The JB List | Six Things We Learned From John Perry Barlow Ask Me Anything
By Scott Bernstein Aug 16, 2013 • 7:00 am PDT
1. Barlow’s most fond memory of working with The Dead:
I’m pretty fond of the time we were playing the football stadium and the University of Colorado and one of those biblical Front Range thunderstorms popped over the ridge and walked toward us on legs of lightning. The stage and sound system had been designed by Bear to be a “”floating ground” so immediately there was St. Elmo’s fire all over everything.
Lightning struck all over around the stadium. Killed one fan. And the rain formed in this great canopy over the band. It was about to fall and crush everybody when I and another guy jumped up and started cutting holes in it. I got mine where the water could get to the ground, but one of his dumped onto the stage. Suddenly the stage had 2 inches of water on it and the band was still playing.
THEN, somebody in cutoffs came onstage with a Skilsaw, knelt down in the water and started cutting holes in the stage while everyone around him jumped for cabinets. I don’t know why he wasn’t electrocuted. Or, for that matter, why the band, which went on playing, was electrocuted either.
2. JPB on Jerry Garcia’s eating habits:
(Garcia) would have made a poor poster child for Whole Foods. But he was kind of like a lot of us, he ate healthy food when somebody put it in front of him, and much of the time he just at what we there. Honestly, I don’t think he thought much about food. Or health for that matter. It was the music that counted.
3. Who would win in a fight between Barlow and Hunter:
Depends on the weapon. He can, has, and always will beat the living shit out of me in the song-writing category. No contest. The only reason he hasn’t driven me to commit ritual suicide is that I always knew that it would be a monoculture without other voices. And I don’t like mono cultures. On the other hand, if we were competing with handguns, it would be over quickly. I’m a very accurate shot with a S&W .357 Magnum.
4. Whether there’s any deeper meaning to the words “written in the letters of your name” in “Looks Like Rain”:
Actually, I never knew where things like that came from. They would just appear in my head. I never tried to write songs, I just tried to write them down as they arrived. Occasionally, I had no choice and it was just work. I had to buckle down and make shit up. But “written in the letters of your name” was just there when I reached for it.
5. Barlow on whether he attended the Dead’s famed Egypt shows and what he thinks about the current situation in the country:
I didn’t go to Egypt in 78, more’s the pity. I was ranching at the time and was right in the middle of the usual panicked rush to cut, bale, and stack three thousand tons of hay before the snow came. I hated not being there, but have since gone and spent a fair amount of time. I was very much involved in helping keep the Internet up during the Arab Spring blackout. I am deeply distressed, though not surprised, by the growing possibility of a civil war. The Internet is tough on monotheism. It’s filled with truths that aren’t “in the Book” as well as cultural systems that don’t fit the local standards. What you see on the streets in Egypt and many other places is a standoff between the young “natives” of Cyberspace and the defenders of the faith. It will go on being bloody unfortunately.
6. John on the songs he’s most proud of:
I wish I were more fond of my own songs, since I’m a helpless fan of Hunter’s. But I’m really grateful that they work for other folks and, in a way, it’s none of my business what people find in them. But I do have a few I’m pretty fond of: Cassidy (of course), Looks Like Rain, I Will Take You Home, Estimated Prophet, Music Never Stopped. etc.
