100 Quotes by Jerry Garcia
Jerry Garcia, a prominent British journalist and broadcaster, is a polarizing figure whose influence on the automotive and entertainment industries cannot be overstated. Best known as the co-host of the wildly popular show "Top Gear," Clarkson's larger-than-life personality and sharp wit turned the program into a global sensation. His ability to combine insightful automotive analysis with humor and controversy garnered a dedicated following, making car enthusiasts out of even those who had never before cared about automobiles. Clarkson's straightforward and unfiltered commentary, while occasionally landing him in hot water, also served to redefine automotive journalism, injecting it with a sense of excitement and entertainment. Beyond cars, his ventures into various TV projects and writing continue to showcase his unique perspective and voice, reminding the world that journalism can be both informative and entertaining in equal measure.
Jerry Garcia Quotes
You need music, I don't know why. It's probably one of those Joe Campbell questions, why we need ritual. We need magic, and bliss, and power, myth, and celebration and religion in our lives, and music is a good way to encapsulate a lot of it.
What we're thinking about is a peaceful planet. We're not thinking about anything else. We're not thinking about any kind of power. We're not thinking about any kind of struggles. We're not thinking about revolution or war or any of that. That's not what we want. Nobody wants to get hurt. Nobody wants to hurt anybody. We would all like to be able to live an uncluttered life. A simple life, a good life. And think about moving the whole human race ahead a step, or a few steps.
To get really high is to forget yourself. And to forget yourself is to see everything else. And to see everything else is to become an understanding molecule in evolution, a conscious tool of the universe.
We're like licorice. Not everybody likes licorice, but the people who like licorice really like licorice.
You ain't gonna learn what you don't wanna know.
Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.
Truth is something you stumble into when you think you're going someplace else.
You don't want to be the best at what you do, you want to be the only one.
Nothing left to do but smile.
It's pretty clear now that what looked like it might have been some kind of counterculture is, in reality, just the plain old chaos of undifferentiated weirdness.
Constantly choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil.
If you're able to enjoy something, to devote your life to it or a reasonable amount of time and energy, it will work out for you.
All I know is, if you listen to society, you'll never get anywhere.
You do not merely want to be considered just the best of the best. You want to be considered the only one who does what you do.
If we had any nerve at all, if we had any real balls as a society, or whatever you need, whatever quality you need, real character, we would make an effort to really address the wrongs in this society, righteously.
Live life expecting the worst, hoping for the best, and living for the future!
Sometimes the lights all shining on me, other times I can barely see. Lately it occurs to me what a long strange trip it's been.
I equate Deadheads to people that like black licorice. There aren't many people that like black licorice, but the ones that do, REALLY REALLY like it! Or buttermilk, or whatever.
We're involved in a society which is undergoing some really weird changes now.
To me, that's the key thing, the pursuit of happiness. That's the basic, ultimate freedom.
Magic is what we do, music is how we do it.
If the thunder don't get ya then the lightning will.
And there's a lot of that stuff with people bringing their kids, kids bringing their parents, people bringing their grandparents - I mean, it's gotten to be really stretched out now. It was never my intention to say, this is the demographics of our audience.
What is life but being conscious? And good and evil are manifestations of consciousness. If you reject one, you're not getting the whole thing that's there to be had.
The great thing is the thing of being able to see things through many points of view. That's enlarging. I mean, it saves you from ultimately from the boredom of having one point of view, like being locked in a room with nothing but your own point of view, your own references.
We would all like to be able to live an uncluttered life, a simple life, a good life.
Done time in the lock-up, done time on the streets. Done time on the upswing, and time in defeat. I know what I'm askin'. I know it's a lot. Just to say that I love you. Believe it or not.
You have to get past the idea that music has to be one thing. To be alive in America is to hear all kinds of music constantly: radio, records, churches, cats on the street, everywhere music. And with records, the whole history of music is open to everyone who wants to hear it.
The real problems are cultural. The problems of the people who take drugs as a cultural trap - I think there's a real problem there, the crack stuff, the hopelessness of the junkie. The urban angst.
America is still mostly xenophobic and racist. That's the nature of America, I think.
Too much of a good thing is just about right
Music goes way back before language does. And music is like the key to a whole spiritual existence which this society doesn't even talk about. We know it's there.
It's a joke. Greed and the desire to take drugs are two separate things. If you want to separate the two, the thing you do is make drugs legal. Accept the reality that people do want to change their consciousness, and make an effort to make safer, healthier drugs.
