Photo FInish: Jerry Garcia at the Pyramids
Photo Finish is an occasional series looking behind the lens to tell the stories of some of rock and blues’ most iconic images. We start with one of my longtime favorites - Jerry Garcia at the Pyramids during the Grateful Dead’s 1978 trip to Egypt.
London photographer Adrian Boot joined the Grateful Dead on their 1978 journey to Egypt, chronicling the events for NME and Melody Maker. After a week with the entourage, on the day before the first of three shows, Boot suggested to Jerry Garcia that they escape the well-visited Giza Pyramids near their hotel and venture across Cairo to the less-known Step Pyramids.
“I had been there before and suggested to Jerry that we visit Saqqara,” says Boot. “We got in a cab with [British journalist] Mick Walls. It was a good 45-minute ride and Jerry was talking to the driver a lot, asking him a lot of questions about Cairo and his life. We drove through the City of the Dead and he was quite interested in what was going on outside the window.
“We got to Saqqara and were able to go under the pyramids and have a very intimate visit. It was very hot, of course, and as we stood there, I just looked at Jerry and framed pictures with the pyramid behind him. Of course, in those days, you had no idea what you got and my concerns were predominantly technical.
“I really liked Jerry and the Dead, because they had a sense of humor, which was uncommon in 70s rock stars, especially Americans. He was very cagey, answering difficult questions in metaphysical terms and being wry so you didn’t quite know how serious he was. When I said good bye, I thanked him and said it was a great time but I had not seen a pyramid levitate as promised. He suggested I just hadn’t been paying attention.”
As Adrian rolled into full retirement he connected with Jay and Ricki Blakesberg and their Retro Photo Archive who acquired Adrian’s Egypt photographs and now own and manage the collection. You can purchase prints or see more at https://www.retrophotoarchive.com/
The paperback edition of my fourth book, Brothers and Sisters: the Allman Brothers Band and The Album That Defined The 70s, was recently released by St. Martin’s Press. It was the third consecutive one to debut in the New York Times Non-Fiction Hardcover Bestsellers List, following Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan and One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band. My first book, Big in China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising a Family, Playing the Blues and Becoming a Star in Beijing, about my experiences raising a family in Beijing and touring China with a popular original blues band, was optioned for a movie by Ivan Reitman’s Montecito Productions. I am also a guitarist and singer with two bands, Big in China and Friends of the Brothers, the premier celebration of the Allman Brothers Band.