Bob Weir’s Long Strange Trip

“The Other One: The Long Strange Trip of Bob Weir” screened at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this month, and the legendary Bob Weir stopped in to the Ron and Fez Show to talk with Ron Bennington about the documentary, along with the film’s director Mike Fleiss.   Weir and Fleiss talked about the film as well as some of the great stories from Weir’s life.  Excerpts from the interview appear below.

Weir’s life has always been strange and he’s always been surrounded by the most interesting people.  Many of his friendships and relationships have been life changing, including a relationship he had with Neal Cassidy.  He told Bennington that he and Neal were roommates for awhile, at 710 Ashbury, when Weir was only 18 years old and in fact, Cassidy taught him to drive.  He described to Bennington about what it was like to learn to drive with the great Neal Cassidy:

Here’s this guy who’s really just other worldly. It’s hard for me to really describe, but for instance…I didn’t have a drivers license when I was 18. Never had gotten around to getting one. Neal taught me how to drive. Now he could drive–  and I was with him numerous times when this happened — he could drive through San Francisco traffic at rush hour. It was stop and go. He was driving 55 mph or 60 mph on the wrong side of the street. On the sidewalk. Never stopped for a stop sign or a red light. He was just in the right place at the right time. If a cop saw him go by, there’s no way the cop could give chase.   I was riding in the shotgun seat. He was doing this–  all the while talking incessantly in rhymes. He was having a conversation with me and with his girlfriend. And the same thing he was saying to me and to his girlfriend were relevant to each of us in different ways. At the same time, he was feeling up his girlfriend and with whatever other hand was available…he was one of those guys you see with the Hindu pantheon, those guys with many arms, he was one of those guys. The pictures that came out of him that anybody has, he only two arms, but he had more. And so one hand would be playing the radio, the buttons on the radio. If he wasn’t talking, he was making whatever came out of the radio or he was allowing whatever came out of the radio to be his conversation. We’d be listening to the radio and the radio would be having a conversation with him, with me and with his girlfriend all at the same time. Pertaining to me, what came out of the radio was relevant and meaningful particularly in lofty terms meaningful to what was going on in my inner voice.

It was no accident that Weir repeatedly encountered interesting people and experiences.  He explained that he had realized early on in life, that he required adventure.  And, he said, “I made every attempt to scratch that itch.”   So surrounding himself with geniuses and unusual people made sense.  And once he had found this new “family scene” he knew he was home.  “We all found each other,” he explained.  “And that extends out to the fans as well. On any given night, when the muse decides – here it is, here it is folks, and you can feel it flowing. I can feel it flowing through my fingertips, through my throat. I can feel it coming back to me from the audience. What was happening was happening at the azimuth if you will, between what was happening on stage and what was being fed back to us…happening out in the audience and fed back to us. And where they merged somewhere above the middle of whatever room we were playing. That was the palpable magic.”

But amidst all the magic, there was also business.  Weir said that they tried their best, at times, to be commercial.  “It’s not like we didn’t make any serious attempts at selling out,” he said, laughing.  “We gave it our best, but we had no talent for that.  And so we just methodically went back to what we could do.” But they did have commercial success with “Touch of Grey” which affected their audience in ways that most bands don’t have to be concerned with. They actually had to de-promote gigs, because they already had a pretty large audience, and had already been playing in stadiums.  “I’m not sure we managed our business affairs all together that well” he explained.  “Our family was everybody who worked for us and were with us and all that kind of stuff. We couldn’t just hire them and fire them and get new people and stuff like that. It wasn’t the way we did things. But we had this business model I guess, set up. And then with the influx of all those new fans, many of whom weren’t really hip to what we were up to.”  Their newer fans, which he referred to as the “yah-hoo element of the crowd” got a little out of control.

After our last show in Chicago at Soldier Field, we were pretty aware that we were going to have take a year or two off and let things simmer down because there was just trouble at almost every gig. There were too many people trying to get into too tight a space. Even in the stadiums. The level of excitement and enthusiasm and the yah-hoo element on top of all that. They were breaking down fences. People were getting trampled and stuff like that. There was no venue for this kind of thing, so we were just going to have to take a couple of years off and pipe down. Go our separate ways and just let things cool off for awhile. And as it turned out, Jerry (Garcia) checked out anyway. So the problem sort of went away.

The documentary, which easily could have been four hours according to director Mike Fleiss, shows more than just Bob Weir, the man.  “I mean they’re the most enduring American rock and roll band. I think they’re the most influential of all. It’s not just music. It’s a culture. It’s a way of thinking. It’s a way of living. It’s a way of eating. It’s a way of dressing. I mean these guys really put their stamp on society.”

You can hear the interview with Ron Bennington and Bob Weir in its entirety exclusively on SiriusXM satellite radio.  The Ron and Fez Show airs weekdays from noon to 3pm eastern time on SiriusXM 99 Raw Dog Comedy Hits.