When I was about 15 or 16 I lived in Palo Alto. There was a great music store called Dana Morgan Music. I think it was around 1965.
There was a 20 year old guy working there named Jerry Garcia. He used to teach guitar and work at the counter. He had long unruly hair. He wanted a Beatle hairstyle but it was too frizzy. He was definitely a beatnik.We got to be friends.
Many days I would go in on a hot afternoon and spend time playing guitar with him and talking about music. We talked about his general idea about creating automatic pop music by having songs with a form but a place within them to have long extended jams. This was not done in popular music at the time so it was a new idea. It was done in jazz and blues but not pop.
He would also sit me down and make me play E-D-A over and over until I would get restless and take off. He loved to jam. He was developing his style right in front of me. About that time there was a guy who would just sit on the couch there and play E-D-A all the time. I always thought that they should play together in a group. His name was Bob Weir.
Mike Shapiro