Grateful Dead

Steve Silberman, 1957-2024

There are layers of Dead Heads -- original Haight-Ashbury or East Village Dead freaks, people who got into the band from hearing them on the radio in the American Beauty era or when they were hitting college campuses hard in the early ‘70s, fans who came on board after the massive summer festivals at Watkins Glen or Englishtown, or the Touch Heads who arrived with In the Dark in the ‘80s. I was none of those. I was, and am, a Skeleton Key head.

I got my copy of David Shenk and Steve Silberman’s Skeleton Key: A Dictionary For Deadheads when it came out in September 1994, between my first Dead show that March and my last Dead show in October and it was my true doorway into the Grateful Dead. I’m not sure when I had parts memorized, but it was probably soon thereafter. One entry, under Y, reads: “YOUR HANDS - Look at ‘em, weird, huh?” As an operating manual for a young Dead freak, it not only got me instantly up to speed on the stories, rituals, and folklore of the Dead’s beguiling universe, but did so with a sensibility that made me not only feel welcome, but--more than anything--like I belonged.

When I met Steve for the first time in the late ‘90s, during an afternoon discussion session at Terrapin Tapes’ Gathering of the Vibes festival, it was an uncanny blast to come across that exact same energy in actual human form. He sought me out through mutual friends a few years later, and we stayed in fairly regular email touch as I got going with my own writing career. Steve was one of the crew of heady elders I started to meet, 10 or 15 or 20 years (or more) older than me, but who feel exactly, precisely like part of my karass, able to offer some pro tips because they happened to have been occupying the planet for a few decades longer.

But I do sometimes wonder if I ended up in Steve’s cohort because his writing (and, by extension, him) imprinted so deeply on me that I couldn’t help it. His writing was inseparable from him, soulful and funny and present, always with the research and receipts to go with the winks and the pearls. Whatever big-eared open-hearted question marks I heard in Jerry Garcia’s guitar playing, I found, too, in Steve’s writing (and ultimately his real-life friendship), imbuing everything with his own curiosity and glow, playing to the tide in his own way. I loved his music writing most of all, but--from the days of his HotWired column--I was ready to read him on any topic, ever.

I’m also not nearly ready to accept his absence, but thankfully have enough of Steve’s voice in my ears to hear his intonations, guffaws, giggles, and eyebrow raises whenever I read his words. And reading his words is very close to actually hanging out with him, minus the constant interruptions to hear tracks from Croz’s next album or some miraculous Garcia Band jam that you’d maybe never previously considered (Steve would really want you to check out the “I Want To Tell You” into “My Brothers and Sisters” from March 6th, 1976 in Seattle).

He’s one of my favorite writers ever and, in that way, I still want everybody to meet and hang out with him. As far as I’m concerned, Skeleton Key should be issued to all newly minted Dead freaks, anybody who has anything to do with the Dead, or anyone who’s ever heard the phrase “Grateful Dead” and is remotely curious. NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity, meanwhile, should probably just be issued to all humans. Find the others remains perhaps Timothy Leary’s most sage piece of advice. Steve was an excellent other-finder, equally well-indexed and ready to be found. Fly your freak flags at half-mast.

Jesse Jarnow
Brooklyn, NY
September 2024