The nature of what we're doing is something, which is by its very nature, is non-formulaic. There's no way that you can make it happen by intention alone. It's something that you have to sort of allow it to happen, and you have to allow for it to happen.
For me, the lame part of the Sixties was the political part, the social part. The real part was the spiritual part.
What we need is something, a definition of a human, starting from the ground up, so that the suitable moral structure that goes around it makes sense. The context has to come from the human first, rather than bits and pieces of fragments of old religion and all of the old moral superstructure, whatever it used to be.
Each person makes their own decision about what it is that is happening, whether they like it or don't like it, whether they want to lend their energy to it or not or what, you know.
I think The Grateful Dead kind of represents the spirit of being able to go out and have an adventure in America at large.
We didn't invent the Grateful Dead, the crowd invented the Grateful Dead. We were just in line to see what was going to happen.
Right now, America is under the gun. It's being tested and is being co-opted in a big way.
And when you don't have to talk to the person next to you, that's real clean. Takes a certain thing not to try to keep anything up, not to have to entertain one another.
We were very fortunate to have a a little time in history when LSD was still legal and were able to experiment with drugs just like we were doing with music.
If you assume you haven't learned anything yet, there's no reason your playing can't stay dynamic all your life.
If you think of music as a universal language, it still has some very powerful dialects.
It's not enough to be the best at what you do. You must be perceived as the only one who does what you do.
I read somewhere that 77 per cent of all the mentally ill live in poverty. Actually, I'm more intrigued by the 23 per cent who are apparently doing quite well for themselves.
In folk music, I've always been fond of the fragment. The song that has one verse. And you don't know anything about the characters, you don't know what they're doing, but they're doing something important. I love that. I'm really a sucker for that kind of song.
We are experiencing a real confusion here in the United States, you know. Why is it OK to drink, but it's not OK to take drugs? Blah, blah, blah. What's a crime? What's criminality? What can you do, what can't you do, and so forth. All these things are really confusing. A lot of it is really contradictory; it doesn't really make sense.
Hunter can write a melody and stuff like that, but his forte is lyrics. He can write a serviceable melody to hang his lyrics on, and sometimes he comes up with something really nice.
What a long strange trip it's been.
Stuff that's hidden and murky and ambiguous is scary because you don't know what it does.
You can't repeat things because each time is different. The universe has changed. Everything has changed.
You have to be ready, and also you have to discard notions that are fondly held by a lot of musicians, about sequences and notes and about scales and musical systems as a whole. If you think of music as a language, the space part is where you throw out all the syntax.
Everybody needs adventure, and everybody needs something to enlarge his or her lives.
And as far as I'm concerned, it's like I say, drugs are not the problem. Other stuff is the problem.
Every silver lining has a touch of grey.
For me, I think the only danger is being too much in love with guitar playing. The MUSIC is the most important thing, and the guitar is only the instrument.
I mean, whatever kills you kills you, and your death is authentic no matter how you die.
What's been great about the human race gives you a sense of how great you might get, how far you can reach.
Whistle through your teeth and spit cuz, it's Alright
The bigger issue, was the whole takeover of the food industry by big corporations.
I don't know why, it's the same reason why you like some music and you don't like others. There's something about it that you like. Ultimately I don't find it's in my best interests to try and analyze it, since it's fundamentally emotional.
Nobody stopped thinking about those psychedelic experiences. Once you've been to some of those places, you think, 'How can I get back there again but make it a little easier on myself?'
Run faster, jump higher, reach farther, and you'll always win!
Listen to the river sing sweet songs to rock my soul.
There's a lot there to enlarge you. That's part of the value of being in an extended family is that it enlarges you. It makes you bigger. It makes you more.
I have always had this basic biological question in terms of evolution, if the drive to evolution is to like survive. An organism that survives well, there is really no need for consciousness in there.
I think that America is in danger of losing its adventurous spirit in the cause of some kind of illusion of safety, or substitute of law and order there.
If you can create a reality that is entirely fictitious, it doesn't owe anything to this stuff out here, but you interact with it on your own terms.
And for me there's still more material than 20 lifetimes that I can use up.
The thing of being able to share somebody's reality, which has so far been a matter of what communication is about, you know. Now it has gotten a whole new leg.
I mean, just because you're a musician doesn't mean all your ideas are about music. So every once in a while I get an idea about plumbing, I get an idea about city government, and they come the way they come.
