August 22, 2025 • 38 mins
On this episode of Takin’ A Walk, host Buzz Knight is joined by acclaimed author, historian, and longtime Grateful Dead publicist Dennis McNally. Known for chronicling American counterculture and the music that shaped a generation, Dennis talks about the inspirations and stories behind his brand-new book, "The Last Great Dream."
. From life on the road with the Dead to the lessons of storytelling and history, this conversation is a journey through art, culture, and timeless music. Join us with Dennis McNally as we explore the rhythms that still resonate today.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Taking a walk.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
The peace movement in general.
Speaker 3 (00:03):
Challenging is the cultural stereotypes, like the whole idea of
the gentle male hippie. Just the first time anybody had
ever gone out of their way to suggest that you
guys could didn't have to be punching each other up.
Speaker 4 (00:16):
Walk with me for a moment. Imagine the San Francisco
fog rolling in, mingling with the scent of fresh paint
and Petruly, the sidewalks pulse with poetry, music, rebellion, and
dreams just crazy enough to change the world. I'm buzznight,
and on today's episode had taken a walk. We're not
(00:39):
just retracing the roots of a counter culture. We're diving
into the wild, unwritten corners of history with one of
its most insightful storytellers. I first know him from his
work as publicists with this little band called The Grateful Dead.
Dennis McNally joins us to illuminate the secret pathways behind
(01:00):
and his new book, The Last Great Dream, a sweeping
chronicle of how bohemians, beats and hippies cracked open American
culture and invited us all to step inside. So lace
up your shoes and get ready. This isn't just a
walk down memory lane. It's a journey into the heart
(01:21):
of the last great American dream.
Speaker 5 (01:25):
Coming up next, taking a walk, Dennis McNally, Welcome to
taking a walk.
Speaker 6 (01:32):
It is so great to be with.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
You right now, my pleasure. Boss.
Speaker 5 (01:37):
We're almost together. We're not really in person together, which
we we love that.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
But well, you know, I just just yesterday in a
Zoom meeting, had a friend started, you know, pondering the
difference between knowing people by Zoom and or the experience
of relating to.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
People on Zoom rather than face to face.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
And there are things about Zoom that are almost you know, preferable,
So I and given you know all that's happened in
the last five years, just in terms of COVID and
then everything else, it's just very it's it's amazing how
this digital connection has become such an essential part of
our lives.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
And I, you.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Know, I don't mind it, although you know clearly face
to face is preferable.
Speaker 7 (02:30):
It always is preferable.
Speaker 6 (02:32):
I think of how Jeffrey Tuban still has a job
after being on Zoom, but we don't have to go there.
Speaker 7 (02:42):
We can leave that alone.
Speaker 6 (02:44):
So anyway, since the podcast Dennis is called Taking a
Walk before we get to talking about the Last Great Dream,
which I'm so excited for you to have created this
and released this. Since we call the podcast taken a Walk.
Is there somebody that you would like to take a
walk with, living or dead? And who would that be?
And where might you want to go with him?
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Well, you know that I haven't gotten that question before.
He usually you know, I can hit auto reply. Well,
one impulse is my mother, who died when I was eleven,
and I sure would like to, you know, have a
nice chat with her. I have so many questions that
(03:27):
you know, only an adult could think of.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
But also.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
I'm a practicing Buddhist. And the man who brought Zen
to Japan Dogan Zenji. You know, if we could have
an instantaneous translator somehow for a medieval Japanese into modern English.
He is one of the most creative, spiritual poets in
(03:56):
world history, and he made for an interesting walk, say
around downtown Kyoto, which by the way, you know, it's
the place I really want to go. And everything I
read now is how tourists have completely overrun Japan. So
may be a little too late on that one.
Speaker 6 (04:17):
This seems to happen a lot. The tourists ruin everything,
don't they.
Speaker 5 (04:20):
I mean, really, I.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Live in San Francisco. What can I say?
Speaker 5 (04:23):
That's right, Well, congratulations on the Last Great Dream.
Speaker 8 (04:28):
I think it's marvelous and it's particularly I think resonating
at the times that we're in. That's just my opinion,
but we'll get into it. What was your you know,
just the initial light bulb moment that was the inspiration
that told you it was the time for this book?
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Well, as you know, you know, I did a book
about Jack CARROLLAC and in the process became a deadhead
and long story short, became the biographer for The Grateful Dead.
And then eventually, because of it took me.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
It took me double.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Time because it usually it takes me about ten years
to write a book. In this case, it took twenty
because I became the publicist and you can't do both
at the same time. So that came out, and then
I did this book about this sort of deeper background
called on Highway sixty one. So anyway, in twenty sixteen,
the very nice woman at the California Historical Society who's
(05:24):
now at the Smithsonian, Anthea asked me. They were anticipating
the fiftieth anniversary of the Summer of Love in twenty seventeen.
All the museums in the library and whatnot, We're going
to do some event. So she asked me to curate
(05:45):
a photo show about the Summer of Love, and I
said sure, and oh, I don't know. A month two
months into the research projects, which was hilarious, good fun.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
It was basically a treasure hunt.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
I had to track down photographers and then track down
their airs and you know, but it was you know,
I had an idea in the in the Immortal Words
of I don't know if it was Rod Stewart, rod
Stewart himself, but whoever created the phrase every picture tells
the story.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
I went, you know, that's easy.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
I mean, I know the story I want to tell,
and so let's get the illustrations. And did and after
a couple three months I suddenly went bozo, it's a book.
And I sort of went, yeah, right, this is And
and then much later still contrary to some people who went, oh,
(06:44):
you knew this all along, I went, no, you know,
I'm like kind of dance on some level, Uh, it
occurred to me that really it's it's the you know,
the last chapter of a four chapter project that sort
of rounds out my self appointed role, I guess as
the historian of the American counterculture since World War Two
(07:07):
in particular. So the Last Great Dream is the biggest
surprise I got in researching it was simply that nobody
done it before, because there's all kinds of books about
the Summer of Low, but they all start in like
the mid sixties. And I was sort of curious as to, well,
(07:28):
where did this come from? And I decided that it
started with poets in the nineteen forties, kind of a
combination of anarchism and mysticism. And then there were students
the San Francisco what became known as the San Francisco
Art Institute, which at that time was called the California
School of Fine Arts in North Beach in San Francisco
(07:53):
was in a really interesting period in post War two.
World War two, it had almost closed because you know,
the war had taken away all the students and thankfully.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
The GI bill.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Not everybody wanted to use it to buy a house
or you know, go to some conventional college. A lot
of people wanted to study art, and it worked for them,
and these people tended to be the kind of adventurous
people who were ready to leave behind conventional values in
conventional society, and they became really one of the primary
(08:31):
sources for what we would later come to call beats.
