Digital Interviews: When did you first develop an interest in drums and percussion?

Mickey Hart: I guess the beginning was when I first hit a drum pad. My dad was a drummer, and he left it in the house when my mom threw him out. The one thing left behind was a drum pad and a pair of sticks. That was my first recollection of percussive noise. And then, hearing the noise of the city really sucked me in. I loved rhythm and noise. I loved the rhythm of the city -- I’d sit there and watch the city go by. Then, of course, the great Latin bands of the ‘50s -- Tito Puente and Machito, those were the big guys. Then rock and roll was starting to happen, and that was the beginning of it all.

DI: How did you hook up with Bill Kreutzmann and the Grateful Dead?

MH: I was hanging out with Sonny Payne, the drummer for Basie. I was at the Fillmore, and they’d changed their name from the Warlocks to the Grateful Dead. Some person said, “You’ve gotta meet this drummer. He’s a drummer for this new band called the Grateful Dead” -- the Warlocks, I think he said at the time. I said, “Sure.” I was standing in the audience, and some person who I never knew -- we never found out who this guy was -- introduced me and Billy. We started talking, and he took me to see Janis Joplin that night. I’d never heard Janis. She was playing at The Matrix; that’s where I saw Janis for the first time. I asked Sonny Payne, when the gig was over, if he’d come over and join us. He came over and he joined us and he said, “This stuff is giving me a headache.” He said, “Let’s go.” And I said, “I’m staying here. See you later, Sonny.” That was the last I ever saw of Sonny Payne. Kreutzmann and I went and played the whole city that night, until dawn. We played on garbage cans, on cars, on street posts and everything that we could play on. We got real loose, went out and bonded that night. That’s how I met Kreutzmann; that was our first night together.

DI: Tell us about the Mickey and the Hartbeats experiment.

MH: Excuse me while I click the wheels of time back -- click, click, click -- back to 1968, was it? Well, it was sort of weird. I think Jerry was fighting with Bob, and Pigpen did something…I can’t remember what it was. You know, everybody fights. I think Bob and Pig were on the short list at that time, so I believe it was me and Kreutzmann and Jerry and Phil. Elvin Bishop sat in. We just wanted to play instrumental music; we didn’t want to play Grateful Dead music. We went to The Matrix. They were putting us up on the marquee -- they asked, “What’s the name of the band?” and Jerry said, “Mickey Hart and the Hartbeats.” That was how that was born. We just played instrumental music. I remember vividly that it was a coffee shop, only like 15 feet to the wall. We played facing the wall -- and it was long. These poor bastards sitting there drinking cappuccino had no idea what was about to hit them. [laughs] Jerry had his twin, and we were playing like maniacs.

DI: Your headlining effort, 1972’s Rolling Thunder, had the early rumblings of future Dead tunes on it.

MH: “Playing In The Band” came from that album, and what became “Greatest Story [Ever Told]” came from that album, too. Those two things. I called them “Pump Song” and “Main Ten.” Different names, the roots of those songs.

DI: And you introduced “Fire On The Mountain” through your work with the Diga Rhythm Band.

MH: Well, we called it “Happiness Is Drumming.” It just started as a riff [hums] and there were no words. Then I gave it to Hunter. He wrote the words to it, and it turned into “Fire On The Mountain.” We did it in stages. Zakir Hussain and I bonded on that record -- we co-authored the record.

DI: When did Olatunji come into your consciousness?

MH: I knew his records -- Drums Of Passion at the end of the ‘50s and the beginning of the ‘60s, More Drums Of Passion, and the great Zungo. Those three records were unbelievable. I was a devotee of his vocal and percussive style. I saw him back in the ‘80s in San Francisco. I introduced myself and asked him to open up for us, and that’s where our relationship started personally.

DI: How did the soundtrack work for Apocalypse Now come about?

MH: Francis [Ford Coppola] came to one of the shows, and he wanted his movie to sound like the Rhythm Devils, the things that me and Billy did. So he asked me to compose the percussive score.

DI: And you’ve also been working with Smithsonian Folkways.

MH: I had been working with Smithsonian, on the board, but more recently, and more importantly, I’ve been working with the Library of Congress at the American Folk Life Center, which is the largest collection of indigenous music in the world. It’s a million-and-a-half hours of recorded sound.

DI: What process is involved in preserving those sounds?

