It's with great sadness that I file this story about John "Marmaduke" Dawson, who co-founded the New Riders of the Purple Sage with Jerry Garcia in 1969 and passed away on July 21 after a long bout with stomach cancer. He was 64.
The New Riders figured into two major events in my life - one directly and one indirectly.
In 1971, when I was senior in high school, me and several friends attended a free New Riders concert in Central Park. Beside being a great show featuring the New Riders - who were essentially a country-themed side project of the Grateful Dead with Dawson (at left) as lead singer and songwriter - it was the day I took my maiden LSD voyage, which I recounted in Paul Krassner's Psychedelic Trips for the Mind:
"We settled into the grass. smoked a few joints and waited for the New Riders. Then a clear glass jug containing an orange-looking drink was passed to me and [my friend] Matt. We looked at each other like, 'You know what this is?' - and then proceeded to take several gulps. A half-hour later we were full-blown tripping. I don't remember leaving out little patch of grass. The New Riders played as the clouds zoomed at super speed across the sky..."
Years and many more trips later, I met the New Riders. In fact, I not only met them, I organized their last-ever reunion performance. In 2002, when I worked at High Times and produced the Doobie Awards, we decided to give the New Riders the Lifetime Achievement Award. With the help of Rob Bleetstein, we were able to coax Dawson out of Mexico, where he'd moved, to New York for the reunion.
The original New Riders of the Purple Sage consisted of Dawson, Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart and David Nelson. Garcia player pedal steel guitar. Here's how Dawson recalled the roots of the New Riders:
"Any story about the early days of the New Riders would also have to be a story about my relationship with Garcia, since that's how the whole thing got started. I first met Jerry Garcia at the house of my guitar teacher, who was my best friend's mother. It was during the folk music days in Palo Alto, sometime, I guess, before I left for my first semester at Millbrook School in New York, in September of 1959. Several of us students as well as members of the local picking scene were invited. Jerry was too...
"There was a house on Gilman Street, behind the post office in Palo Alto, where David Nelson, Eric Thompson, Herb Pedersen, and Rick Shubb lived. I would go there in the evenings to smoke pot. One night Denny Smith brought the only kilo of genuine Acapulco Gold that I've ever seen. Delicious. The next morning when I walked into the place, Rick Shubb decided that I looked more like a Marmaduke than a John Collins Dawson. He took me around to everybody's room, saying, 'Doesn't this look more like a Marmaduke to you?' I don't know from what reccesses of his cannabis-enhanced brain he came up with Marmaduke (I looked it up: it means Sea Leader!?!), but the name has stuck, although Garcia later shortened it to McDuke, because I can talk like Donald Duck...
"Kids would empty out of the pizza shop a block up the street and come down to the Underground to hear Jerry (for sure) and me (I think they liked the songs; they applauded) play. Well, we decided that we would like a bigger band and that we would like to play in bars and Grange Halls, like a real country-western band. We called up David Nelson, who was playing in what was left of Big Brother after Janis left and they weren't doing much, I'd guess because they hadn't found a new girl singer. So David said sure, he would like to play lead guitar in a band with me as the singer and Jerry as the pedal steel. This country thing that Jerry was doing was beginning to get some notice in the Dead scene and Mickey Hart said he wouldn't mind playing drums. After Bob Mathews didn't work out on the bass, Phil Lesh said he'd give it a try. So there we had it: a full, five-piece band. And the neat thing was, the Dead would only have to buy two more plane tickets and we could go on the road with them, as an opening act. It would give Jerry, Phil and Mickey a chance to warm up before THEIR set and it would give our music and my songs a national audience. After doing more gigs than I can remember locally that summer, we did the two extra ticket thing and went on the road with The Grateful Dead in the fall of 1969."
After opening for the Dead in 1969 and 1970, Buddy Cage, Dave Tolbert and Spencer Dryden gradually replaced the Dead members, and NRPS took off on their own. Their self-titled debut with the sagauro cactus on the cover is among the greatest country-rock albums ever. All ten songs - from "I Don't Know You" to "Louisiana Lady" - are classics.
