[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 126 (Tuesday, August 1, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H8139-H8141]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1745
                               DEADHEADS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Metcalf). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. Duncan] is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, as some people here know, I spent 7\1/2\ 
years as a criminal court judge in Tennessee trying felony criminal 
cases, the burglaries, the rapes, the armed robberies, the murder 
cases, the drug cases, the most serious cases. As everyone can imagine, 
I saw many very sad things during those years. However, one of the 
saddest cases involved what was then, and may still be, the biggest 
drug case every to hit the city of Knoxville.
  Four young people brought 72,000 hits of LSD from California and were 
arrested in a raid at the Hilton Hotel. One of the four was a very 
beautiful young woman, just 1 month past her 18th birthday. She 
testified that she started with marijuana in the 7th grade, and because 
she handled that with no problem, she went on to cocaine in the 9th 
grade and heroin in the 10th grade. She then left home and started 
following a band called the Grateful Dead. She became part of a 
subculture called the Deadheads.
  They used her for a couple of years or so until she ran out of money 
in California and started living on the beach and having to beg for 
money and beg for food.
  Then she got involved in selling drugs. She came to Knoxville, got 
caught and had to spend 12 years of a nonprobatable sentence in the 
Tennessee Penitentiary for Women.
  After she was arrested, she found out she was pregnant, and she had 
twins which were delivered while she was incarcerated and had to be 
turned over to the State of Connecticut where she was originally from.
  I became horrified from what I heard from those young people about 
how their lives were ruined when they became attracted to this band, 
the Grateful Dead, and became part of this horrible subculture called 
the Deadheads. So you can imagine how interested I was when I picked up 
Sunday's Washington Post and read on the front page of the Outlook 
section of a column, an article, a lengthy article entitled 
``UnGrateful Deadheads, My Long, Strange Trip Through a Tie-Dyed 
Hell,'' by Carolyn Ruff.
  I wanted to read just a portion of this article because there may be 
some people here tonight or some parents who are listening whose young 
people are attracted to things like this. I do this sort of as 
hopefully a warning for these young people to get some help. Carolyn 
Ruff wrote this:

       She jumped from a window of a seedy motel on Market Street 
     in San Francisco. From a room full of Deadheads she 
     considered to be her family, she climbed out onto the ledge 
     and then took one more step forward. No one made any attempt 
     to stop her. I was on the street below and to this day remain 
     thankful I was looking the other way. I don't even remember 
     her name anymore. I suspect few remember her at all.
       We met at a Grateful Dead show in North Carolina. It was 
     the end of the Dead's fall tour of 1989, I had just completed 
     my first full tour and she had finished what would be her 
     last. She was a bright, beautiful runaway from a loveless 
     home in Pittsburgh. Like many of the hundreds on the tour, 
     she was attracted to the scene around the Grateful Dead as 
     much as the band itself. In the Deadheads, she thought she 
     saw family.
       When we saw each other again a few months later in Miami, I 
     was shocked by her mental deterioration. She rambled gravely 
     about how her closest friends had stolen her clothes and her 
     money. She shamefully recounted having sex with men in 
     exchange for food and drugs. She had lice in her hair. She 
     was hungry, lonely, miserable. Another Deadhead suggested 
     that she medicate with acid to cleanse the dark thoughts from 
     her head, and then swim in the ocean to rinse the black film 
     on her soul. This home remedy failed and a young life was 
     lost within months of our meeting.

  I continue to read from this column from the Washington Post, as 
Carolyn Ruff put it this past Sunday:

       Contrary to the image laid out by the Deadheads themselves, 
     life on tour these 

[[Page H8140]]
     days is far from peace, love and smiles. Capitalism, greed and betrayal 
     would be more apt descriptions.
       In my seven years as a devoted Deadhead including two spent 
     touring the country, I came to take for granted that people 
     would steal from a friend's backpack and rationalize their 
     actions. I saw friends sleep with other friends' partners. I 
     saw young women sexually assaulted after being unwittingly 
     dosed with acid. I saw someone give a friend's dog acid just 
     to watch it lose it mind. I saw people stranded in a strange 
     city because their friends were impatient to hit the road. I 
     saw people trash their friends motel rooms, knowing that they 
     would not be held responsible for the damage.
       With no legal system within the Deadhead culture, these 
     injustices go unchallenged.