MH: The idea is to digitize the most endangered of the collections. First, identify the collections, then digitize them, and then give people access to them on the Web site -- www.loc.gov.

DI: What’s the size of the staff there?

MH: It’s formidable. We have dozens of people at the American Folk Life Center who are involved in preservation. I also “work” the Hill -- the Senate and the House of Reps -- trying to raise consciousness and budgets. That’s what this is really about, to make people aware, especially the government, that these great sonic treasures have to be preserved. We just got $750-thousand from “Save America’s Treasures,” Hillary Clinton’s thing. The Library of Congress and the Smithsonian both -- we joined hands and went to the First Lady.

DI: Are you going to be lobbying for more?

MH: I’m always lobbying -- NEH, NEA, all of that. It’s a race against time, really, because the properties on which we’ve imprinted sound are decomposing.

DI: They’re on regular tape?

MH: No, it starts with wax, tin, wire, glass, acetate, magnetic tape, yak butter -- you name it. We’ve imprinted sound on paper. Some of the things are not playable, other things give their life on the first pass. When I’m listening to anything, I immediately take it into digital domain, so I never look back. It’s very heartbreaking, really. You have this thing called sticky shed syndrome, where everything just leaves itself on the capstan. It’s terrible.

DI: Your work with the Gyuto Monks brought them to a new audience. How did that project come about?

MH: It started at the end of the ‘60s, when Bob Hunter put a microphone up to a KPFA broadcast of Houston Smith’s recording of the Monks from ’65, which was the first time anyone had ever recorded monks. Each Monk has the ability to hold three notes. It’s a multiphonic choir, the Dalai Lama’s choir. Only a few hundred of them do this. This is probably the rarest vocal technique on the planet. We call it the extended voice. Hunter gave it to me on an unmarked cassette, and I listened to it for years, never knowing what it was. It was just intriguing. When I would come down from my acid trips, or something, you know, [laughs] I would always listen to the Monks. Then, in the early ’70s, I ran across a recording of David Lewiston, and on the back, it had the whole thing about the Monks. It explained it, and I realized what they were. They were creating a new universe by using these chants, emptying their bodies and minds of all thoughts, recreating a perfect universe, like a mandala of sound, using these really low chants. I realized that these were sacred chants. In about ’85, when I was doing my research for Drumming At The Edge, I heard that these Monks came to the United States and they were at Amherst College. I was on tour at the time, so I took my Nagra and went to Amherst and met them. Bob Thurman, a leading Buddhist scholar, had brought them in -- the Buddhist Society of America. Uma Thurman’s father, Bob Thurman, a terrific guy. And that’s where it started. When I heard them, I said, “Boy, my friends have got to hear this.” We brought them back to the Berkeley Community Theatre. We made the first recording, on Windham Hill, at Studio D at Fantasy. The second one, Freedom Chants From The Roof Of The World, was made at Skywalker.

DI: In the early ‘90s, you wrote Drumming At The Edge of Magic and Planet Drum. What were the missions of the two books?

MH: They were actually one book. They were sisters, and I had to split them at birth, separate them at birth, because they were too large. It was talking about planetary phenomenon -- rhythm and rapture and trance -- and there was no way to tell it in one book. Drumming At The Edge became the autobiographical, and the story; and Planet Drum the icons I brought back from the journey. They became two books. I started investigating the power of rhythm and trance, ecstasy, shamanism, and my cosmology of the world, as life is rhythm. That was what Drumming at the Edge was about, and there was a companion CD with that. Then Planet Drum, and there was a companion CD with that, which led eventually last year to Spirit Into Sound, a book of quotes on music. It was about music; it wasn’t percussion. It was how some of the great and not-so-great minds try to describe, pro and con, the power of music, or the fear of music, the glory of trying to describe this amazing, wondrous, mysterious energy we call music. They’re quotes, a small little book of little sound bites.

DI: The philosophy of music?

MH: It’s philosophical because it’s hard to describe the indescribable. There is a philosophical bent to it, but it’s easy reading. The longest thing is a paragraph. It goes from one word -- like Toscanini talking to his orchestra, after they’ve just murdered one piece, he looks at them and calls them, “Assassins!” -- to the longer ones.

DI: You’ve also worked with Rykodisc on the “World Series.”

MH: That’s a series of indigenous recordings from around the world, and also my solo projects. About 33 of them now on Rykodisc.

DI: After Jerry Garcia passed away, how did things change?

