Ron “Pigpen” McKernan Episode 1: Fueled by Thunderbird, Taught by a Nine-Fingered Wizard, and Saving Woodstock
Explicit content warning
06/09/22 • 33 min
Ron "Pigpen" McKernan was the primary figure and driving force at the core of the Grateful Dead's origin story. He was an old soul, a digger of deep moods, a devotee of biker chic, and a tireless student of the blues. His devotion to classic Americana kept the band grounded even when they found themselves lost in experimental improvisation. But as the Dead evolved and became more famous, Pigpen became more of an outlier. While the rest of the band dropped acid, he drank Thunderbird. While they looked to the future for a new strain of American music, he looked back to the past. And by the time he died in 1973 at the age of 27, the band that Pigpen had started all those years ago no longer had room for him.
Sources:
A Long Strange Trip: The Inside Story of the Grateful Dead, by Dennis McNally
Searching for the Sound, by Phil Lesh
San Francisco Blues, by Jack Kerouac
5 Logistical Woodstock Nightmares We Can Learn From (Prevue Meetings)
The Grateful Dead at Woodstock 1969 (Bethel Woods)
Debunking Woodstock: What really happened? (Today)
The Grateful Dead (Woodstock Wiki)
The Dead At Woodstock (Dead Essays)
Grateful Dead at Woodstock (YouTube)
Owsley Stanley Interview (KPFA)
Grateful Dead Guide: Pigpen Solo (Dead Essays)
White people, blues music and the problem of cultural appropriation (Medium)
'Pigpen' McKernan Dead at 27 (Rolling Stone)
Jerry's Brokendown Palaces: Dana Morgan's Music Store
Bob Weir on meeting Jerry Garcia (Vimeo)
The Grateful Dead: Making the Scene in Palo Alto (Palo Alto History)
Fact-checking the Life and Death of Bluesman Robert Johnson (Mother Jones)
The Sad Story Of Robert Johnson (Radio Facts)
Robert Johnson: Murder or Bad Whiskey? (Criminal Element)
David “Honeyboy” Edwards on Robert Johnson and Mississippi Delta Blues (Chicago Magazine)
Robert Johnson: Unlock the guitar mysteries of the Delta blues great (Guitar World)
The Not-So-Mysterious Missing Grave of Blues Legend Robert Johnson (Atlas Obscura)
Greatest Stories Ever Told - "Easy Wind" (Dead.net)
For behind the scenes info and news on this ep...
Ron "Pigpen" McKernan was the primary figure and driving force at the core of the Grateful Dead's origin story. He was an old soul, a digger of deep moods, a devotee of biker chic, and a tireless student of the blues. His devotion to classic Americana kept the band grounded even when they found themselves lost in experimental improvisation. But as the Dead evolved and became more famous, Pigpen became more of an outlier. While the rest of the band dropped acid, he drank Thunderbird. While they looked to the future for a new strain of American music, he looked back to the past. And by the time he died in 1973 at the age of 27, the band that Pigpen had started all those years ago no longer had room for him.
Sources:
A Long Strange Trip: The Inside Story of the Grateful Dead, by Dennis McNally
Searching for the Sound, by Phil Lesh
San Francisco Blues, by Jack Kerouac
5 Logistical Woodstock Nightmares We Can Learn From (Prevue Meetings)
The Grateful Dead at Woodstock 1969 (Bethel Woods)
Debunking Woodstock: What really happened? (Today)
The Grateful Dead (Woodstock Wiki)
The Dead At Woodstock (Dead Essays)
Grateful Dead at Woodstock (YouTube)
Owsley Stanley Interview (KPFA)
Grateful Dead Guide: Pigpen Solo (Dead Essays)
White people, blues music and the problem of cultural appropriation (Medium)
'Pigpen' McKernan Dead at 27 (Rolling Stone)
Jerry's Brokendown Palaces: Dana Morgan's Music Store
Bob Weir on meeting Jerry Garcia (Vimeo)
The Grateful Dead: Making the Scene in Palo Alto (Palo Alto History)
Fact-checking the Life and Death of Bluesman Robert Johnson (Mother Jones)
The Sad Story Of Robert Johnson (Radio Facts)
Robert Johnson: Murder or Bad Whiskey? (Criminal Element)
David “Honeyboy” Edwards on Robert Johnson and Mississippi Delta Blues (Chicago Magazine)
Robert Johnson: Unlock the guitar mysteries of the Delta blues great (Guitar World)
The Not-So-Mysterious Missing Grave of Blues Legend Robert Johnson (Atlas Obscura)
Greatest Stories Ever Told - "Easy Wind" (Dead.net)
For behind the scenes info and news on this ep...
