80 Best Jerry Garcia Quotes - Uplift Life Quotes

Jerry Garcia was born in 1942 in San Francisco, California, and died in 1995 at the age of 53. Jerry Garcia was a tremendously gifted musician. Jerry Garcia Quotes were very famous. He was a fantastic guitarist in particular and is widely regarded as one of the best guitarists of all time. Jerry Garcia was commonly referred to as the “leader” of the Grateful Dead, despite his protests. He exuded natural charisma and could always be counted on for a good comment.

Jerry Garcia went on to lead or play in a variety of other bands and duos after the Grateful Dead, as well as doing some solo work. Take a look at these Jerry Garcia quotes. During the counterculture era, he gained notoriety as the group’s primary guitarist and vocalist and was also regarded by some as the band’s spokesman.

The Grateful Dead took over the hearts of music fans not just in America, but all across the world for nearly three decades. Jerry Garcia established a name for himself as a co-founder of the world-famous musical group, but he also got involved in other ventures, the most significant of which was the Jerry Garcia Band.

Table of Contents

Best Jerry Garcia quotes

“So it’s one of those things where we have to – our problem is
pacing ourselves and still reaching a large enough number of our audience.
Because we don’t want to burn the audience.
And we don’t want to be excluding anybody.”
-Jerry Garcia Quotes

“We’re like licorice.
Not everybody likes licorice,
but the people who like licorice
really like licorice.”
-Jerry Garcia

“And the live show is
still our main thing.”
-Jerry Garcia

“Constantly choosing
the lesser of two evils is
still choosing evil.”
-Jerry Garcia Quotes

“Our strong suit is what we do,
and our audience.”
-Jerry Garcia

“I have all the patience in the world about Sirens.
For me it’s not a Grateful Dead project, it’s a Me project.”
-Jerry Garcia Quotes

“We didn’t invent the Grateful Dead,
the crowd invented the Grateful Dead.
We were just in line to see
what was going to happen.”
-Jerry Garcia

“For me, the lame part of the Sixties was
the political part, the social part.
The real part was the spiritual part.”
-Jerry Garcia

“Every silver lining has a touch of grey.”
-Jerry Garcia

10.

“There is a road, no simple highway,
Between the dawn and the dark of night,
and if you go, no one may follow,
that path is for your steps alone”
-Jerry Garcia

11.

“Hunter can write
a melody and stuff like that,
but his forte is lyrics.
He can write
a serviceable melody to hang his lyrics on,
and sometimes he comes up
with something really nice.”
-Jerry Garcia

12.

“I’m shopping around for something
to do that no one will like.”
-Jerry Garcia Quotes

13.

“America is still mostly xenophobic and racist.
That’s the nature of America, I think.“
-Jerry Garcia

14.

“I read somewhere that 77 percent
of all the mentally ill live in poverty.
Actually, I’m more intrigued by the 23 percent
who are apparently doing
quite well for themselves.“
-Jerry Garcia

Jerry Garcia quotes about love

15.

“For me, I think the only danger is
being too much in love with guitar playing.
The MUSIC is the most important thing,
and the guitar is only the instrument.”
-Jerry Garcia Quotes

16.

“I don’t think that Slaughterhouse-Five was
successful movie material.
In fact, Vonnegut’s books mostly
I don’t feel are movie material.“
-Jerry Garcia

17.

“I mean, whatever kills
you kills you,
and your death is authentic
no matter how you die.”
-Jerry Garcia

18.

“We were very fortunate to have a little time in history
when LSD was still legal and
were able to experiment with drugs just like
we were doing with music.”
-Jerry Garcia

19.

“I mean, just because you’re a musician
doesn’t mean all your ideas are about music.
So every once in a while
I get an idea about plumbing,
I get an idea about city government,
and they come the way they come.“
-Jerry Garcia Quotes

20.

“Too much of a good thing is
just about right.”
-Jerry Garcia

21.

“Don’t tell me this town ‘aint got no heart”
-Jerry Garcia

22.

“Seems like everything
lead up to this day
and it’s just like every day
that’s ever been.
Sun goin’ up
and then the sun
it goin’ down.”
-Jerry Garcia Quotes

23.

“And the live show is still our main thing.“
-Jerry Garcia

24.

“And for me there’s still more material
than 20 lifetimes that I can use up.”
-Jerry Garcia

25.

“Every mind is at least as heavy as mine”
-Jerry Garcia

26.

“Lady’s finger,
dipped in moonlight,
writing what for
across the morning sky.”
-Jerry Garcia

27.

“If we had any nerve at all,
if we had any real balls as a society,
or whatever you need,
whatever quality you need, a real character,
we would make an effort to really address
the wrongs in this society, righteously.”
-Jerry Garcia Quotes

28.

