Bob Weir: Balancing money and causes
By Larry Getlen • Bankrate.com

The Grateful Dead were an incredible 30-year phenomenon, and could probably claim the most loyal following in the history of music. The fanaticism of Dead fans was legendary.

But while the Dead enjoyed their success and their vagabond, party lifestyle, the actual devotion of the Deadheads sometimes made them uneasy. Guitarist Bob Weir says that many of the Deadheads misled themselves about the band's significance and he even blames the enormous responsibility felt by Dead leader Jerry Garcia toward the fans as part of the pressure that continually drove him back to drug abuse. Garcia's heart gave out in 1995 during an attempt at detoxification. He was 53, and his death meant the same for the Dead.

People often think of the Dead in terms of drugs, partying, hippie lifestyle and the ever-present Deadheads, there were some very serious aspects to the band as well. Beyond just being environmentally conscious, the members of the Dead were activists, even testifying before Congress in 1992 on the plight of indigenous Malaysians in the wake of that country's deforestation. These days, Weir is in touch with a powerful cadre of environmentalist friends, including former leaders of Greenpeace and the Green Forest Action Network, and is strategizing a next step in the fight for environmental awareness.

That type of power has been an interesting contradiction in the band's life. On one hand, they were the epitome of mellow, clearly liberal beings who seemingly rejected traditional establishment in all its forms. On the other hand, especially toward the end, the Dead were a major corporation in their own right. They were one of rock's top touring acts, and as such brought in hundreds of millions of dollars every year. For a band so decidedly anti-establishment, they were an establishment all their own.

After the band broke up, Weir toured with his side band Ratdog, and eventually built it into a full-time act. Bankrate spoke with Weir, currently on the road with Ratdog, about his friends in high places, some of his other endeavors, and the interesting dichotomy between the Dead's extremely liberal lifestyle and views and the tremendous corporate entity it eventually became.

BANKRATE:COM: I've read that you're friends with Al Gore. Are you in touch with him at all?

BOB WEIR: I just got a thank-you note from him today for helping out with the election. I'll be in Tennessee not too far from now, in a couple of weeks, and so I intend on looking him up.

BANKRATE:COM: What do you think his next big political move will be?

BOB WEIR: I hesitate to guess, but I'd love to find out what's on his mind.

BANKRATE:COM: Tell me about the books you wrote with your sister Wendy Weir -- Panther Dream: A Story of the African Rainforest, and Baru Bay.

BOB WEIR: They're children's books. I attempted to bring kids into environmental awareness at sort of an organic level.

BANKRATE:COM: How did they sell?

BOB WEIR: They were pretty well received. I don't know how they sold because I never got any profits from it. I funneled the profits into environmental causes. So I never did actually look at the checks.

BANKRATE:COM: The Dead were such a liberal, artistic entity, and yet at the same time they were a really big business. Did you ever find that the ideals of one side of the Dead conflicted with the realities of the other?

BOB WEIR: All the time. That's the balancing act you're going to be doing unless you run the business like Coca-Cola or something like that, where the bottom line wags the dog. We never did that. We had conflicts of money, but that was kind of the fun of it. We had lots of board meetings and hashed it out. It was interesting, having a bunch of maniacs sit in a room for a few hours and try to get complicated issues straight.

BANKRATE:COM: What was the biggest business conflict that you remember having to deal with?

BOB WEIR: They were all that way. Every meeting we had monumental conflicts to negotiate. Some real bumps on the road -- there's no one I can think of that takes precedence over any others. They were all miserable, but we had fun dealing with them anyway.

BANKRATE:COM: Considering the business aspects of the Dead, are you very involved in your own finances?

BOB WEIR: Yeah. I'm Chairman of the Board of Grateful Dead Productions, and basically the same with Ratdog.

BANKRATE:COM: Do you play the market?

BOB WEIR: Not personally, no. I have a stockbroker. That's a little like gambling as far as I'm concerned. I have a philosophy about it that I only invest in stuff that I want to see happen. So I probably haven't done as well in the stock market as people who invested in stuff that they expect will make money.

BANKRATE:COM: Who are some of the companies that you invested in that you believed in?

BOB WEIR: You know, I can't ... for instance, a company that sells spring water, the best spring water I've run across. I bought stock in that.

BANKRATE:COM: Do you remember their name?

BOB WEIR: No, not really. It'll come back to me, I just haven't been thinking about it for a couple of months.

BANKRATE:COM: Any stocks do really well for you?

BOB WEIR: The Pernassus fund.

BANKRATE:COM: All socially responsible stuff?

BOB WEIR: They have a number of levels of it. In those funds I usually subscribe to the tightest directives, or whatever.

BANKRATE:COM: Considering what's going on with the NASDAQ, have you had any stocks that you got killed on?

BOB WEIR: I had one called E-Loan that did real well at first, and that was sort of a darling of that whole community, and then quite suddenly took a nosedive, and a spectacular one.

BANKRATE:COM: Do you tell your broker what you want to invest in?

BOB WEIR: Yeah.

BANKRATE:COM: So you're in control?

BOB WEIR: Yeah. Not specifics, though. I rarely give him specifics. I just give him directives. And he specializes in that, anyway.

-- Posted: May 4, 2001