With all of that in mind, we hired a limo and went to pick up Dawson and his wife at the airport several days before the Doobies on Sept. 25, 2002. I made sure to bring lots of pot - freshly stuffed in a glass jar and rolled and ready for smoking. Dawson was game. We talked and toked as the car rode into Manhattan and dropped them off at their hotel.
That night was the rehearsal at Jimi Hendrix's old Electric Lady Studios. The current version of the New Riders would consist of Dawson, Nelson and several of his band members, plus Peter Rowan, who wrote "Panama Red." As weed stunk up the studio, Dawson and Nelson got to work, playing their songs together for the first time in several years. When Dawson couldn't remember the words, Nelson gently helped him along.
The next night at the Doobies, it was a bigger New Riders reunion than I could've ever imagined. In addition to Dawson, Nelson and Rowan, Dryden (Jefferson Airplane's original drummer) and Tolbert's wife Patti also showed up. (Sadly, Dryden - at right in photo above - died in 2005.)
The New Riders played a sweet set that included "Glendale Train" (my request), "Henry" ("rollin' down the mountain, goin' fast, fast, fast"), "Last Lonely Eagle" and, of course, "Panama Red."
The set and acceptance speeches was a highlight moment in my part-time career as an awards-show producer.
In 2006, when the New Riders decided to get back together, I asked Cage about Dawson's possible participation. "He's not well enough to come out on the road," Cage told me for a feature I wrote about the band in Relix. Dawson had an alcohol problem, as did Cage before he beat it thanks to Alcoholics Anonymous.
John "Marmaduke" Dawson's last years were spent in the expat-friendly San Miguel de Allende. I'm sure he smoked Panama Red, Acapulco Gold or some other Mexican variety until his last breath.
I was at that Central Park concert! Thanks for the memories! A great band, RIP John.
5
Tuesday, 28 July 2009 20:02
Strider
I saw NRPS at their first NYC gig at the Fillmore, 5-15-70. Strange that on 7-20-09 I broadcast Ian and Sylvias version of Last Lonely Eagle on my radio show on KGLP, Gallup Public Radio. Thanks for all the good memories Marmaduke.
4
Sunday, 26 July 2009 01:17
aron pieman kay
marmeduke has passed on!!!! miss him!! miss him !!! miss him!!!gone is the brother who gave us "panama red" at our desire!!! gone is the one who flew to dc to play at the july 4, 1978 smoke-in in the midst of a flood!!! this brother was one of the best possed by psychedelic roch'n;roll!!!! however we will still boogie to the sounds of PANAMA RED!!!!
JOHN DAWSON!!!! WE LOVE YOU
3
Saturday, 25 July 2009 18:28
aeon pieman ky
i was at the gig in 2002 in nyc!!! i didnt realize that it would be the last time i would see marmaduke...wow, i would always see him at the lone star, wetlands or the free concert at central park which also had the jefferson starship. roger mcguinn and richie havens on the bill!!! now john is gone, but panama red will keep on smoking
2
Saturday, 25 July 2009 07:01
The Last Lonely Eagle..
Shed a tear for the fate on the last lonely eagle, he's soaring the length of the land...
1
Saturday, 25 July 2009 06:27
Bob
Sad days for us NRPS fans with the passing of Marmaduke, he was the face of NRPS for so long and kept the music alive for many years on his own. A true artist in every sense of the word. Even with the great success of the current band, and I think we all agree they are a fine group of talented musicians! (having been to many of their shows over the past 3 years)I still have the image in my minds eye of John Dawson front and center with an acoustic guitar strapped on whenever I hear the words “New Riders of the Purple Sage”
Thanks for this great work by you in remembering one of the great ones! I posted it to the bands forum at http://www.thenewriders.com/
JOHN DAWSON!!!! WE LOVE YOU
Thanks for this great work by you in remembering one of the great ones! I posted it to the bands forum at http://www.thenewriders.com/
RIP John “Marmaduke” Dawson