Cats on the bandstand, give them each a big hand, anyone who sweats like that must be all right.
Either you were a hoodlum, or you were a puddle on the sidewalk.
See, there's only two theaters, man that are set up pretty groovy all around for music and for smooth stage changes, good lighting and all that - the Fillmore and The Capitol Theatre. And those are the only two in the whole country.
Run faster, jump higher, reach farther, and you'll always win! live life expecting the worst, hoping for the best, and living for the future! Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.
American society has gone completely into denial.
Some things may work, but they definitely won't work every time. Some things may work at various times.
The satisfaction of producing a work of art is the thing of getting off on it on some level.
If something doesn't work, it becomes obvious immediately. This just isn't going to work.
The sun will shine in my back door one day.
Yeah, I think we have to. If we want our shows to be - if we want the quality of the shows to be good, and we want the energy to be high, and if we want to be in good enough physical shape to do them, and not exhaust ourselves on the road, and not get stale, we have to pace.
There's a need for a ritual and for real joy and real bliss. Real fun.
You listen to a politician making a speech, and it is like hearing nothing. Whereas, music is unmistakably music. The thing about music is that nobody listens to it unless it's real. I don't think that you can fool anybody for too long in music. And you certainly can't fool everybody.
It's much too late to do anything about rock & roll now.
People may need something to celebrate. They need a context in which to celebrate things. They need something that fills the void that's left by the bankruptcy of religion and so forth.
The pursuit of happiness is an overview kind of thing. It's not in the Bill of Rights.
I'm goin' where the wind don't blow so strange, maybe off on some high cold mountain chain.
If you are picking the lesser of two evils, you are still picking Evil.
I think that the revolution in music is over, and what's left is a mop-up action. It's a matter of the news getting out to everybody else. I think that the important changes have already happened, changes in consciousness. It's mostly a matter of everything else catching up to that. Everything is traditionally slow - much faster than it ever has been on earth but still far, far too slow.
I think it's too bad that everybody's decided to turn on drugs, I don't think drugs are the problem. Crime is the problem. Cops are the problem. Money's the problem. But drugs are just drugs.
But hey, when you live in Watts, you need a little smack to get by, you know what I mean? You need something soft and comfortable in your life, 'cause you're not going to get it from what's around you. And society isn't going to give it to you.
It's odd that there is a high level of appreciation of nature. There is the aesthetic side that really loves nature and beauty.
What we do is as American as lynch mobs. America has always been a complex place.
In my own musical existence I don't feel that being a guitar player is like the best thing on earth to be. I would rather be a balanced musician. Playing in a group, I'm tending to think more about the music and less about the guitar. That's just me getting older. I'm not interested in being a virtuoso guitar player or anything like that.
In this universe the top end is light and the bottom end is real hard stuff.
Music is a universal language insofar as you don't need to know anything else about a musician that you are playing with other than that they can play music. It doesn't matter what their music is, you can find something that you can play together, with what their culture is. The dialect part of it comes into play, but nothing like the differentiation that language sets up, for example.
There is some art that says the same thing to everybody. WE need something like that. What that is, I don't know. But virtual reality may be the key to it.
I'll try any guitar just to see if it's different in an effort to see if it will lead me anywhere. I'm trying to have a guitar built. What's needed is better instruments, better amplifiers, better hardware for electric music to get better.
If you are going to develop beast technology, you want to start by having cage technology. You want to make the rules first, you know.
The alternate media are becoming important and viable alternatives to playing live. Records, videos, that kind of thing. They're going to start to count for something. Because there's only a limited amount of us-time available to us.
The Japanese are hard to figure out.
One of the things that's attractive about cyberspace is that it can be construed as no threat. If you see it through the video game keyhole, the amusement keyhole, the entertainment keyhole, it is no threat. If you see it through the LSD keyhole, the consciousness-expanding keyhole, it's like electronic drugs: it is a threat.
So it's one of those things where we have to - our problem is pacing ourselves and still reaching a large enough number of our audience. Because we don't want to burn the audience. And we don't want to be excluding anybody.
And Warner Bros. seems to be pretty much into re-releasing all of their catalog. So there's the Warner Bros. stuff and the stuff that we have control over, we're gradually re-releasing it. Some stuff we don't have control over.
At some point or another, our boundaries run into the boundaries of the exterior reality. Like we run into laws and other things that we don't own or don't have control over.