The beat next. But in the forties there were just bohemians.
There were just people who, as I say, you know,
stepped aside from conventional roles and mostly pursued art and love,
which is, you know, the practical effect of bohemia.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
The story starts there.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
I actually I'm going to jump ahead and tell one
specific story because in some ways it really sums up
the whole book, which is one of those people at
the Art Institute was a guy named Wally Hedrick, a
very well known beat assemblage artist and big deal in
that world. He taught at the institute. He taught Saturday
(09:20):
art to high school kids, and in nineteen fifty eight,
one of his students was a young man from the
Mission District of San Francisco named Jerry Garcia. And Wally
played Big Bill Brunsi and other African American blues acoustic
music while they painted, and the end result of that
(09:42):
was that when Garcia's mother gave him an accordion for
his birthday. He pissed and moaned and screamed and cried,
and eventually got himself a guitar, which really.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Is the end of his biography. The rest is just
more guitar.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
But in addition, he and his buddy said to Wally,
what is the you know, Remember this is nineteen fifty eight,
he's sixteen. This is this is a time when Beat
is on the front pages and in the on the
bestseller list.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
And they said to Wally, you know, what is this beat? Then?
Speaker 3 (10:18):
You know? And Wally said, you guys are beat good
down the city lights and get this book on the
road and you'll find out. And Jerry did and it
was his bible for the rest of his life. And
then that is why I you know, I'd written a
book about Kerouac. And when he saw it, he liked,
you know, he happened to like it. Thank you, and
(10:38):
eventually said, why don't you do us, why don't you
write a book about the gret bul Dead, which I said,
good idea.
Speaker 7 (10:45):
Yea, I love it. Thank you for sharing that.
Speaker 5 (10:47):
It's amazing.
Speaker 6 (10:48):
Yeah, So why do you think the story though, of
how you made reference to this of how hippie came
to be kind of eluded serious hysteric historical research until now.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
Well, the problem with hippie they you know, maybe a
thousand people, all of them were well into their twenties,
and we're working in the arts in some fashion, whether
it was as as poets or as painters or or
a lot of course a lot of music too, took
refuge in the Hate. It was a very inexpensive neighborhood,
(11:23):
which is the virtue of all neighborhoods where people want
to you know, practice art because you know, it's not
usually financially successful.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
And it went very well.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
They they you know, it was a psychedelic neighborhood. They
all almost all did psychedelic drugs and experimented with social freedom,
with with you know, free love as it was once called,
with challenge you know, anti materialism and challenging the standard
(11:56):
where you're supposed to act as an American. So it
went extremely well, so well in fact, that they planned
a party to celebrate it, and that was called the Being. Unfortunately,
the Being attracted fifty thousand people, and suddenly what was
going on in the Hay, which had been very under
the radar and just you know, nobody.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Paid any particular attention to it.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
San Francisco has a tradition of tolerance for crazy, and
there was just there just wasn't much of a problem.
And in fact, on the day of the b in
the total security allotment for the San Francisco Police Department
were two cops on horseback who were like watching the
you know, watching this, And to illustrate their attitude, I
(12:39):
might add, a lady walked up to them and begged
them for help in finding she lost her child. And
the copper replied, go down to the stage, ask them
to make an announcement.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
They'll help you.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
That's you know, you won't have any problem, he said,
But lady, we can't go down there at the smoking pot.
And you know, so obviously they were not what do
you call confrontational. That of course blew their cover, and
really everything that happened after that was sort of a
holding action because the general assumption was that somewhere between
(13:15):
one and a quarter one hundred thousand and a quarter
million people kids, kids, high school kids, college kids, people
without a lot of resources, whether financial or just life
you know, flexibility, people who would need to be taken
care of and they they spent the spring, you know,
anticipating that, and nobody really knows how many people came
(13:38):
in the summer, but it was too many and it
kind of ruined it as a neighborhood. But there was
in the in the end, you know, the ideas of
what was going on there, you know, went out and
it involved things like it didn't It probably helped somewhat
(14:00):
with anti war efforts the Vietnam War, but after that
it was cultural, not political. And what they did was
organic food is now a forty billion dollar year business.
And these issues, I mean, these issues had preceded it,
but the sixties and the hay brought them up, you know,
(14:25):
to a much more. It brought them to the forefront.
So you have things like organic food, you have well,
the peace movement in general. Challenging is the cultural stereotypes,
like the whole idea of the gentle male hippie.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Just the first time.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
Anybody had ever gone out of their way to suggest
that you know, guys could didn't have to be punching
each other out, and that, I would argue, led aided feminism,
which was emerging just after in the more in the
late sixties of the seventies and gay rights. And you know,
(15:02):
it wasn't an accident that just a few years after
the hate, you know, every gay guy in Kansas said,
I think San Francisco might be more fun to live in.
And another example which people don't realize. And there's a
wonderful book which I recommend to you by a man
named John Markoff called What the Dormouse Said, and it
(15:26):
is about the psychedelic history of Silicon Valley. There's a
reason why the home computer, the individual based computer comes
from Silicon Valley rather than say near Mit because noja
all jokes aside, there was a history of people doing LSD,
(15:47):
which created an interest in things that were more individual
than the sort of IBM giant you know, giant computer.
And the two people that are most associated with this,
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, were part of a homebrew
computer cub which was involved, which all of whom had
(16:08):
connections to LSD.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
So you know, and there's lots more.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
But the fact is that a great deal of what
we think of as an alternative culture, and I grant you,
at the moment it's not looking very good considering the
current administration. But the fact is that it's not surprising
either the current administration. To go back, just a brief
(16:33):
history lesson, Ronald Reagan got elected governor in nineteen sixty
six and then president in nineteen eighty by running on
an anti Hipnie, anti free speech movement, in an anti
Watts rebellion, anti Black Frankly.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Campaign.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
And there's a through line from Reagan to Donald Trump.
Donald Trump's shall we say, somewhat more nuts, just more
overt and and and pretty pretty wild, h Van Reagan.
But the the the politics which are to you know,
(17:15):
return control of the government to the white male elite,
which is in a large larger sense what it's about
is exactly in opposition to the Six Days. If you
read my book, as I hope every you know, everybody will,
that they they can see the values that were generated
(17:38):
there and how they're they're they're still real.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
It's just.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Well, things would be a little different if somebody else
has won the election.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
But that's another story.
Speaker 7 (17:49):
And I think all you described is one of the
many reasons why your book is really resonating at this
at this time for sure, because of the times that
that we.