MH: Jerry died -- that’s how it changed. The Grateful Dead ended. I was prepared for it. 15 years I was waiting for that call. It’s never easy, you know. I mean, it’s never a pleasant moment, but I anticipated it.

DI: You were working on Mystery Box at that time?

MH: I was in the middle of it. That saved me, Mystery Box. That’s all I did, was the music. When he died, I just never looked up. That’s how I grieve. I just locked myself in the studio for four or five months, and finished Mystery Box -- me and Hunter.

DI: And what did you find when you went back out and did the first Furthur Festival?

MH: It was strange. It was really strange, but I had to go out and play music. It was an interim thing. I was never really comfortable playing with Mystery Box. I had these singers up there that just couldn’t really relate to it. They couldn’t relate to the audience. They were like Motown singers, “copycat” Motown singers that did the best they possibly could, but they couldn’t connect with the audience, and I couldn’t connect with them. It was a studio project that I brought live. It was a mistake. It was a good record, but it never translated live. I was searching for the new music and searching for the new partners. I finally found them, but it took five, six years to find them. The people I’m with now are really my partners. It took a long time.

DI: In between Mystery Box and the Mickey Hart Band, you brought Planet Drum into a concert setting.

MH: It was another version of the original Planet Drum. Again, it was a little awkward. When you try to field a superstar group, it’s not as easy as making a record. Making a record, you get them in a studio for a week or two, in an ego-less situation, make everything sound good -- you come out with something like Planet Drum, which is brilliant. We did that in five days. But when you take them all out on the road -- I’m not used to running a herd on people. In the Grateful Dead, it was this machine that just went along. Everybody got along, no really big egos, nobody told anybody what to do, and everybody was responsible in their own adequate, and inadequate, ways. We had certain rhythm. But with that band, it was egos, and I just didn’t want the hassle. It was just a hassle. When you get people who play that good, and they all have their own careers, getting them together was a hassle. I couldn’t work when I wanted to work. We had to plan it six months or a year in advance. I just said, “Forget about it. It’s just not worth it. It’s too much of a hassle.” And it reflected in the music. It wasn’t joyful, as opposed to this band, which is a dream. The Mickey Hart Band’s a dream. Everybody loves each other, and we have a real interesting combination of Clave and Western music, and it cooks. It’s not just about percussion. Of course, it’s heavy rhythmically -- no flutes, no violins.

DI: But you have been on the forefront of electronic sound.

MH: Oh, yeah.

DI: Tell us about RAMU.

MH: RAMU is Random Access Musical Universe. It’s a sound droid. It’s a robot, and it contains all of my sounds, my samples, my collection of instruments from around the world. And it’s a midi instrument, a live performance instrument. It allows me to play all these delicate sounds. Vince uses it as well.

DI: So, you can bring all your instruments in this one compact unit?

MH: It’s all in there. It took me years to sample it.

DI: What memories do you have of the first Other Ones tour in 1998?

MH: It was fine. It was really great. It was good energy. That’s what it’s all about, you know. We played the same songs, a little different way, and it was good. I enjoyed it. I have to say it was quite enjoyable.

DI: In the new incarnation, you’re back with Bill Kreutzmann. Are you excited about that?

MH: Excited isn’t really a good word. I would have to say I have this real deep love for him. He’s sort of like my partner. It’s like my other side. Like we’re married rhythmically on a deep level. Excited might be one way of describing it, but it just makes me very warm all over.

DI: If you were the person in charge of the Grateful Dead tape vault, what would you do with that recorded output?

MH: First of all, I’m going to immediately digitize it, so I can save it from rot. Then, I’d allow access to it. Those are the two things. Basically, the most important thing is to hear it in our lifetime and to preserve it. You’re dying to ask me if I’m going to sell out to Microsoft, aren’t you? There’s a lot of rumors running around. I know that it’s behind everybody’s mind, because Phil says one time we were selling out to Microsoft. Could you imagine spending your whole life, considering you’re the Grateful Dead, and selling something to some corporate monster? Preposterous. It’s an absolute -- not only is it a lie, it’s just uninformed.

DI: You also composed the opening ceremony music for the Olympics.

MH: That’s right, in ‘96. They came to me. Actually, they had my book, Planet Drum, on a storyboard. They said, “This is what the Olympics are all about. It’s a gathering of tribes and rhythm. What you captured in the book, we want to have a rhythmic opening to the Olympics. We’d like you to compose the first 12 minutes of the opening ceremony of the Olympics.” That’s how it happened.

