A Poem For His Friend.

David Crosby writes a poem in memory of Jerry Garcia on what would have been his 70th birthday.

Jerry Garcia would have turned 70 yesterday (Wednesday), and his friend, David Crosby, remembers him with a poem he wrote called "Cause I'm Missing Jerry Tonight."

"If I had to pick one of us to speak for us all

He would have done the job well

Coming from some crazy angle

He'd have known which story to tell

he'd tell the truth about real music

he knew the truth long before he fell

 

His fingers would touch his guitar neck

My axe would be pressed to my chest

A chord and a melody would walk in the door

Closely followed by all of the rest

Magic and tragic and triumph and storm

and all the things we had sought on our quest

 

You get your ego out of the way of your hearts

The whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts

 

A sort of field pops into existence

Everything lifts off the ground

You know that you're doing what you were born to do

That you're using the gift that you've found

To create some lift and break all the chains

with which all our people are bound

 

he did it for all the right reasons

and made all of our mistakes

a more human man you could not find

an accelerator without the brakes

but he had the brains and the heart and the spirit

Garcia really had what it takes."

In 1970, Crosby, Garcia and The Grateful Dead's Phil Lesh and Mickey Hart formed a band called David and the Dorks and recorded a live collection on December 15th, 1970 at the Matrix in San Francisco. Garcia also played on Crosby's first solo album, If I Could Only Remember My Name, and co-wrote one of the album's songs with Crosby, "What are Their Names." Garcia died on August 9th, 1995 of a heart attack while in drug rehab.