“The alternate media are becoming important and
viable alternatives to playing live.
Records, videos, that kind of thing.
They’re going to start to count for something.
Because there’s only a limited amount of
us-time available to us.”
-Jerry Garcia Quotes

29.

“Magic is what we do.
Music is how we do it.”
-Jerry Garcia

30.

“If you’re able to enjoy something,
to devote your life to it or
a reasonable amount of time and energy,
it will work out for you.”
-Jerry Garcia

Jerry Garcia quotes from songs

31.

“I think it’s too bad that
everybody’s decided to turn on drugs,
I don’t think drugs are the problem.
Crime is the problem.
Cops are the problem.
Money’s the problem.
But drugs are just drugs.“
-Jerry Garcia Quotes

32.

“You don’t want to be the best at what you do,
you want to be the only one.”
-Jerry Garcia

33.

“I’m shopping around for
something to do that
no one will like.“
-Jerry Garcia

34.

“You ain’t gonna learn
what you don’t wanna know.”
-Jerry Garcia

35.

“I listen to anything anyone gives me.
I always go back to a few basic favorites.
I can always listen to Django Reinhardt and
hear something I haven’t heard before.
I like to listen to Art Tatum and Coltrane and Charlie Parker.
Those are guys who never seem to run out of ideas.“
-Jerry Garcia Quotes

36.

“You do not merely want to be considered
just the best of the best.
You want to be considered the only one
who does what you do.”
-Jerry Garcia Quotes

37.

“And Warner Bros. seems to be pretty much
into re-releasing all of their catalogs.
So there’s the Warner Bros. stuff and
the stuff that we have control over,
we’re gradually re-releasing it.
Some stuff we don’t have control over.“
-Jerry Garcia

Jerry Garcia quotes about life

38.

“But hey, when you live in Watts,
you need a little smack to get by, you know what I mean?
You need something soft and comfortable in your life,
’cause you’re not going to get it from what’s around you.
And society isn’t going to give it to you.“
-Jerry Garcia Quotes

39.

“Stuff that’s hidden and murky and ambiguous is
scary because you don’t know what it does.“
-Jerry Garcia

40.

“I don’t think that
Slaughterhouse-Five was successful movie material.
In fact, Vonnegut’s books mostly
I don’t feel are movie material.”
-Jerry Garcia

41.

“And as far as I’m concerned,
it’s like I say,
drugs are not the problem.
Other stuff is the problem.”
-Jerry Garcia

42.

“My guitar is a mutation
between a classic Fender Stratocaster guitar,
which I played for years,
and a Gibson solid-body like an SG or a Les Paul.
It contains all sounds of the basic classic
rock n’ roll guitars.
It does what I want it to do.“
-Jerry Garcia

43.

“Either you were a hoodlum,
or you were a puddle on the sidewalk.”
-Jerry Garcia

44.

“We’re not uncomfortable with it,
and we’ve already been through enough
of the music business where
I’m not really worried that
commercial success is going to in some way –
we’re already past saving, you know what I mean?
It’s too late for us.“
-Jerry Garcia Quotes

45.

“Nothing left to do but smile.”
-Jerry Garcia Quotes

46.

“If the thunder don’t get ya
then the lightning will.”
-Jerry Garcia

47.

“Whistle through your teeth
and spit cuz, it’s Alright”
-Jerry Garcia

48.

“My kids seem to be more mature and
older than I am now somehow.
They’ve gotten ahead of me somehow.
But they’re very patient with me.“
-Jerry Garcia Quotes

49.

“It’s pretty clear now that what looked like
it might have been some kind of counterculture is,
in reality, just the plain old chaos of
undifferentiated weirdness.”
-Jerry Garcia

50.

“For me, the lame part of the Sixties was
the political part, the social part.
The real part was the spiritual part.“
-Jerry Garcia

51.

“It’s not enough
to be the best at what you do.
You must be perceived as the only one
who does what you do.”
Jerry Garcia

52.

“I don’t wake up in the morning and say,
‘Jeez, I feel great today. I think I’ll write a song.’
I mean, anything is more interesting to me than writing a song.
It’s like, ‘I think I’d like to write a song…
No, I guess I better go feed the cat first.’
Do you know what I mean?
It’s like pulling teeth. I don’t enjoy it a bit.”
-Jerry Garcia Quotes

53.

“What’s been great about the human race
gives you a sense of how great you might get,
how far you can reach.”
-Jerry Garcia

54.

“I Don’t Think There’s A Good Excuse For Being Unhappy.
I’m Not Particularly Unhappy, But I Know What Pain Is.
I think That Life Is Characterized By Pain, Partly.
Part Of The Way You Can Tell You’re Alive Is
By How Much Pain You’re Experiencing, Or How Little…”
-Jerry Garcia Quotes

55.

“Once in awhile you get shown the light,
in the strangest of places if you look it right”
-Jerry Garcia

56.

