Brent Mydland and the Rule No One Could Break
Brent Mydland overdosed in December 1989. Two bandmates drove him home from jail and, in one account’s words, “refrained from scolding” him. That silence had a name.
In the Grateful Dead world, no one told anyone else not to indulge. It traced back to the Acid Tests and Ken Kesey. Phil Lesh once called it almost a religious point: avoidance of confrontation. Applied to music, that radical autonomy produced transcendence. Applied to a man in crisis, it produced a body.
Brent Mydland joined in April 1979, replacing Keith Godchaux, and spent eleven years and more than five hundred shows still feeling like the new guy. By late 1989 his marriage was gone, Built to Last had underperformed In the Dark. Mydland played his last show on July 23rd, 1990, at the World Music Theatre in Tinley Park, ten years to the day after Keith Godchaux died. Three days later he was gone at thirty-seven.
Six weeks after, the Dead were back on the road with Bruce Hornsby and Vince Welnick. This is the story of the rule that held the band together, told from the record.
Sources: David Browne So Many Roads; Bill Kreutzmann Deal; Phil Lesh Searching for the Sound; Dennis McNally A Long Strange Trip; The Golden Road (John Perry Barlow essay); Rolling Stone (Jerry Garcia interview 1991).
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