  I do not have time, tonight, Mr. Speaker, to read this entire 
article. But I do commend the Washington Post for writing this and 
Carolyn Ruff for bringing this horrible subculture of the Deadheads to 
the attention of so many people.
  Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the article to which I 
referred.

               [From the Washington Post, July 30, 1995]

                        The Ungrateful Deadheads


             my long, strange trip through a tie-dyed hell

                           (By Carolyn Ruff)

       She jumped from a window of a seedy motel on market Street 
     in San Francisco. From a room full of Deadheads she 
     considered to be her family, she climbed out onto the ledge 
     and then took one more step forward. No one made any attempt 
     to stop her. I was on the street below and to this day remain 
     thankful I was looking the other way. I don't even remember 
     her name anymore. I suspect few remember her at all.
       We met at a Grateful Dead show in North Carolina. It was 
     the end of the Dead's fall tour in 1989. I had just completed 
     my first full tour and she had finished what would be her 
     last. She was a bright, beautiful runaway from a loveless 
     home in Pittsburgh. Like many of the hundreds on the tour, 
     she was attracted to the scene around the Grateful Dead as 
     much as the band itself. In the Deadheads, she thought she 
     saw family.
       When we saw each other again a few months later in Miami, I 
     was shocked by her mental deterioration. She rambled gravely 
     about how her closest friends had stolen her clothes and her 
     money. She shamefully recounted having sex with men in 
     exchange for food and drugs. She had lice in her hair. She 
     was hungry, lonely, miserable. Another Deadhead suggested 
     that she medicate with acid to cleanse the dark thoughts from 
     her head, and then swim in the ocean to rinse the black film 
     on her soul. This home remedy failed and a young life was 
     lost within months of our meeting.
       That indecent occurred five years ago, but recent headlines 
     surrounding the Grateful Dead have taken me back to that time 
     and to my own days on tour. As the itinerant band celebrates 
     an astonishing 30 years on tour, it has been dogged by 
     misfortune--lightning struck fans earlier this summer at RFK 
     Stadium in Washington, several dozen people were arrested 
     outside a Dead concert in Albany and for the first time in 
     three decades, a scheduled concert was canceled in Indiana 
     for fear of crowd violence. None of this can be directly 
     attributed to the band itself, but the incidents are 
     nonetheless beginning to expose a darker, more malevolent 
     side of the Grateful Dead milieu. Contrary to the image laid 
     out by the Deadheads themselves, life on tour these days is 
     far from peace, love and smiles. Capitalism, greed and 
     betrayal would be more apt descriptions.
       Today's Deadheads wear the tie-dyed costumes of a past 
     generation but aren't propelled by the same sense of moral 
     rebellion. If bygone Deadheads were protesting war and social 
     strife, today's seem only to be dissenters from real-world 
     monotony. Unfortunately, like many of my generation's 
     discontents, they are cynical, savy and unhappy with their 
     lives.
       In my seven years as a devoted Deadhead--including two 
     spent touring the country--I came to take for granted that 
     people would steal from a friend's backpack and rationalize 
     their actions. I saw friends sleep with other friends' 
     partners. I saw young women sexually assaulted after being 
     unwittingly dosed with acid. I saw someone give a friend's 
     dog acid just to watch it lose its mind. I saw people 
     stranded in a strange city because their friends were 
     impatient to hit the road. I saw people trash their friends' 
     motel rooms, knowing that they would not be held responsible 
     for the damage.
       With no legal system within the Deadhead culture, these 
     injustices go unchallenged. Thankfully, violent acts of 
     retribution have been few, but who knows if it will someday 
     come to that? The common reaction when this sort of incident 
     occurs is to get a bit meaner, shrewder and make a plan to do 
     it back to someone else. Eventually. I came to dislike the 
     music of the Dead because of the association I made between 
     the band and its followers.
       It would be unfair to imply that all of those on tour 
     engage in such loathsome behavior. There are many who revel 
     in the shows and demonstrate respect not just for their 
     fellow Tourheads but for the cities they visit. Their sole 
     desire is to immerse themselves in the music and peacefully 
     co-exist with others who feel the same. But the dominant 
     culture is not so sanguine.
       In an attempt to escape the society they so disdain, the 
     Deadheads have created a world underpinned by the same 
     materialism and greed. Whether it be overpricing their wares 
     or selling crack and ecstasy, the looming specter of 
     capitalism rules supreme, and it is every bit as ruthless as 
     that of the American mainstream.
       Newcomers naive enough to think otherwise quickly have 
     their misconceptions dispelled. I met quite a few 14- and 15-