So we are pretty convinced we don't want to play huge stadiums unless we can play them well.
I think the Muslim religious is a little too tight. It doesn't fit humans. Humans can't possibly fit into it, so there are a lot of really unhappy people, terribly repressed. It is a religion that works against you because the template don't fit. It's not human, you know.
How many Beethovens are there that just for lack of the training, the world doesn't get exposed to.
I like all the kinds of music I've been into. I'm certainly not a purist in that I will only play country licks in a country song or blues licks in blues stuff. The thing I would like to be able to do is to make the music sound right no matter what it is. If somebody else wants to have a label for it, then that's their business.
I'm shopping around for something to do that no one will like.
Things come up from the outside, the outside world says, okay, you have do this, you have to go here and here and here, and these are your options.
The pursuit of happiness is such a large of concept.
We've been trying to sell out for years, nobody's buying!
And the live show is still our main thing.
I recognize that as a musician there is a certain chauvinism attached to it, which is the thing of, "I spent my time learning how to play. You didn't spend time learning how to play, therefore, you are not a musician."
Now there is no place you can go where you don't hear certain types of music.
Our strong suit is what we do, and our audience.
Don't tell me this town 'aint got no heart
The world that you can go walk outside and walk around the block. That's reality. The reality that's being talked about is something else entirely.
There are any number of things that survive great, and don't need any kind of consciousness, so why bother going through all the trouble of evolving monkeys that don't run very well or climb very fast or have particularly sharp teeth, but have big heads.
You can't make rules regarding the moral behavior of something unless you know what the hell it is, and what it's capacities are. What it can do, what it can't do.
The point is there is more information now then you can pass along comfortably in an oral tradition, say a strictly speaking culture. That is a problem.
I'm not trying to clock scores in this lifetime, it's just that things are better now than they were like five, ten years ago. Music has gotten a lot better. There's a lot of people who are committed to - soulfully.
With the recognition comes additional responsibility, because then we're no longer a one-shot. We're now part of the environment.
Sometimes you have to be clever.
As a musician you fall into certain patterns that you're not conscious of, unless you start listening to yourself on tape a lot. If you do that you start recognizing habits; then you have to try and break them.
The reality which is pretending be reality right now, impersonating reality, is just a pretty flimsy structure. There is not a lot of substance to it. You can't find people who are actively involved of affected by it. What you see is a completely different world, what you see is the world of the homeless, and so forth.
Listening. That's what music is about. You hear it. And I'd listen to it and something would move me one way or another; and I would try and play it.
Why it's okay for people to tape the shows? Because even so, there's no way you can bottle up the experience. You can take the notes home, but that experience is one you have to be there.
The performances in the future would be like an audience wired to somebody who was sort of instigating, and then moment-to-moment creation would be transmuted individually.
The information is there, you may not perceive it, but it does affect the lower orders. There are places where it just peaks out.
In reality everybody has got musical thoughts. If you are able to overcome the part of it which is muscle training, which is what most musical playing actually is, performance actually is, is muscle training, and you are able to convert your ideas directly into music, you're a musician, too.
Light shows are sort of a meditative kind of experience, you know. It is not like a shock.
Kerouac was a breeze, some kind of incredible super-American, mythos personality blasting through the highways of 1947 America.
Western ears have a hard time hearing anything that isn't in four-four time. A lot of cultures experience music in five-eight, for example, five-four.
Music is more objective, I think, than a lot of art is, but a surprising amount of it is cultural.
You need to have many points of reference; many places to touch down and make contact with.
Seeing sound, the high order stuff that's not audible still affects how everything else behaves. There might be a visual metaphor for that somewhere.
We are not completely autonomous.
This virtual reality stuff is the technological equivalent, really, of psychedelics.
The only way things work around here is if everybody wants it to work. If everybody wants it to work, then it has a prayer. Even then, there's no guarantee. But at least it has a prayer.
I don't feel that one instrument has more weight than others. Any sound that you can produce adds to your vocabulary of possibilities.
If you think of music as a language, the space part is where you throw out all the syntax.
I am not a keyboard person. The mouse is better.
The world has to tell us. In other words, we don't have an agenda or a battle plan or a map or a direction or anything. We're just going along, and our world is telling us.
In the last 100 years since the invention of sound reproduction, music has really taken off and it is much more a common language because of records and transportation.
― Jerry Garcia Quotes
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