“But audio is a component of video,
so there’s always been that anyway,
and although we’ve never expressed
a visual side apart from the Grateful Dead movie,
I don’t find it that remote, you know what I mean?
It’s a departure of sorts, but it’s like a first cousin.“
-Jerry Garcia

57.

“Death comes at you no matter
what you do in this life,
and to equate drugs with death
is a facile comparison.“
-Jerry Garcia

58.

“I don’t know why it’s the same reason
why you like some music and you don’t like others.
There’s something about it that you like.
Ultimately I don’t find it’s in my best interests
to try and analyze it, since it’s fundamentally emotional.”
-Jerry Garcia Quotes

59.

“The sun will shine
in my back door one day..”
-Jerry Garcia

60.

“I’m not trying to
clock scores in this lifetime,
it’s just that things are better now than
they were like five, ten years ago.
Music has gotten a lot better.
There’s a lot of people
who are committed to – soulfully.“
-Jerry Garcia Quotes

61.

“The process of selecting the tone on the guitar is
an aesthetic process like any other,
so you try a lot of different things.“
-Jerry Garcia

62.

“And there’s a lot of that stuff
with people bringing their kids,
kids bringing their parents,
people bringing their grandparents – I mean,
it’s gotten to be really stretched out now.
It was never my intention to say,
this is the demographics of our audience.“
-Jerry Garcia

63.

“Our strong suit is what we do,
and our audience.“
-Jerry Garcia

64.

“What we do is as American as lynch mobs.
America has always been a complex place.“
-Jerry Garcia

65.

“I have one custom guitar which I play almost exclusively.
I have others – sometimes you want a little texture,
kind of a different sound or something.“
-Jerry Garcia Quotes

66.

“So we are pretty convinced
we don’t want to play huge stadiums unless
we can play them well.“
-Jerry Garcia

67.

“Truth is something you stumble into
when you think you’re going someplace else.”
-Jerry Garcia

68.

“To get really high is to forget yourself.
And to forget yourself is to see everything else.
And to see everything else is to
become an understanding molecule in evolution,
a conscious tool of the universe.”
-Jerry Garcia

69.

“Yeah, I think we have to. If we want our shows to be –
if we want the quality of the shows to be good,
and we want the energy to be high,
and if we want to be in good enough physical shape to do them,
and not exhaust ourselves on the road,
and not get stale, we have to pace.“
-Jerry Garcia Quotes

70.

“What we’re thinking about is a peaceful planet.
We’re not thinking about anything else.
We’re not thinking about any kind of power.
We’re not thinking about any kind of struggle.
We’re not thinking about revolution or war or any of that.
That’s not what we want.
Nobody wants to get hurt.
Nobody wants to hurt anybody.
We would all like to be able to live an uncluttered life.
A simple life, a good life.
And think about moving
the whole human race ahead of a step,
or a few steps.”
-Jerry Garcia

71.

“Sometimes the lights all shining on me,
other times I can barely see.
Lately, it occurs to me what
a long strange trip it’s been.”
-Jerry Garcia

72.

“I don’t think I’ve ever actually written from inspiration,
actually had a song just go,
‘Bing!’ I only recall that happening to me twice –
once was with ‘Terrapin’ and the other was ‘Wharf Rat.
‘ I mean, that’s twice in a lifetime of writing!“
-Jerry Garcia

73.

“Stuff that’s hidden and murky and ambiguous is
scary because you don’t know what it does.”
-Jerry Garcia Quotes

74.

“Nobody stopped thinking about
those psychedelic experiences.
Once you’ve been to some of those places,
you think, ‘How can I get back there again
but make it a little easier on myself?’”
-Jerry Garcia

75.

“It’s much too late to do anything
about rock & roll now …”
-Jerry Garcia

76.

“And as far as I’m concerned,
it’s like I say, drugs are not the problem.
Other stuff is the problem.“
-Jerry Garcia

77.

“To me, that’s the key thing,
the pursuit of happiness.
That’s the basic, ultimate freedom.”
-Jerry Garcia

78.

“You need music, I don’t know why.
It’s probably one of those
Joe Campbell questions, why we need ritual.
We need magic, and bliss, and power, myth,
and celebration and religion in our lives,
and music is a good way to encapsulate a lot of it.”
-Jerry Garcia

79.

“Somebody has to do something,
and it’s just incredibly pathetic
that it has to be us.”
-Jerry Garcia

80.

“The alternate media are becoming important
and viable alternatives to playing live.
Records, videos, that kind of thing.
They’re going to start to count for something.
Because there’s only a limited amount of us-
time available to us.“
-Jerry Garcia

How good was Jerry Garcia at guitar?

Jerry Garcia, on the other hand (and I say this as someone who isn’t a great Deadhead), was a really innovative performer who could play a variety of styles and do so very well. He pioneered several technical areas of guitar playing and recording, in addition to being a fantastic player/writer from a very influential band.