Speaker 4 (18:00):
Certainly live in We'll be back with more of the
Taken a Walk Podcast in a bit now. If you're
looking for a rock and roll oriented podcast, we invite
you to check out The Imbalanced History of rock and Roll.
The history's fascinating. There's so much to uncover. The Imbalanced
History of rock and Roll explores moments in time, albums, songs, events,
(18:23):
and people who had an impact on the history of
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Imbalanced History of rock and Roll find it wherever you
get your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Welcome back to the Taking a Walk Podcast.
Speaker 5 (18:41):
I want to talk about the deep research that I
know that you always do and whether you had surprises,
certain revelations, overlooked characters, maybe that showed up that you
hadn't necessarily thought of or realized.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
The big surprise I had two surprises. One of course,
was that nobody had done this before. I really I
kept waiting to find a book that was going to,
you know, look at some of the origins of all this,
because everybody, you know, tended to start in like the
mid sixties. The other is San Francisco in particular. The
(19:24):
book touches a lot on La New York and London
and each of those places were very receptive, but kind
of the creator of this impulse was particularly San Francisco.
Psychedelics had a lot to do with it. Psychedelics are
something that really resonates with nature, and San Francisco. You
(19:44):
can stand on H Street and you're looking at Golden
Gate Park. There's Mount tam you know, across the way.
It's an appropriate place for that.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
New York City to me is not.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
I mean, you know, the the biggest nature for the
for the you know, Greenwich Village area is Tompkins Square Park,
and that's you know, that's not too much nature. But
at any rate, for me, the surprise was I started
without anything particularly in mind, and then I mean I
just started looking, and fairly quickly I went on the
(20:20):
as I say, the poets, and and then some art students.
And then as time went along and into the fifties,
there was theater, there was dance woman in Ann Halpern.
There was this wonderful place called the Tate Music Center,
which involved electronic music, you know, sort of leaps and
(20:42):
blour ups and not something that's generally very popular. But
the thing is, uh, it invited. They had they opened
up a building for their work, and they brought in
the dancers and and KPFA, and it creates did an
energy that was way more than I mean, you know,
(21:03):
not many people are going to get into heavy duty
electronic music, but the energy went way beyond that. And
what happened was through the late fifties and into the
early sixties you constantly get this blending where you'd have
an event in which you'd have you know, painters maybe
(21:26):
on the walls, and then you'd have music, you know,
local musicians playing strange music.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
There's a classic example is an event that.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
The Mime Troop, which would go on to have a
lot to do when they got arrested with the development
of the rock culture in San Francisco, and the Mime
Troops sponsored this event and they had they had the painters,
they had an early progenitor of the light shows they had,
and you know, people like Phil Lesh of the Grateful
(21:56):
Dead later of the Grateful Dead, this is five years
before who was, you know, playing a little trumpet and
just mostly there and he's not even sure why is
there except it was an experiment in consciousness and uh
and and improvisational music, which at the time he wasn't
really an improvisational music musician so much. But of course
(22:18):
it turned out that he had a talent for that
and would go on to a very distinguished career, and
that that was the surprise. You know, There's this these
wonderful events in which the full span of odd you know,
of oddball avant garde art would come together and instead
of being siloed, as the current phrase has it, they
(22:40):
would consciously reach out to each other and say, let's
do something.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
And the end result was when you do that.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
And you have all these artists running around and then
you stir in some LSD and people came to to
that experience pretty much with the same reaction. And then
you so in you have all these One of the
elements was rock and roll was always part of all
of this in the fifties. And then you've got folk,
(23:13):
the folk music which was overtly political from the beginning.
And then you have all these folk musicians and they
encounter LST and the Beatles, and the end result is
the San Francisco music scene, which carried all those values
implicitly or explicitly in either a benign an easy way
(23:34):
like Jerry Garcia, or a more aggressive and in your
face way like Paul Kantner and the airplane.
Speaker 9 (23:42):
He loved to provoke the police. Paul, he liked he
liked to provoke people. Actually, but you have, you know,
you have.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
The end result is this hippie thing, and it's it's
lives in the music. And that's why my book ends
at Monterey Pop, which is sort of the high point
where everything is fresh and new and quite wonderful, I
wrote in the book, and I think it's true one
(24:15):
of the stereotypes. And it is a stereotype because you know,
this all came from media who took one look at
the hippies and went, huh. You know, they just they
didn't get it. Literally, they just didn't get what was
going on.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
All they knew.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
All they could tell was flowers and you know, dreamy
eyed girls in long dresses and whatnot. The end result
was all these values got poured into the music and
at Monterey, you know, the stereotype was that, you know,
the summer of love was beautiful young people with flowers
(24:54):
in their hair, very high, listening to wonderful music, apped
in blissful peacefulness. Well, at Monterey for four days it
was that was reality. It really was, and you know,
you have this magical music which is going to change
America music for the next twenty years. And I might
(25:15):
add you also had a speaking as someone who's worked
with a band that had crowd control problems at times.
You had a potential crowd control problem where there were
maybe seven thousand seats in the arena and there were
probably twenty five thousand people on the grounds and nothing
(25:36):
bad happened. And you know, it could have been a
spectacular mess, but the ambiance, the spirit of the sixties
really held true, and people if they couldn't get in,
they just sat outside and listened. And it by literally
it was a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and by Saturday afternoon,
(25:56):
the police chief of Monterey was sending us cops. Yeah,
you know, of course he called it all you know,
all hands on deck on Friday, you know, with not
all you've got hippies, but but Hell's angels coming into
Monterey and they're.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
All by Saturday. It was obviously it wasn't a problem.
Speaker 6 (26:15):
The book is full of stories that captured, you know,
the spirit of the artistic and social experimentation of the era.
Is there one story in particular you can share that
really sticks out, that captures what was going on there.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
He kind of.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
One of them and going back to you know, getting surprised,
so I read, Okay, there's a guy named Hendrik Hertzberg.
Uh he at least up until recently. I'm not sure
if it's just this minute, but was the lead writer
for He would write the opening sentence in the article
(26:57):
in The New Yorker for years, very you know, important
guy in American literary and political culture. In nineteen sixty six,
he was a cub reporter for Newsweek, and he went
to the hate and you know, poked around and for
(27:18):
whatever reason, maybe it was his age, they he completely
got them.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
He understood what was going on.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
He didn't ever go the boy that these people weird
that every other reporter did.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
He was simpatico.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
And if the Newsweek had like been smart enough to
publish his notes, they would have had the best article
about about tapes ever.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
And you know, I don't know whether it would have mattered.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
Much because you know, the other it's not as though
the other writers were going to get enlightened. But the
fact is that it's amazing now the article that came out,
as you know, I'm sure of Newsweek and Time magazine
in those days, one person did the reporting, or multiple persons,
and one did the writing, and the right you know,
(28:10):
the writing was as as not get it, you know,
they it was as though they barely read what his
notes were, because what they published was something that included
things like that wearing a necklace meant you had taken LSD.
