This is my reply to an email on the GD Hour mailing list. The guy I was replying to is Lenny Stubbe, but as I say in the message, I’m not singling him out in my argument.
The boys sang about a lot of shit for a LONG time. Smiling, being kind, treating your brothers and sisters RIGHT.
Really? Which songs were about those values?
hearing of the circumstances surrounding Vince surface now that he is gone, whether or not it had anything to do with his suicide, is a very discouraging after pouring half of my life into this.
Vince had a very hard time of it, that is for sure. He and I had plenty of conversations about that over the years, believe me. But the list of people who’ve been fucked over by one or more (or all) of the Grateful Dead is as long as your arm and then some. No one who worked in or near the Grateful Dead had no illusions about the “family” values embodied and practiced around there.
The suggestion that Vince’s departure from Ratdog more than a decade ago can be considered the trigger for his suicide last week is the height of folly.
I knew Vince reasonably well, and I had a lot of really great musical adventures with him. I am deeply saddened by his decision to take his own life, but I knew him and these circumstances well enough to believe that it is not possible to isolate a proximate cause, nor is it fair to lay the blame at Bob Weir’s feet. Nor the GD organization’s, either.
Wasn’t that what the boys wrote about in the letter they handed me when I pulled up to the Deer Creek Music Center on July 3, 1995, with my paid in full mail order ticket in hand? Were they not asking us to act in a certain way? Did they not point out that crashing gates was NOT in the spirit of the Grateful Dead? Well business or no business, neither was the way they treated Vince.
You don’t know enough about what went on between Vince and them to judge. Period.
I’m not singling you out here, Lenny, but I’m responding to your statements because they are representative of a lot that I’ve read in the last few days.
I respect Mike Lawson’s comments, and I do not accept the actions of the surviving members of the Grateful Dead, towards Vince.
Mike’s post was made in the heat of emotion, and although he has said he stands by those sentiments, in our subsequent communications I have gotten the strong impression that he knows it’s more complicated than that.
I am sure Jerry wouldn’t either.
Jerry wasn’t the sweetest, most easy-going, kindest, most saintly motherfucker ever to walk the face of the earth, either, I’m afraid. “What Would Jerry Do?” is a vastly more complicated question than anyone out here could possibly answer.
David,
I find it funny that ten years ago we would have never had this conversation. It was only a murmuring that the Grateful Dead was disfunctional. At that time there were many that still believed that Jerry would pull through. For what it is worth I met the Wizard backstge 2/27/94. It was a scene that was scattared, and very much alone. Billy had his own room, as did Mickey, Bob, Phil, Vince and Jerry.
It hurts that it has taken a painful and a selifcious (sic) moment for people to once again sound off. I am only but a fan, who simply followed my heroes onstage, and came to realize that they were craftsmen who did a job.
I am both saddened and dissapointed by the death of Vince Welnick. I only hope that people can forgive the past and look to the future. Nobody is to blame. Just listen to the music play.
I can hopefully say….He Was a Friend of Mine.
Sam