Merl Saunders
The year was around 1986. My girlfriend's godfather of her daughter was one of the Grateful Dead’s Road managers. Her Ex was a major hippie drug dealer from Chicago who got in trouble and disappeared. Whenever the Grateful Dead came to LA until we broke up, I hung with them at whatever concerts they did in the vicinity.
The first concert where I hung out backstage was in Irvine right next to the Laguna Beach vicinity. Laguna Beach was the first “hippie” commune “artist” community in Orange County and had many friends of The Dead. Back then it wasn’t yet the exclusive ultra-expensive real estate and there were these little communities in the woods and hills that were just trailer camps festooned with the decorative art: wood sculptures, flowers etc. These folks are the the reason Laguna Beach is now an internationally known “art city”.
After the show everyone convened to one of the first hippie “art” compounds in a wooded area about a mile or so from Laguna Beach. Sitting in the trailer I did strike up a friendship with Merl Saunders that night. He was just sitting on a couch by himself while all the celebs kept going into a backroom that I surmised was for the elite drugs. I struck up a conversation and found out I was talking to Merl Saunders, the Bay area organ legend. I had known him as the guy who got Garcia to play his ass off on their collaboration. Later on he became more famous as the guy who got Garcia playing again after diabetes and strokes had affected his technique. Merl was touring with the Dead not because he was going to play but as Garcias music trainer.
I told him I grew up 20 minutes south of Newark NJ which was legendary for Hammond B3 players, Larry Young, Leon Spencer, Big John Patten, Don Patterson, Reggie Washington. The rest are from the Philly area: Jimmy Smith, Groove Holmes, Jimmy McGriff. He freaked out that I knew Leon Spencer personally, we talked all night about our favorite LPs, and we exchanged phone numbers... Merl told me this.
I called Merl every now and then but 15 years later when I started playing in the Bay area once a month with my Celtic band, we reconnected. We played Johnny Foley's, Ireland 32, and some other Irish joints on Cannery Row. We visited his girlfriend’s crib in San Fran and we would crash there on occasion. Merl Saunders was a "musician's musician".
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