Things like that, silly things, a complete failure to understand
which is normal was normal uh for the media. And
(28:35):
to me that that that complete inability to understand that
what the hippies were about, as the beats before them,
was about a spiritual riate reawakening in America. Go and
this isn't original, This goes all the way back to threeaux.
But the fact is you've got a depression, you've got
a war, you've got a Cold War, and because of
(28:59):
the Cold War, you've got all this anxiety about about
you know, Russian infiltration.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Hmm set sound familiar.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
The price for the prosperity of the fifties was was uh,
you know, uh, conform conformity and you know, keeping your
mouth shut. You know again, sound familiar, don't you know,
don't criticize uh, you know, capitalism and and and what's
going on because you know, we're all making more money now,
(29:28):
which was true the money part. Suddenly you've got this
group of people who are saying, you know again, it's
the same and the message ultimately is the same as
as as the meats, which is simply there's more to
life than just you know, making money, buying a house,
you know, being good little robots. The media could only
(29:53):
see the in general, except for Hendrick I swear, could
only see the obvious, which is they dress funny and
they talk funny, and you know, they're not behaving and
so forth and so on. That's what got translated to
the mass audience.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
And it's a pity.
Speaker 3 (30:18):
But having now in twenty twenty five, particularly for my
generation which saw politically it's high water mark at driving
a corrupt and unconstitutional president out of office with the
media thanks to the media in nineteen seventy four, we've
(30:38):
been on a downhill slide since because we've got a
media that's you know, explicitly political, i e. Fox News,
and instead of the media that sort of you know,
was the traditional guardians of liberty and you know, keeping
people honest. You know, it's it's you know, overtly cheerleaders,
(31:03):
and now it's because of a news site, you know,
the twenty four hour news cycle twenty that that's so
out of date. Now, I don't know what is it
the instantaneous news cycle that we're living in in this case,
you know right now, I mean it's Epstein, Epstein, Epstein
and a president who's basically saying, don't listen to them,
(31:25):
don't listen to them, which is interesting. This is kind
of new and kind of over intense, and you know,
all of us are staring at our screens going what
the heck is going on?
Speaker 6 (31:39):
We sure are As you reflect, I want to close
on this and have you think of the work you
put into the Last Great Dream, and as you reflected
on it, thinking of your life as well, because you
know you've lived through so many experiences that that.
Speaker 7 (32:03):
You write about.
Speaker 6 (32:05):
Is there anything you would say to younger Dennis McNally
that you think would have been a key statement that
would have done something significant for you.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
I'm not sure what i'd say to me back in
the only depression I ever had in my life, serious
depression I ever had in my life, was after the
it was I identified it It's a little bold because
I am not a woman, but I identified it as
postpartum depression, namely that I'd given birth to this seven
(32:38):
year project, this book on Krauac, and I didn't know
what I was going to do next, and it took
a year before I was invited to do a Grateful
Dead book, which is what I wanted. So the point is,
I've been incredibly lucky in my life that the thing
I wanted to do most was what I've done, which
(33:00):
is these books, and on the subjects. You know that
I wanted to write about what would I tell myself?
You know I got dumb about drugs when I was
working in rock and roll. That makes me unique. But
you know that only lasted, you know, a couple of
years of stupidity. You know, I've had the work I wanted.
(33:24):
Thanks to the Grateful Dad. I met the wife I wanted.
She came with a twelve year old daughter, a biological
daughter who eventually we ended up adopting each other.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
So I got the family that I wanted. She has
two sons.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
I have two grandsons who are in their teens now
are late teens, early twenties, going to college and you know,
they're lovely people. I've fucked out, so I don't know
what advice I apparently was doing something right. I wasn't
very conscious. A lot of it was dumb luck. My intuition,
(34:01):
for instance, that I could not, you know, approach the
grateful dead and say, hi, I'd like to write a
book about you, because they would have said, sure, take
a number, or at least that's my import and then,
knowing what I know now, that's pretty much accurate.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Now how I knew that, I don't know. I just did.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
And what I needed to do, and what I ended
up getting was I couldn't have the idea come from me.
It had to come from them, and eventually it did
from Jerry and thanks to the caroc book. So I
lucked out, you know, as I say, I, you know,
just keep on doing what you're doing. And most of it,
(34:43):
you know, most of it worked out.
Speaker 5 (34:46):
That's a pretty darn good lesson right there, when you
think of it, you know, stick to it, Pick the
people that you'd like to be working with or the
subject matter that you'd be you know, associated with, and
then pour your heart into your craft.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
And you know, that was pretty much it, you know,
I committed to what I wanted to do, and it
was you know, it wasn't God knows, it wasn't for money,
because I will be honest and say I got quite
a large sum of money for the Grateful Dead book,
not because of me, but because of the subject. The
other books have not, you know, have no But the
(35:24):
other books are just as satisfying, especially this last one,
which is the response to it is, I mean, the
Grateful Dead book. A large part of the response, of course,
was the subject. And so you know, that's good. It
feels that this the Last Great Dream, is much more
the response is much more towards my work rather than
(35:46):
the subject per se. Although you know, I went to
a I did an event at the North Berkeley Public Library,
and North Berkeley is a neighborhood that's very much graying.
It's you know, it's people my age in their sixties
and seventies, and many of whom I'm sure were at
(36:09):
the being or whatnot, you know, certainly sympathetic to the
events of the sixties. And I was a little startled
because it was just packed, you know, it was just
a little library thing, and I thought, you know, it's
not gonna be a big deal, which it didn't matter
if it would. I once did in a library event
and competed with the San Francisco Giants twenty fourteen playoff run,
(36:33):
and two people showed up and I gave them the
full forty five. You know, it was like there you go,
you know, but you have to do the show, and
I did the show. This surprised me at how you know,
and granted it's sort of a very appropriate neighborhood, but
(36:54):
at any rate, it was packed and the asthmat fact,
pretty much all of my events have really gotten this turnout,
so you know, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
Thank you.
Speaker 7 (37:04):
It's amazing.
Speaker 5 (37:05):
The Last Great Dream a sweeping, wonderful chronicle of how bohemians,
beats and hippies cracked open American culture.
Speaker 6 (37:13):
Thanks for inviting us to step inside of it.
Speaker 5 (37:16):
And it's always a pleasure being with you.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Dennis McNally, Thank you, buzz. It's you know, it's nice
to talk about it with you. In particular, thanks.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
For listening to this episode of the Taking a Walk podcast.
