss Woodstock vs. Altamont in Rare Interview

Raffaela Kenny-Cincotta on November 14, 2018
Watch Jerry Garcia Discuss Woodstock vs. Altamont in Rare Interview

 

As reported by Rolling Stone, a new set of videos depict a ’70s-era Jerry Garcia candidly discussing his time at the 1969 Woodstock festival as well as the deadly Altamont concert of that same year.

The clips arrive as bonus content from Amir Bar-Lev’s Long Strange Trip documentary (out Nov. 16 on DVD and Bluray).

“With Woodstock and Atlamont the same situations were prevailing in terms of how it was for the people there,” Garcia says in the first clip, between puffs of a cigarette. “It was free, essentially, and it was also completely without control of any sort. There was no police. There’s no way you can realistically control that size, really. You can’t expect to. The way I saw it, both of those situations being sort of like two sides of the same coin. It’s like [there’s] two ways that that kind of expression can go, a huge number of people and no rules. And one of the ways, obviously, it can go is a terrible bummer like Altamont, and one of the other ways is into an immensely joyful scene like Woodstock. And they both had their extremes, but they were both characterized by this heaviness. A historical heaviness.”

In the second video, the conversation shifts to the Dead’s relationship with the Hells Angels as well as the community growing around the band themselves.

“There’s a lot of us, and we’ve been doing what we’ve been doing for a long time. Movie makers, musicians, painters, craftsmen of every sort. People doing all kinds of things.”

Watch the interviews below: