Twisted Sister Guitarist Was Grateful Dead Fan but Then Saw Them Sober: ’The Worst Band I Ever Heard’

Twisted Sister guitarist Jay Jay French looked back on his early days as a musician and how he gave up on his obsession with the Grateful Dead. Admitting that he was a huge fan during his appearance on the “Vinyl Ventures” podcast, French pointed out that this change came along with an important lifestyle and stylistic change.

“So I was a Grateful Dead freak, Allman Brothers [Band] freak,” French recalled. “Believe it or not, I was in an Allman Brothers cover band in the summer of ’72.”

“And I come back to the city — I was living in a commune in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania with a hippie band living on a drug dealers’ farm.”

These were different times, of course, adding that the dealers in question bought 400 acres for about $30,000. “They invited us up,” he added. “We rehearsed for two months.”

But as it often goes with young and overly enthusiastic bands (especially when living on a farm owned by drug dealers), things soon fell apart. And young Jay Jay French was at a crossroads:

“We played one gig, broke up, and I come home. And I’m saying to myself, ‘What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do?’ [It was] September ’72. ‘What am I going to do? What the f*** am I going to do now? I dropped out of high school already. What am I going to do?'”

Nonetheless, French would refuse to give up on his dream of being a musician. So he found inspiration in different kind of music and different kind of artists:

“And I got a subscription to Creem magazine, and the subscription had three albums. It had ‘Ziggy Stardust’ [by David Bowie], it had ‘All the Young Dudes’ [by Mott the Hoople], and it had ‘Transformer’ [by Lou Reed].”

Although from the same era, David Bowie, Mott the Hoople, and Lou Reed were not exactly the same flavor of rock music when compared to Grateful Dead. French added:

“And I was like, ‘Whoa!’ It was like the way the Beatles were when you first heard the Beatles in ’64 — this was the next stage.”

And this was a crucial moment for French who was in his early 20s at the time:

“I get these three records, and I freak out. I see pictures of David Bowie and The Spiders from Mars, and I see Mick Ronson. I freaked out — I cut my hair, dyed it blonde, and in essentially 24 hours.”

“I de-Grateful-Dead’d myself,” he explains, adding that it’s “like removing yourself from a cult. I unplugged myself from the cult.”

“And that basically caused a lot of problems because all my friends were Grateful Dead fanatics, and they basically thought I was out of my f***ing mind.”

After that, the experience of seeing Grateful Dead just wasn’t the same. Once you’re not taking LSD to enhance the show, then the show just isn’t worth it.  

“And I had seen the Dead twenty [times] at that point — 27 times,” recalled French. “I saw it 26 times on LSD — it was the greatest band I ever saw. But I saw them straight, and it was the worst f***ing band I ever heard in my life.”

Over the years, it seems that Jay Jay French had somewhat of a love-hate relationship with Grateful Dead’s music. Although he doesn’t deny that guitarist Jerry Garcia had an impact on him, French still feels like he wasn’t the biggest 6-string virtuoso out there.

When compiling a list for the Goldmine Magazine earlier this year, he put Garcia on the last spot and said:

“Jerry Garcia shouldn’t even be on this list, but I acknowledge that many feel strongly about his playing, and I had the good fortune to see the Dead many times during their most legendary period (1969-72).”

“Garcia is listed last because I was never a fan of his playing. I get the fact that he was perfect for the band, but his style and his guitar tone were never particularly interesting to me. All these other players on my list were very heavy with blues chops. Garcia was not — at all.”

“I never liked his guitar tone or his meandering scales. But I really loved the band, and especially the rhythm section of bassist Phil Lesh and drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart. The band also went through keyboard players like Spinal Tap has gone through drummers!”

“The Dead were more like an improv jazz band, too. Every night was different, and they went where the music (and drugs) took them. For four years I was hooked on the music as an ensemble performance machine. As weird as it sounds, I got them but just never got Garcia’s feel. Many, of course, have — and I respect that he may be a god to some of you. I saw them five times in 1969.”

Photos: Alfred Nitsch (20140802-347-See-Rock Festival 2014-Twisted Sister-John „Jay Jay“ French), Carl Lender (Grateful Dead – Jerry Garcia (cropped))