     year-old kids who came to tour without a penny and thought 
     they could turn to other Deadheads for support. Somehow, they 
     thought money didn't hold the same relevance that it does 
     elsewhere. But unless you're a Trustfund Deadhead, sustained 
     by the family fortune, everyone needs a scheme. Selling 
     veggie sandwiches is one option, as is hawking jewelry or 
     clothing. To make these business go, some Deadheads trek to 
     Central America between tours to buy the Guatemalan jewelry 
     and garb so
      popular among Dead followers. Others make their own products 
     to sell. And with a steady flow of suburban kids who have 
     the cash to spend on a $5 tofu burger and a $20 T-shirt, 
     these entrepreneurs have an ideal location at Dead shows.
       But these business ventures take a level of initiative and 
     planning beyond what most Tourheads are willing to expend. 
     More typically, people make just enough money to cover food, 
     lodging, their concert ticket and enough gas to get to the 
     next city. If you are not good at selling or at least 
     scamming, you will not make it on tour. Many Deadheads, while 
     professing distrust and disdain for the government, make it 
     by accepting food stamps and other public hand-outs. A walk 
     down the streets of Berkeley or San Francisco, a popular hub 
     of between-tour activity, is evidence enough that many 
     Tourheads are also adept at panhandling, although this is not 
     a profitable choice for survival.
       The drug trade is also an easy and rather lucrative route 
     to sustenance. With perseverance, one can usually find 
     suppliers of acid, mushrooms or ecstasy to resell, and the 
     rising popularity of crack and heroin on tour is opening up 
     new markets. There is the nuisance of undercover agents from 
     the Drug Enforcement Administration, to say nothing of fellow 
     Deadhead narcs, but this can add an element of excitement to 
     a new career--which for today's Deadheads is a tonic in 
     itself.
       My initiation to the Grateful Dead came in 1986 and 
     coincided with the band's resurgence back then. I was in 
     college and had been more interested in the Clash and Flipper 
     than wearing bells on my shoes and tie-dyeing every white 
     shirt I owned. But after going to a few shows I grew 
     enchanted, with the band and with the hordes of colorfully 
     attired people who seemed like happy children at recess. I 
     worked every conceivable retail job to finance my indulgence, 
     choosing positions where there was little commitment. With 
     the money I had saved and the cushion of a few credit cards, 
     I was able to traverse the country with relative financial 
     security. It also helped that I had family that, though 
     preferring I settle down and get a job, made clear that I 
     could rely on them if things got desperate.
       It might have been different had I joined the tour earlier. 
     One retired Tourhead who requests anonymity for fear of 
     losing a respectable job says the late 1980s ushered in a 
     more amoral environment. ``The demise of the Dead scene began 
     in 1987 when going to shows became like going to some sort of 
     pop scene,'' says this ex-Deadhead who himself was eventually 
     scared away by the violence. He blames alcohol abuse for what 
     he sees as an increased incidence of fighting, show-crashing 
     and other disruptive behavior.
       Today's version of tour is a mockery of what the original 
     Dead followers created. There is an attempt to form family 
     units, but too often they aren't bound together by loyalty 
     and trust. The members travel together, bunk together and, 
     theoretically, provide the love and support that one might 
     bestow on a relative. And, to a degree, there is a sense of 
     sharing: In spurts of generosity, one person or a few will 
     support the others by buying the gas or paying for the motel 
     room. But typically this generosity is born of necessity--
     everybody else is broke.
       Rarely do the relationships that develop transcend each 
     person's own selfishness. Usually, the break occurs over 
     money--someone feels they've been cut out of a drug deal, or 
     grows tired of supporting a parasitic family member.
       To survive on tour, it helps to have emotions encased in 
     steel. Courtesy is not mandatory and verbal assaults, rude 
     comments and sexist remarks are common in the course of a 
     motel room conversation. People refer to each other freely as 
     ``sister'' or ``brother'' but there was rarely the 
     accompanying intimacy. Practically everyone goes by a 
     nickname--Woodstock, Scooter, Zeus, Rainbow, Jinx. Often, I 
     never knew people's real first names, and rarely did I know 
     their last. There was a degree of secrecy which supposedly 
     stemmed from a paranoia of the law, but sometimes I wondered 
     whether going by a fake name among friends was just a way of 
     preventing anyone from getting too close.
       So what's the beauty of it all? The question for many on 
     tour is probably: What's the alternative?
       ``There is this core group of Tourheads who have dropped 
     out of society and their only alternative is to follow the 
     Dead,'' says Jill, another former Deadhead. These people live 