Share this and other episodes with your friends and follow
us so you never miss an episode. Taking a Walk
is available on the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts and wherever
you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Give people belie
Taking a walk.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
The peace movement in general.
Speaker 3 (00:03):
Challenging is the cultural stereotypes, like the whole idea of
the gentle male hippie. Just the first time anybody had
ever gone out of their way to suggest that you
guys could didn't have to be punching each other up.
Speaker 4 (00:16):
Walk with me for a moment. Imagine the San Francisco
fog rolling in, mingling with the scent of fresh paint
and Petruly, the sidewalks pulse with poetry, music, rebellion, and
dreams just crazy enough to change the world. I'm buzznight,
and on today's episode had taken a walk. We're not
(00:39):
just retracing the roots of a counter culture. We're diving
into the wild, unwritten corners of history with one of
its most insightful storytellers. I first know him from his
work as publicists with this little band called The Grateful Dead.
Dennis McNally joins us to illuminate the secret pathways behind
(01:00):
and his new book, The Last Great Dream, a sweeping
chronicle of how bohemians, beats and hippies cracked open American
culture and invited us all to step inside. So lace
up your shoes and get ready. This isn't just a
walk down memory lane. It's a journey into the heart
(01:21):
of the last great American dream.
Speaker 5 (01:25):
Coming up next, taking a walk, Dennis McNally, Welcome to
taking a walk.
Speaker 6 (01:32):
It is so great to be with.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
You right now, my pleasure. Boss.
Speaker 5 (01:37):
We're almost together. We're not really in person together, which
we we love that.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
But well, you know, I just just yesterday in a
Zoom meeting, had a friend started, you know, pondering the
difference between knowing people by Zoom and or the experience
of relating to.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
People on Zoom rather than face to face.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
And there are things about Zoom that are almost you know, preferable,
So I and given you know all that's happened in
the last five years, just in terms of COVID and
then everything else, it's just very it's it's amazing how
this digital connection has become such an essential part of
our lives.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
And I, you.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Know, I don't mind it, although you know clearly face
to face is preferable.
Speaker 7 (02:30):
It always is preferable.
Speaker 6 (02:32):
I think of how Jeffrey Tuban still has a job
after being on Zoom, but we don't have to go there.
Speaker 7 (02:42):
We can leave that alone.
Speaker 6 (02:44):
So anyway, since the podcast Dennis is called Taking a
Walk before we get to talking about the Last Great Dream,
which I'm so excited for you to have created this
and released this. Since we call the podcast taken a Walk.
Is there somebody that you would like to take a
walk with, living or dead? And who would that be?
And where might you want to go with him?
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Well, you know that I haven't gotten that question before.
He usually you know, I can hit auto reply. Well,
one impulse is my mother, who died when I was eleven,
and I sure would like to, you know, have a
nice chat with her. I have so many questions that
(03:27):
you know, only an adult could think of.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
But also.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
I'm a practicing Buddhist. And the man who brought Zen
to Japan Dogan Zenji. You know, if we could have
an instantaneous translator somehow for a medieval Japanese into modern English.
He is one of the most creative, spiritual poets in
(03:56):
world history, and he made for an interesting walk, say
around downtown Kyoto, which by the way, you know, it's
the place I really want to go. And everything I
read now is how tourists have completely overrun Japan. So
may be a little too late on that one.
Speaker 6 (04:17):
This seems to happen a lot. The tourists ruin everything,
don't they.
Speaker 5 (04:20):
I mean, really, I.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Live in San Francisco. What can I say?
Speaker 5 (04:23):
That's right, Well, congratulations on the Last Great Dream.
Speaker 8 (04:28):
I think it's marvelous and it's particularly I think resonating
at the times that we're in. That's just my opinion,
but we'll get into it. What was your you know,
just the initial light bulb moment that was the inspiration
that told you it was the time for this book?
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Well, as you know, you know, I did a book
about Jack CARROLLAC and in the process became a deadhead
and long story short, became the biographer for The Grateful Dead.
And then eventually, because of it took me.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
It took me double.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
Time because it usually it takes me about ten years
to write a book. In this case, it took twenty
because I became the publicist and you can't do both
at the same time. So that came out, and then
I did this book about this sort of deeper background
called on Highway sixty one. So anyway, in twenty sixteen,
the very nice woman at the California Historical Society who's
(05:24):
now at the Smithsonian, Anthea asked me. They were anticipating
the fiftieth anniversary of the Summer of Love in twenty seventeen.
All the museums in the library and whatnot, We're going
to do some event. So she asked me to curate
(05:45):
a photo show about the Summer of Love, and I
said sure, and oh, I don't know. A month two
months into the research projects, which was hilarious, good fun.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
It was basically a treasure hunt.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
I had to track down photographers and then track down
their airs and you know, but it was you know,
I had an idea in the in the Immortal Words
of I don't know if it was Rod Stewart, rod
Stewart himself, but whoever created the phrase every picture tells
the story.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
I went, you know, that's easy.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
I mean, I know the story I want to tell,
and so let's get the illustrations. And did and after
a couple three months I suddenly went bozo, it's a book.
And I sort of went, yeah, right, this is And
and then much later still contrary to some people who went, oh,
(06:44):
you knew this all along, I went, no, you know,
I'm like kind of dance on some level, Uh, it
occurred to me that really it's it's the you know,
the last chapter of a four chapter project that sort
of rounds out my self appointed role, I guess as
the historian of the American counterculture since World War Two
(07:07):
in particular. So the Last Great Dream is the biggest
surprise I got in researching it was simply that nobody
done it before, because there's all kinds of books about
the Summer of Low, but they all start in like
the mid sixties. And I was sort of curious as to, well,
(07:28):
where did this come from? And I decided that it
started with poets in the nineteen forties, kind of a
combination of anarchism and mysticism. And then there were students
the San Francisco what became known as the San Francisco
Art Institute, which at that time was called the California
School of Fine Arts in North Beach in San Francisco
(07:53):
was in a really interesting period in post War two.
World War two, it had almost closed because you know,
the war had taken away all the students and thankfully.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
The GI bill.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Not everybody wanted to use it to buy a house
or you know, go to some conventional college. A lot
of people wanted to study art, and it worked for them,
and these people tended to be the kind of adventurous
people who were ready to leave behind conventional values in
conventional society, and they became really one of the primary
(08:31):
sources for what we would later come to call beats.
The beat next. But in the forties there were just bohemians.
