Ron “Pigpen” McKernan Pigpen was fourteen when he landed in Palo Alto. Found work at Dana Morgan’s Music Store downtown, where he met Jerry Garcia. Two kids in a music shop. You know how this goes.
McKernan, Garcia, Bob Weir, they started playing together. The Zodiacs. Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions. Names that sound like someone’s putting you on, but this was real. This was the beginning.
Bill Kreutzmann shows up on drums, and now you’ve got something. The Warlocks. Around ’65, Pigpen, because this is his story, he’s the one pushing them to go electric. Phil Lesh comes in on bass. They need a new name. The Grateful Dead.
And here’s the thing: Pigpen was the Dead. The original frontman. The best singer they had. Before Jerry became Jerry, before all the myth-making and the parking lot economy and the tie-dye industrial complex, it was Pigpen’s band.
Twenty-seven years old. Dead in Corte Madera.
A week before, he’d recorded something on a tape cassette. They found it in his apartment after.
Don’t make me live in this pain
no longer
You know, I’m gettin’ weaker, not
stronger
My poor heart can’t stand no more
Just can’t keep from talkin’
If you gonna walk out that door,
start walkin’
I’ll get back somehow
Maybe not tomorrow, but someday
I know someday I’ll find someone
Who can ease my pain like you once donea‘Pigpen’ McKernan Dead at 27, Rolling Stone
They buried him in Alta Mesa Memorial Park. Across the street from Gunn High School. I went to Gunn.
Twenty-seven years old in the ground. The dead watching the living. The living, mostly, not noticing.
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