Vince Welnik: a man of many coats

Vince Welnick’s musical career as a keyboardist has been long and varied to say the least. As a founding member of the seminal fractured-art rock band The Tubes Welnick was in the front lines of the late 70’s pre-punk movement that begat 80’s new wave. In the 90’s he replaced the late Brett Mydland as keyboardist for the eternal hippy trip that was the Grateful Dead. Nowadays Welnick has a cozy little place in the northern California wood and still keeps his musical iron in many fires.

There may not have been two bands more disparate than the Tubes and the Grateful Dead, yet these bands will forever define your rock and roll career. Was performing in each as widely divergent as it seems?

Well, musically speaking it was. In the Dead you had a space and time for a solo and you could pretty much do whatever you want – I really got to play my instrument. In the Tubes you’d pretty much have to stick to your solo spot and play what was on the record. Although in the early days with the Tubes – when we were The Beans - we had a huge repertoire of songs, so it wasn’t unusual for us to have done a Dead-like twenty minute version of Bob Dylan’s "Hollis Brown".

The fan base for each of those bands had to be somewhat extreme in their differences though; did you find that to be the case when you joined the Grateful Dead?

The main difference is the drugs they used! The Tubes had lots of amped-up types – the coke users, the amphetamine poppers, and some Quaalude droppers. That audience could become violent. They’d throw stuff at the bands that opened for us – beer, rocks, cans with nails pounded through them. I remember on one tour the band Squeeze was opening for us. They’re a great band, but our audience was brutal to them the first few shows and they dropped off the tour.

The Dead’s audience was more loving. They took mushrooms and acid and smoked pot. They were very loving, unconditionally so – to the point where you could play a completely shitty show and they’d be just fine with it.

Was the difference in audience size something difficult to get used to?

Well we played some pretty big shows with the Tubes, but nothing like what I encountered with the Dead. Those crowds would go on forever. You couldn’t see the end of them from the stage even. And the roar of such an endless sea of people is really frightening – in a good way. Even after all the years of doing these shows I would see Jerry (Garcia) and Bob (Weir) standing there waiting to go on with their knees knocking. But I had a vision when I was 11 years old that I’d be performing in front of a sea of people, so I was prepared!

Both the Tubes and the Dead were pretty large troupes – were the bands democracies or did one person pretty much have the final say in each?

The Tubes were very much a democracy, everyone had input. The Dead always said "we don’t do anything that’s not unanimous" – which meant that whatever Jerry wanted to do we did. But Jerry was very cool and he was always open to everything.

Did Jerry carry around a cooler of Cherry Garcia ice cream?

Oh man, I don’t think I ever saw him eat the stuff. It’s funny because the Dead rarely did that sort of endorsement thing. There were always offers, but Jerry turned them down. With the ice cream thing he decided to do it and send all the money along to charity, so it wasn’t a personal ego sort of thing at all. Jerry wasn’t like that. I remember an offer from some casino in Vegas to make Grateful Dead poker chips – which just seemed absurd to Jerry.

The Dead obviously can’t truly reunite but the Tubes still play shows and the original members are all still around – is there talk of a full reunion at all? Or was it too nasty of a break-up to put things back together?

It was a bit messy at first, but now everyone is on good terms. But I doubt it would happen unless it was for television, or a movie, or there was a lot of money offered from someone. We’ve talked about it a bit, and if it ever does happen it will be the right way – with a new record to support and with everyone who has been involved with the Tubes. And that’s a group which would fill a stage up pretty fast!

(Laughs) I’ve had friends say that too. I just tell them I’d die doing what I loved to do!

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