A smiling, energetic, visibly thinner Jerry Garcia calls this "the golden age of the Grateful Dead." "We're going through a good moment right now," said Garcia. "This is a good period for us."

The Dead's first performance since Garcia collapsed last August from exhaustion bore out his words. The group's three-hour concert before 18,000 fans -- the first of two sold-out shows at Denver's McNichols Sports Arena in early December -- was a triumph.

Garcia was animated, moving about the stage, joking with keyboardist Vince Welnick and singer-guitarist Bob Weir and offering up a tour de force of brilliant electric-guitar pyrotechnics. Whether getting down and dirty with raw slide work on Willie Dixon's "Same Thing," finger-picking country-flavored licks on "Jack-a-Rowe" or reaching for the heavens with jazz-inflected flurries of notes on "They Love Each Other," Garcia delivered one virtuoso performance after another.

"For me, there's always moments of excruciating despair and hideous embarrassment, and then there's moments of pure joy," said Garcia a week after the Denver gigs. "It goes all over the place from note to note. For me, it's a complex emotional experience. That's what I love about it."

The leader of the Dead was alert, up-beat and in good humor as he sat in the office of Berkeley's Weir Gallery (no relation to Dead member Bob Weir), which is currently holding an exhibit of Garcia's artwork. "Mainly, I really enjoyed playing in Denver," he continued. "And I loved the way the band played. It was fun for us."

Both Garcia and the entire group have, in Weir's words, "been revitalized." In addition to resuming a full touring schedule for '93, there are plans to record a new studio album, the group's first since 1989's Built to Last and a third volume of the group's older live recordings will be released by Grateful Dead Records.

For Garcia, the revitalization is due to the radical changes he's made in his lifestyle to avoid potentially life-threatening lung and heart problems. "I wasn't that sick," said Garcia. "I didn't go to a hospital or anything. It was one of those things that are reversible and fixable, provided you make changes. That's what it boiled down to."

Once his doctor made it clear what was required, Garcia rapidly got on the program. "I guess it was quick," he said. "I don't think of myself as a suicide. It's silly to ignore dire news about your health.

"For a long time I was sort of planning on something along those lines in kind of a nebulous way," Garcia said. "'One of these days I'm going to do something about my health.' It's embarrassing to go through this stuff publicly. I'd rather sneak off in a corner and be ill by myself . . . . I like what I do and mostly enjoy myself. I don't think of myself as a person who's anxious to die."

Garcia has lost sixty pounds on a special vegetarian diet since last August and intends to lose another thirty in the months ahead. "It's pretty much the same diet that Phil [Lesh, bassist] and Mickey [Hart, drummer] are on," said Welnick. "No oil, no fat, no salt, nothing with a face." He laughed. "Jerry takes it one step further: nothing with an asshole."

In addition to the diet, Garcia works out three times a week on a Nautilus under the direction of a personal trainer. And he is trying to give up a thirty-five-year smoking habit. "This is the best I've felt in years," Garcia said.

Following the Denver shows, the group was scheduled to play seven more dates in December and a handful of Bay Area dates in January. An East Coast and Midwest tour is being booked for the spring. "I don't think we're going to slow down," said Weir. "Maybe in five years, but for the time being I think we're actually going to pick up some speed and momentum."

Recording the next album could begin before the summer. Material already written includes Garcia's folk-style "So Many Roads"; "Long Way to Go," a gritty rocker sung by Welnick; and the soulful "Corinna."

Garcia has no overall concept for the next album. "I never do," he said. "I hope it turns out even halfway decent. When we first started making records, I used to have ideas. Now I see our records as a long string of failures. I see it in terms of near misses."

And what kind of record would satisfy him? "Music that has the power to transform the ordinary into the divine -- how's that?" Garcia said, smiling. "For me, the big test is if I can perform a piece of music without being embarrassed by it."

As he prepared to leave the gallery, Garcia said the break from touring has, ultimately, been a positive experience. "It was good for all of us," he said, zipping up his leather jacket. "We all needed it. Right now we're happening. We're enjoying what we're doing. It's all new again. I think it's helpful to have those kinds of near-death experiences once in a while."

Garcia laughed, then said dryly, "They kind of brighten up your perspective."

[From Issue 648 — January 21, 1993]