There were just people who, as I say, you know,
stepped aside from conventional roles and mostly pursued art and love,
which is, you know, the practical effect of bohemia.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
The story starts there.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
I actually I'm going to jump ahead and tell one
specific story because in some ways it really sums up
the whole book, which is one of those people at
the Art Institute was a guy named Wally Hedrick, a
very well known beat assemblage artist and big deal in
that world. He taught at the institute. He taught Saturday
(09:20):
art to high school kids, and in nineteen fifty eight,
one of his students was a young man from the
Mission District of San Francisco named Jerry Garcia. And Wally
played Big Bill Brunsi and other African American blues acoustic
music while they painted, and the end result of that
(09:42):
was that when Garcia's mother gave him an accordion for
his birthday. He pissed and moaned and screamed and cried,
and eventually got himself a guitar, which really.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Is the end of his biography. The rest is just
more guitar.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
But in addition, he and his buddy said to Wally,
what is the you know, Remember this is nineteen fifty eight,
he's sixteen. This is this is a time when Beat
is on the front pages and in the on the
bestseller list.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
And they said to Wally, you know, what is this beat? Then?
Speaker 3 (10:18):
You know? And Wally said, you guys are beat good
down the city lights and get this book on the
road and you'll find out. And Jerry did and it
was his bible for the rest of his life. And
then that is why I you know, I'd written a
book about Kerouac. And when he saw it, he liked,
you know, he happened to like it. Thank you, and
(10:38):
eventually said, why don't you do us, why don't you
write a book about the gret bul Dead, which I said,
good idea.
Speaker 7 (10:45):
Yea, I love it. Thank you for sharing that.
Speaker 5 (10:47):
It's amazing.
Speaker 6 (10:48):
Yeah, So why do you think the story though, of
how you made reference to this of how hippie came
to be kind of eluded serious hysteric historical research until now.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
Well, the problem with hippie they you know, maybe a
thousand people, all of them were well into their twenties,
and we're working in the arts in some fashion, whether
it was as as poets or as painters or or
a lot of course a lot of music too, took
refuge in the Hate. It was a very inexpensive neighborhood,
(11:23):
which is the virtue of all neighborhoods where people want
to you know, practice art because you know, it's not
usually financially successful.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
And it went very well.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
They they you know, it was a psychedelic neighborhood. They
all almost all did psychedelic drugs and experimented with social freedom,
with with you know, free love as it was once called,
with challenge you know, anti materialism and challenging the standard
(11:56):
where you're supposed to act as an American. So it
went extremely well, so well in fact, that they planned
a party to celebrate it, and that was called the Being. Unfortunately,
the Being attracted fifty thousand people, and suddenly what was
going on in the Hay, which had been very under
the radar and just you know, nobody.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Paid any particular attention to it.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
San Francisco has a tradition of tolerance for crazy, and
there was just there just wasn't much of a problem.
And in fact, on the day of the b in
the total security allotment for the San Francisco Police Department
were two cops on horseback who were like watching the
you know, watching this, And to illustrate their attitude, I
(12:39):
might add, a lady walked up to them and begged
them for help in finding she lost her child. And
the copper replied, go down to the stage, ask them
to make an announcement.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
They'll help you.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
That's you know, you won't have any problem, he said,
But lady, we can't go down there at the smoking pot.
And you know, so obviously they were not what do
you call confrontational. That of course blew their cover, and
really everything that happened after that was sort of a
holding action because the general assumption was that somewhere between
(13:15):
one and a quarter one hundred thousand and a quarter
million people kids, kids, high school kids, college kids, people
without a lot of resources, whether financial or just life
you know, flexibility, people who would need to be taken
care of and they they spent the spring, you know,
anticipating that, and nobody really knows how many people came
(13:38):
in the summer, but it was too many and it
kind of ruined it as a neighborhood. But there was
in the in the end, you know, the ideas of
what was going on there, you know, went out and
it involved things like it didn't It probably helped somewhat
(14:00):
with anti war efforts the Vietnam War, but after that
it was cultural, not political. And what they did was
organic food is now a forty billion dollar year business.
And these issues, I mean, these issues had preceded it,
but the sixties and the hay brought them up, you know,
(14:25):
to a much more. It brought them to the forefront.
So you have things like organic food, you have well,
the peace movement in general. Challenging is the cultural stereotypes,
like the whole idea of the gentle male hippie.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Just the first time.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
Anybody had ever gone out of their way to suggest
that you know, guys could didn't have to be punching
each other out, and that, I would argue, led aided feminism,
which was emerging just after in the more in the
late sixties of the seventies and gay rights. And you know,
(15:02):
it wasn't an accident that just a few years after
the hate, you know, every gay guy in Kansas said,
I think San Francisco might be more fun to live in.
And another example which people don't realize. And there's a
wonderful book which I recommend to you by a man
named John Markoff called What the Dormouse Said, and it
(15:26):
is about the psychedelic history of Silicon Valley. There's a
reason why the home computer, the individual based computer comes
from Silicon Valley rather than say near Mit because noja
all jokes aside, there was a history of people doing LSD,
(15:47):
which created an interest in things that were more individual
than the sort of IBM giant you know, giant computer.
And the two people that are most associated with this,
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, were part of a homebrew
computer cub which was involved, which all of whom had
(16:08):
connections to LSD.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
So you know, and there's lots more.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
But the fact is that a great deal of what
we think of as an alternative culture, and I grant you,
at the moment it's not looking very good considering the
current administration. But the fact is that it's not surprising
either the current administration. To go back, just a brief
(16:33):
history lesson, Ronald Reagan got elected governor in nineteen sixty
six and then president in nineteen eighty by running on
an anti Hipnie, anti free speech movement, in an anti
Watts rebellion, anti Black Frankly.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Campaign.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
And there's a through line from Reagan to Donald Trump.
Donald Trump's shall we say, somewhat more nuts, just more
overt and and and pretty pretty wild, h Van Reagan.
But the the the politics which are to you know,
(17:15):
return control of the government to the white male elite,
which is in a large larger sense what it's about
is exactly in opposition to the Six Days. If you
read my book, as I hope every you know, everybody will,
that they they can see the values that were generated
(17:38):
there and how they're they're they're still real.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
It's just.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Well, things would be a little different if somebody else
has won the election.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
But that's another story.
Speaker 7 (17:49):
And I think all you described is one of the
many reasons why your book is really resonating at this
at this time for sure, because of the times that
that we.
Speaker 4 (18:00):
Certainly live in We'll be back with more of the
Taken a Walk Podcast in a bit now. If you're
looking for a rock and roll oriented podcast, we invite
you to check out The Imbalanced History of rock and Roll.
