Jerry Garcia Watched The 1969 Moon Landing With Syd Barrett’s Girlfriend

According to the official account on the NASA website:

Apollo 11 launched from Cape Kennedy on July 16, 1969, carrying Commander Neil Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin into an initial Earth-orbit of 114 by 116 miles.

The historic mission was to land the first human on the moon. While the NASA astronauts were blasting toward the moon, on the evening of July 16, 1969, Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia performed at Longshoreman’s Hall in San Francisco. According to JerryBase, “The event was to benefit the pregnant widow of Gino Heinicke, a Hell’s Angel who had been shot to death by rival bikers (from the Gypsy Jokers) in Golden Gate Park on June 29th.”

Author Blair Jackson shared more about the concert via outtakes from his excellent Jerry Garcia biography, Garcia: An American Life. Jackson quotes John “Marmaduke” Dawson, who stated the concert was the first by what would become The New Riders Of The Purple Sage, who early on included Garcia. According to Jackson’s outtake, Dawson stated:

“We played our first gig at Longshoremen’s Hall for the Hell’s Angels and Owsley [“Bear” Stanley] was the sound guy, and everything went wrong with the equipment and Owsley’s there with his soldering gun out and taking the P.A. apart and there are these giant Hell’s Angels lurking over us saying, ‘Hey, you guys. Don’tcha think you could play some music? Like now?’ ‘Yeah, as soon as Bear gets the P.A. fixed, man.’ ‘How ’bout you just play some stuff on your guitar?’ ‘Well, they’re electric instruments.’ So finally we got it on and we got the gig done. Then we did a gig after that in the Bear’s Lair at U.C. Berkeley, and that was more like our first official gig.”

Four days later, on July 20, 1969, Garcia hosted members of the Dead and others at his house as they were among the estimated 650 million people who watched the monumental moon landing. While it comes as no surprise that Garcia’s bandmates were at his house to watch the moon landing – supposedly because he was the only one in the band who owned a television – there was another attendee whose presence was perhaps less expected.

Jenny Spires, who was raised in England and had been romantically involved with Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett, was at Garcia’s house to watch the moon landing on July 20, 1969. In an interview with Loudersound, Spires spoke about her relationship with Barrett that began after they met in Cambridge in December 1964. Spires recalled meeting the 18-year-old Barrett:

“[Syd] came up and introduced himself. Unbeknown to me he had sketched a picture of me standing at the bar. He said, ‘Hi I’m Roger, I’ve got my own band, we’ve just done some recording and are changing our name to Pink Floyd’.”

“[Syd was] very together, always confident, always with some project on the go, some painting or song idea. Syd would always be writing songs in a notebook, which he’d tell me were written for or about me, like ‘Bike.’ He was very loving and wrote me letters all the time. His main thing was always painting. He’d write and tell me what paintings he was doing. He played at my 16th birthday party in Summer 1965 …

“We listened to blues, Dylan, the Kinks and Animals. People always say he was into The Beatles but he was more into the Stones. We listened to some jazz; Charlie Parker and Miles Davis, and things like Dave Van Ronk, Jesse Fuller and Bo Diddley. His musical tastes were very eclectic.”

Barrett was in a romantic relationship with Spires around the time he wrote the above mentioned “Bike” and other early Pink Floyd songs that appeared on the band’s 1967 debut album, The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn. Spires is the “girl that fits into” Barrett’s world mentioned in “Bike,” and she was also referenced in the Barrett-written “Lucifer Sam,” which also appeared on The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, and contains the lyric “Jennifer Gentle.”

In 2015, Spires talked about this period in her life in an interview with Eyeplug Magazine. By mid-1968 Barrett was no longer a member of Pink Floyd, soon reclusively leaving the public eye and his career in music while dealing with mental health issues. Spires was invited in the fall of 1968 by American friends she met in London to visit the United States.

“It was a lovely traveling period for me,” Spires said. “I saw all the things I wanted to see over the years and had a great time doing it. Of course, music was all important and I saw some of the greatest bands. Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, the Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, Quick Silver, Creedence Clearwater and I went across from California to the Woodstock Rock Festival. It meant that I had missed London, the Stones in Hyde Park and The Isle of Wight etc, but I was in America at an exciting time and Santana were just out of this world. It was a fabulous festival of music.”

Spires was also asked about her experience watching the moon landing at Garcia’s house. Responding to an inquiry about how the friendship came about, Spires stated:

“Watching the moon landing with Jerry Garcia just came about through my having met some of the Grateful Dead when they were in London. I’m not sure why I happened to be at his place that day. It had been my birthday a couple of days before and I was on my way up to Oregon and stayed over there on my way.

“Jerry was a very generous host but he was quiet, really. He offered me drinks, but I don’t drink and I remember how he was surprised by that but we were so amazed at the moon landing and it was extraordinary for me hearing the Floyd play. I can’t really remember having any real meaningful or deep conversation with him. It was just very relaxed with just a few of us sitting around with food and wowing out on the moon landing.”

Though the Grateful Dead did not play in London until April 1972 (an October 1968 tour in England was canceled), Sprires certainly could have met someone associated with the band in England before her journey to the U.S. At least one account claims that a month after the moon landing, Spires accompanied the Dead to the legendary Woodstock festival in Upstate New York.

In April 2023, Spires attended a screening in London of the new Syd Barrett documentary film, You Got It Yet?.