Previous Episode
Ron "Pigpen" McKernan Episode 0: 27 Club Season 5 Official Trailer
Get ready for Season 5 of the 27 Club to take the strange and not-so-long trip of Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, a founding member of the Grateful Dead. Pigpen wasn't just a member of the Dead. He was the Dead. But just like Brian Jones in the Rolling Stones or Syd Barrett in Pink Floyd, Pigpen felt his role in the Grateful Dead shrink as the rest of the band members expanded their minds and their sound. The story of Pigpen is about a major musical and cultural shift that took place as the 1960s gave way to the 1970s. It’s a story of acid tests and bottles of Thunderbird, of angels from hell and a nine-fingered wizard, of busts down on Bourbon Street and shakedowns in the Haight...and of the man who tried to pull his band back down to earth as they continued to get pulled higher into the cosmos. It's a story that ends tragically...at the age of 27.
The 27 Club is hosted by Jake Brennan, creator and host of the award-winning Disgraceland podcast, and produced by iHeartRadio and Double Elvis. Season 5, all about Ron "Pigpen" McKernan and the Grateful Dead, launches Thursday, June 9, 2022.
For more info on the 27 Club and other great shows, visit the Double Elvis website and follow Double Elvis on Twitter and Instagram.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Next Episode
Ron “Pigpen” McKernan Episode 2: A Life-Changing Car Crash, Mind Experiments, and Hanging onto the Blues
Ron "Pigpen" McKernan could already feel his influence in the band waning from early on. Even back when the Grateful Dead were still known as the Warlocks. Whereas Pig subsisted on raw power fueled by alcohol and blues music, the rest of the members of the band were functioning on a completely different level. They listened to music, talked literature, and explored the cosmos...while loaded to the gills on LSD. Pig did not partake. He found himself not just playing in a band, but navigating a world of merry pranksters, acid tests, and long, strange trips.
Sources:
A Long Strange Trip: The Inside Story of the Grateful Dead, by Dennis McNally
Garcia: An American Life, by Blair Jackson
Searching for the Sound, by Phil Lesh
Jerry Garcia & Sandy Rothman travel down south (Woodstock Records)
High Flying Bird – Jerry Garcia
Kepler's Books 60th Anniversary (Metro Silicon Valley)
Grateful Dead Guide: Pigpen Solo (Dead Essays)
Flashback: LSD Creator Albert Hofmann Drops Acid for the First Time (Rolling Stone)
'Apparently Useless': The Accidental Discovery of LSD (The Atlantic)
What a Trip (Stanford Magazine)
Ken Kesey & The Merry Pranksters (University of Virginia)
A brief history of psychedelic psychiatry (The Guardian)
Ken Kesey On Misconceptions Of Counterculture (NPR)
“We Were Alive and Life Was Us.” How Ken Kesey Created LSD Subculture (Lithub)
Ken Kesey's First LSD Trip Animated (Open Culture)
Therapeutic Use of LSD in Psychiatry: A Systematic Review of Randomized-Controlled Clinical Trials (Frontiers)
Did the CIA's Experiments With Psychedelic Drugs Unwittingly Create the Grateful Dead? (Collectors Weekly)
Doors of Perception: How Aldous Huxley Brought LSD Therapy to His Readers (Psychedelic Times)
Inside the 1950s LSD Therapy That Changed Cary Grant's Life (Vulture)
Ken Kesey and Jerry Garcia on the Tom Snyder Show, 1981
The CIA's Secret Quest For Mind Control: Torture, LSD And A 'Poisoner In Chief' (NPR)
What a Long Strange Trip — LSD and the Grateful Dead (Medium)
27 Club - Ron “Pigpen” McKernan Episode 1: Fueled by Thunderbird, Taught by a Nine-Fingered Wizard, and Saving Woodstock
Transcript
Double Elvis Club is the production of I Heart Radio and Double Elvis Ron. Pigpen mccernan died at the age of and he lived the life that seemed to always be running a little late. I can give you twenty seven reasons why that statement is true. Five would be the number of years he obsorbed the blues and R and B music that is disc jockey father Spawn, helping Pigpen develop a love for music that was decades before his time. Another twelve would be
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