The history's fascinating. There's so much to uncover. The Imbalanced
History of rock and Roll explores moments in time, albums, songs, events,
(18:23):
and people who had an impact on the history of
rock and roll. They keep rock and roll fun. The
Imbalanced History of rock and Roll find it wherever you
get your podcasts.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
Welcome back to the Taking a Walk Podcast.
Speaker 5 (18:41):
I want to talk about the deep research that I
know that you always do and whether you had surprises,
certain revelations, overlooked characters, maybe that showed up that you
hadn't necessarily thought of or realized.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
The big surprise I had two surprises. One of course,
was that nobody had done this before. I really I
kept waiting to find a book that was going to,
you know, look at some of the origins of all this,
because everybody, you know, tended to start in like the
mid sixties. The other is San Francisco in particular. The
(19:24):
book touches a lot on La New York and London
and each of those places were very receptive, but kind
of the creator of this impulse was particularly San Francisco.
Psychedelics had a lot to do with it. Psychedelics are
something that really resonates with nature, and San Francisco. You
(19:44):
can stand on H Street and you're looking at Golden
Gate Park. There's Mount tam you know, across the way.
It's an appropriate place for that.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
New York City to me is not.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
I mean, you know, the the biggest nature for the
for the you know, Greenwich Village area is Tompkins Square Park,
and that's you know, that's not too much nature. But
at any rate, for me, the surprise was I started
without anything particularly in mind, and then I mean I
just started looking, and fairly quickly I went on the
(20:20):
as I say, the poets, and and then some art students.
And then as time went along and into the fifties,
there was theater, there was dance woman in Ann Halpern.
There was this wonderful place called the Tate Music Center,
which involved electronic music, you know, sort of leaps and
(20:42):
blour ups and not something that's generally very popular. But
the thing is, uh, it invited. They had they opened
up a building for their work, and they brought in
the dancers and and KPFA, and it creates did an
energy that was way more than I mean, you know,
(21:03):
not many people are going to get into heavy duty
electronic music, but the energy went way beyond that. And
what happened was through the late fifties and into the
early sixties you constantly get this blending where you'd have
an event in which you'd have you know, painters maybe
(21:26):
on the walls, and then you'd have music, you know,
local musicians playing strange music.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
There's a classic example is an event that.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
The Mime Troop, which would go on to have a
lot to do when they got arrested with the development
of the rock culture in San Francisco, and the Mime
Troops sponsored this event and they had they had the painters,
they had an early progenitor of the light shows they had,
and you know, people like Phil Lesh of the Grateful
(21:56):
Dead later of the Grateful Dead, this is five years
before who was, you know, playing a little trumpet and
just mostly there and he's not even sure why is
there except it was an experiment in consciousness and uh
and and improvisational music, which at the time he wasn't
really an improvisational music musician so much. But of course
(22:18):
it turned out that he had a talent for that
and would go on to a very distinguished career, and
that that was the surprise. You know, There's this these
wonderful events in which the full span of odd you know,
of oddball avant garde art would come together and instead
of being siloed, as the current phrase has it, they
(22:40):
would consciously reach out to each other and say, let's
do something.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
And the end result was when you do that.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
And you have all these artists running around and then
you stir in some LSD and people came to to
that experience pretty much with the same reaction. And then
you so in you have all these One of the
elements was rock and roll was always part of all
of this in the fifties. And then you've got folk,
(23:13):
the folk music which was overtly political from the beginning.
And then you have all these folk musicians and they
encounter LST and the Beatles, and the end result is
the San Francisco music scene, which carried all those values
implicitly or explicitly in either a benign an easy way
(23:34):
like Jerry Garcia, or a more aggressive and in your
face way like Paul Kantner and the airplane.
Speaker 9 (23:42):
He loved to provoke the police. Paul, he liked he
liked to provoke people. Actually, but you have, you know,
you have.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
The end result is this hippie thing, and it's it's
lives in the music. And that's why my book ends
at Monterey Pop, which is sort of the high point
where everything is fresh and new and quite wonderful, I
wrote in the book, and I think it's true one
(24:15):
of the stereotypes. And it is a stereotype because you know,
this all came from media who took one look at
the hippies and went, huh. You know, they just they
didn't get it. Literally, they just didn't get what was
going on.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
All they knew.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
All they could tell was flowers and you know, dreamy
eyed girls in long dresses and whatnot. The end result
was all these values got poured into the music and
at Monterey, you know, the stereotype was that, you know,
the summer of love was beautiful young people with flowers
(24:54):
in their hair, very high, listening to wonderful music, apped
in blissful peacefulness. Well, at Monterey for four days it
was that was reality. It really was, and you know,
you have this magical music which is going to change
America music for the next twenty years. And I might
(25:15):
add you also had a speaking as someone who's worked
with a band that had crowd control problems at times.
You had a potential crowd control problem where there were
maybe seven thousand seats in the arena and there were
probably twenty five thousand people on the grounds and nothing
(25:36):
bad happened. And you know, it could have been a
spectacular mess, but the ambiance, the spirit of the sixties
really held true, and people if they couldn't get in,
they just sat outside and listened. And it by literally
it was a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and by Saturday afternoon,
(25:56):
the police chief of Monterey was sending us cops. Yeah,
you know, of course he called it all you know,
all hands on deck on Friday, you know, with not
all you've got hippies, but but Hell's angels coming into
Monterey and they're.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
All by Saturday. It was obviously it wasn't a problem.
Speaker 6 (26:15):
The book is full of stories that captured, you know,
the spirit of the artistic and social experimentation of the era.
Is there one story in particular you can share that
really sticks out, that captures what was going on there.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
He kind of.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
One of them and going back to you know, getting surprised,
so I read, Okay, there's a guy named Hendrik Hertzberg.
Uh he at least up until recently. I'm not sure
if it's just this minute, but was the lead writer
for He would write the opening sentence in the article
(26:57):
in The New Yorker for years, very you know, important
guy in American literary and political culture. In nineteen sixty six,
he was a cub reporter for Newsweek, and he went
to the hate and you know, poked around and for
(27:18):
whatever reason, maybe it was his age, they he completely
got them.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
He understood what was going on.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
He didn't ever go the boy that these people weird
that every other reporter did.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
He was simpatico.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
And if the Newsweek had like been smart enough to
publish his notes, they would have had the best article
about about tapes ever.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
And you know, I don't know whether it would have mattered.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
Much because you know, the other it's not as though
the other writers were going to get enlightened. But the
fact is that it's amazing now the article that came out,
as you know, I'm sure of Newsweek and Time magazine
in those days, one person did the reporting, or multiple persons,
and one did the writing, and the right you know,
(28:10):
the writing was as as not get it, you know,
they it was as though they barely read what his
notes were, because what they published was something that included
things like that wearing a necklace meant you had taken LSD.
