Continue.

Okay.

Okay.

So there are f- five sets in w- in an evening's performance, five one-hour sets.

There are four bands, so they draw straws.

Who's gonna c- who's gonna close the show? And the Grateful Dead wins this, that draw, and Garcia says, "I can't because I gotta make my plane because I promised Mountain Girl I'd be back in LA." And Phil goes absolutely bonkers and starts running around the room screaming, "Garcia doesn't wanna play.

Garcia doesn't ..." And he loses his mind because they won the toss, but they're not gonna do the performance.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Inside the circles on e- either side of the figure eight is a, a round disc with a pentacle, a star on it.

And a- as you move it up, the stars either go one way or the other, and it never goes all one way or all the other way.

It's always loose and fluid, always in motion.

Anyway, so I have this theory that i- if any th- if any side wins, order or chaos, life ends.

And I walk outside of the backstage, take off my corduroy coat, put it on the floor, throw myself on top of it, and lie down right in front of Jerry at the Fillmore, and I let, and for the first time, I heard the Grateful Dead.

And man, I really dug it, and particularly Pigpen.

But the, the point is that he-

But the meeting took an unexpected turn.

Bear wanted to know the facts of my life so that he could ascertain my spirit.

I'm guessing now, but that's what I believe is accurate.

And I had just received a delivery from B&H Photo Supply in New York of a new Hasselblad and a lens, the n- what's called the normal lens, and a back.

Oh, and a pistol grip so that I can hold it up.

And so I had the boxes opened but put back together, which is that sloppy way that you do when you, after you open stuff and try to cover it with the cover.

And I was talking to him, and he said, "What the hell is that?" I said, "I, I do photography.

[upbeat music]

They had one more meeting when the band returned from their summer gigging, and at some point, Rakow's lawyers and the Dead's lawyer, Hal Kant, sauntered off to continue the discussion.

They went out to dinner, and they left me with the Grateful Dead in my office, and everybody [laughs] in that room wanted to kill me except one guy, and his name was Jerry Garcia.

And they had just come back from their tour, and Jerry pulled a chair up, and we sat knees to knees, our knees were touching, and he told me about every gig on the tour and what songs they played and so on, and everybody was pissed off.

McIntyre, I heard him muttering, "God, he's not calling Rakow out.

He's just talking about the tour." The reason for that is Garcia felt guilty.

He knew he, he fucked me.

Not them.

Around then, Ron Rakow was getting ready to exit the Dead scene, though still had a few open projects with Garcia, including the Dead movie.

They chose to sell their record companies, and Rakow, president of Grateful Dead and Round Records, went to work.

I started with, uh, United Artists was not desirable, but they had plenty of money behind them, and they needed us the most.

It would've been nice for Warner or Columbia or Capitol or anybody to get us.

We had a little reputation.

It wasn't little.

It, it was a big reputation.

We didn't sell very much though.

Rakow's version involves the late Grateful Dead roadie Rex Jackson.