[[Page H8141]]
     for tour to resume each season, but quickly grow disgusted. They boast 
     of making enough money from the present tour to buy that land 
     in Oregon and settle down. But more typically their money is 
     blown on lavish hotel rooms, expensive meals, beer and drugs. 
     Strung out and broke, they're left scrambling for someone to 
     support them until tour begins again.
       And so a cycle evolves: Many may want to try a new life but 
     have become ensnared in the tour culture. Financially, they 
     know no other way to make money other than selling wares on 
     tour. Socially, whether they truly like them or not, the 
     people on tour are the only friends they have. Alienated and 
     fearful of what the real world is about, they settle into 
     what they know best: The Dead.
       Every time there is a scare that the Dead may stop touring, 
     I find myself worrying about the lost souls who know nothing 
     else but the parallel world of the Grateful Dead. Many are 
     talented and have skills adaptable to the mainstream. It's 
     those who use the Dead simply as an escape who will have 
     difficulty adjusting to life without tour. Sadly, I cannot 
     picture their future.
       They will surely endure the loss of the Dead's live 
     performances, but can they handle the end of tour? That 
     possibility seems ever more zeal with the current malaise 
     surrounding the band. As the amount of violence and police 
     confrontation has grown, so have concerns about how to 
     curtail it. A group calling itself Save Our Scene has formed 
     in an attempt to quash disruptive behavior. And through 
     newsletters and the Internet, band members have practically 
     begged their fans to clean up their act. If they don't, the 
     Dead will stop touring' or so they threaten.
       In an open letter passed out to Deadheads at a recent St. 
     Louis show and later posted on the Internet, the Dead told 
     fans that ``over the past 30 years we've come up with the 
     fewest possible rules to make the difficult act of bringing 
     tons of people together work well--and a few thousand so-
     called Dead Heads ignore these simple rules and screw it up 
     for you, us and everybody.''
       Arguably, it is not the Tourheads who are responsible for 
     the bad behavior, but local kids who view the parking lot at 
     a Dead show as an invitation to party with complete abandon. 
     Tourheads can blame the less devoted concert-goers, but it is 
     these ``outsiders'' who buy the goods that sustain the 
     Tourheads lifestyle. And it is the Tourheads who have created 
     the atmosphere that is so appealing to revelers in the first 
     place.
       The Dead went on to say, ``If you don't have a ticket, 
     don't come. This is real. This is a music concert, not a 
     free-for-all party.''
       To me, the issue of blame isn't really relevant. The real 
     question is: How long did anyone think the party could last?
     

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