Things like that, silly things, a complete failure to understand
which is normal was normal uh for the media. And
(28:35):
to me that that that complete inability to understand that
what the hippies were about, as the beats before them,
was about a spiritual riate reawakening in America. Go and
this isn't original, This goes all the way back to threeaux.
But the fact is you've got a depression, you've got
a war, you've got a Cold War, and because of
(28:59):
the Cold War, you've got all this anxiety about about
you know, Russian infiltration.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Hmm set sound familiar.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
The price for the prosperity of the fifties was was uh,
you know, uh, conform conformity and you know, keeping your
mouth shut. You know again, sound familiar, don't you know,
don't criticize uh, you know, capitalism and and and what's
going on because you know, we're all making more money now,
(29:28):
which was true the money part. Suddenly you've got this
group of people who are saying, you know again, it's
the same and the message ultimately is the same as
as as the meats, which is simply there's more to
life than just you know, making money, buying a house,
you know, being good little robots. The media could only
(29:53):
see the in general, except for Hendrick I swear, could
only see the obvious, which is they dress funny and
they talk funny, and you know, they're not behaving and
so forth and so on. That's what got translated to
the mass audience.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
And it's a pity.
Speaker 3 (30:18):
But having now in twenty twenty five, particularly for my
generation which saw politically it's high water mark at driving
a corrupt and unconstitutional president out of office with the
media thanks to the media in nineteen seventy four, we've
(30:38):
been on a downhill slide since because we've got a
media that's you know, explicitly political, i e. Fox News,
and instead of the media that sort of you know,
was the traditional guardians of liberty and you know, keeping
people honest. You know, it's it's you know, overtly cheerleaders,
(31:03):
and now it's because of a news site, you know,
the twenty four hour news cycle twenty that that's so
out of date. Now, I don't know what is it
the instantaneous news cycle that we're living in in this case,
you know right now, I mean it's Epstein, Epstein, Epstein
and a president who's basically saying, don't listen to them,
(31:25):
don't listen to them, which is interesting. This is kind
of new and kind of over intense, and you know,
all of us are staring at our screens going what
the heck is going on?
Speaker 6 (31:39):
We sure are As you reflect, I want to close
on this and have you think of the work you
put into the Last Great Dream, and as you reflected
on it, thinking of your life as well, because you
know you've lived through so many experiences that that.
Speaker 7 (32:03):
You write about.
Speaker 6 (32:05):
Is there anything you would say to younger Dennis McNally
that you think would have been a key statement that
would have done something significant for you.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
I'm not sure what i'd say to me back in
the only depression I ever had in my life, serious
depression I ever had in my life, was after the
it was I identified it It's a little bold because
I am not a woman, but I identified it as
postpartum depression, namely that I'd given birth to this seven
(32:38):
year project, this book on Krauac, and I didn't know
what I was going to do next, and it took
a year before I was invited to do a Grateful
Dead book, which is what I wanted. So the point is,
I've been incredibly lucky in my life that the thing
I wanted to do most was what I've done, which
(33:00):
is these books, and on the subjects. You know that
I wanted to write about what would I tell myself?
You know I got dumb about drugs when I was
working in rock and roll. That makes me unique. But
you know that only lasted, you know, a couple of
years of stupidity. You know, I've had the work I wanted.
(33:24):
Thanks to the Grateful Dad. I met the wife I wanted.
She came with a twelve year old daughter, a biological
daughter who eventually we ended up adopting each other.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
So I got the family that I wanted. She has
two sons.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
I have two grandsons who are in their teens now
are late teens, early twenties, going to college and you know,
they're lovely people. I've fucked out, so I don't know
what advice I apparently was doing something right. I wasn't
very conscious. A lot of it was dumb luck. My intuition,
(34:01):
for instance, that I could not, you know, approach the
grateful dead and say, hi, I'd like to write a
book about you, because they would have said, sure, take
a number, or at least that's my import and then,
knowing what I know now, that's pretty much accurate.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Now how I knew that, I don't know. I just did.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
And what I needed to do, and what I ended
up getting was I couldn't have the idea come from me.
It had to come from them, and eventually it did
from Jerry and thanks to the caroc book. So I
lucked out, you know, as I say, I, you know,
just keep on doing what you're doing. And most of it,
(34:43):
you know, most of it worked out.
Speaker 5 (34:46):
That's a pretty darn good lesson right there, when you
think of it, you know, stick to it, Pick the
people that you'd like to be working with or the
subject matter that you'd be you know, associated with, and
then pour your heart into your craft.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
And you know, that was pretty much it, you know,
I committed to what I wanted to do, and it
was you know, it wasn't God knows, it wasn't for money,
because I will be honest and say I got quite
a large sum of money for the Grateful Dead book,
not because of me, but because of the subject. The
other books have not, you know, have no But the
(35:24):
other books are just as satisfying, especially this last one,
which is the response to it is, I mean, the
Grateful Dead book. A large part of the response, of course,
was the subject. And so you know, that's good. It
feels that this the Last Great Dream, is much more
the response is much more towards my work rather than
(35:46):
the subject per se. Although you know, I went to
a I did an event at the North Berkeley Public Library,
and North Berkeley is a neighborhood that's very much graying.
It's you know, it's people my age in their sixties
and seventies, and many of whom I'm sure were at
(36:09):
the being or whatnot, you know, certainly sympathetic to the
events of the sixties. And I was a little startled
because it was just packed, you know, it was just
a little library thing, and I thought, you know, it's
not gonna be a big deal, which it didn't matter
if it would. I once did in a library event
and competed with the San Francisco Giants twenty fourteen playoff run,
(36:33):
and two people showed up and I gave them the
full forty five. You know, it was like there you go,
you know, but you have to do the show, and
I did the show. This surprised me at how you know,
and granted it's sort of a very appropriate neighborhood, but
(36:54):
at any rate, it was packed and the asthmat fact,
pretty much all of my events have really gotten this turnout,
so you know, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
Thank you.
Speaker 7 (37:04):
It's amazing.
Speaker 5 (37:05):
The Last Great Dream a sweeping, wonderful chronicle of how bohemians,
beats and hippies cracked open American culture.
Speaker 6 (37:13):
Thanks for inviting us to step inside of it.
Speaker 5 (37:16):
And it's always a pleasure being with you.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Dennis McNally, Thank you, buzz. It's you know, it's nice
to talk about it with you. In particular, thanks.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
For listening to this episode of the Taking a Walk podcast.
Share this and other episodes with your friends and follow
us so you never miss an episode. Taking a Walk
is available on the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts and wherever
you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Give people belie
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