At the time I signed up, I was listening to the song
Cassidy on the album
Ace by Bob Weir, the rhythm guitarist for the Grateful Dead. On the one hand, that’s all there is to it . . .
. . . But, on the other hand, it seemed appropriate. Weir wrote the music and John Perry Barlow wrote the lyrics: Weir was also a mountain biker in the 1980s (indeed, Charlie Kelly interviewed him on a nighttime ride) and Barlow was an early user of the ‘Well’ in San Francisco, probably the earliest computer-based bulletin board, before going on to become an internet pioneer. The Dead were a Marin County band for most of their career, and that’s where mountain biking as we know it began. When the Dead disbanded in 1995, their offices in San Rafael were taken over by Marin bikes—and I had a Marin bike.
In the 1990s, Barlow wrote an entire
essay on the lyrics to
Cassidy. It’s about the death of Neal Cassady, the famous beatnik and inspiration for Jack Kerouac’s
On the Road, and it’s about the birth, at roughly the same time, of Cassidy Law, daughter of Eileen Law, the Dead’s office manager. ‘
Catch-colt draws a coffin cart. There he goes now, here she starts.’ In Barlow’s words, ‘This is a song about necessary dualities: dying & being born, men & women, speaking & being silent, devastation & growth, desolation & hope.’ Hence the avatar with yin and yang, sun and moon, night and day, inside a Grateful Dead ‘stealie’ skull.
The version of
Cassidy on
Ace is largely acoustic but one of my lasting memories of 1990 is the Dead’s performance of the song at Wembley Arena on November 1st—and Bob’s guitar was front, centre, powerful and brilliant.