DI: Let’s talk about the Mickey Hart Band. Who’s in the group?

MH: There’s half of the old Planet Drum band, the ones that I related to and locked with - Nengue Hernandez on Latin percussion, Rahsaan Fredericks on bass, Bobi Cespedes on clave and vocals, Rick Shlosser, who’s a rock-steady, L.A. kind of studio whiz on drums, and a dot-com guy who came out of retirement, called Barney Doyle -- played beautiful guitar. And, of course, Vince Welnick, who’s playing keyboards and singing - my old Grateful Dead keyboard player. So, it’s half rocking contingent, and the other half, heavy rhythm feel.

DI: Will this ensemble be together for a while?

MH: It will stay together. It will stay together for a long period of time. It’s just one of the best bands I’ve played with. It took me five years to find these guys. It’s not easy to find the right players, and I never really went out there actively searching for them. I just waited for them to pop up. Then, I put out the word that I’m looking for other players, and I started auditioning. That’s how I found the others. I found Rick and Barney through audition tapes, and then I invited them to rehearse with us. I wanted to see how they made it with the rest of the Planet Drummers, and it was love at first bite.

DI: What can you tell us about the music business?

MH: It’s probably one of the hardest businesses to be in. If you don’t really want to do it, don’t bother. Not unless you’re totally obsessed with it, and that’s all you can think of, don’t even think of it. Because it’s a business, and there’s a lot of sharks in this water, and it’s not getting any easier. You hang out with some strange people, and there’s a lot of deviant behavior in the music industry, so you have to be careful. Keep your nose clean and serve the music well. Always make sure your priorities are straight. The music always comes first. Do it with everything you’ve got. Practice. Then, you’ve got to let yourself go. It’s a real meditation. It’s a funny thing -- you practice all these things, and then you’ve got to forget almost everything when you’re really performing, and be in the moment.

I heard an interview with Don King, the fight promoter. You always hear the fight business is really the worst business to be in. Well, he had just promoted Michael Jackson or something. I heard him on an interview on radio, and he said he’d never work in the music business. He said it’s the lowest business, they’re cutthroats in that business. I couldn’t believe I was hearing this, coming from Don King. That just gives you an idea, because when you’re in the business, you don’t know how bad it is. I mean we’ve been blessed in the Grateful Dead because we just said, a long time ago, “We’re going to do it our way,” and our way worked. But that’s not the way it is with everybody, especially if you’re starting out now. It’s not like you’re starting out in 1967 or ’66. It’s a different world, and it’s a lot harder to start now. You have to be able to read your own passion, and if you’re doing it for the wrong reasons, you’ll never make it to the end, because music is a lifelong pursuit. It’s something that...you can’t really find it in 10 years. Maybe you will, but more than likely, you’ll find it later on in life, and you can play music until the day you die.

One of my early teachers asked me that question. “Do you want to play music for the rest of your life?” A second didn’t go by, and I said, “Yes!” He said, “Well, the first thing you should remember is to always warm up.” And I never forgot that. It’s a small thing, but most musicians, when they get a little older, suffer physical ailments. It’s a very rigorous thing, especially when you’re older -- whether you’ve got carpal tunnel or this or that, some kind of a physical thing with your wrist, or your neck or your elbow or your foot -- there’s something. I warm up for hours in a day. I could put in three hours before I hit the stage, which would be, I would say, an average. I just carry that through, so I don’t have any aches and pains that are associated directly with my playing. So, that’s elongated my career. That’s another thing I would recommend highly; if you want to play for the rest of your life, warm up, and get in it slow before you go in and start crashing around, or playing any instrument hard. Arthritis -- all that stuff is inherent in this business, and you have to train for it. I work out every day, and you’ve got to be prepared to approach this as an athlete. It’s not something, you know, you smoke a joint and go out there and play. Those days are over. You might be able to do that when you’re 21, but certainly not when you’re 57.

DI: The Grateful Dead spawned a legion of other bands -- exploration through music.

MH: That’s being in the moment. That’s what I meant when I say having to forget everything and be in the moment. That’s what the jam is all about. You don’t think about a jam, because if you’re thinking “jam,” then you’re not jamming! The idea is, you’ve got to have a blank slate, and you’ve got to start from scratch, right then and there. It’s got to be the wonder of it all, and the magic. That’s a big, important thing -- the magic.