You were born in San Francisco at an incredibly, it was a rich musical scene, a gazillion jazz clubs, jazz greats, a rich culture. Take me back 80 years into the world that you were born into in 1940 San Francisco.

1940 San Francisco. Sometimes

it comes back as like wooden

buildings and colors and that neighborhood. And I was the first generation. I've often felt very bad for my grandfather, you know, who came from Italy. And I'm the first generation in this country before a guy gets a jazz drummer, you know. So I really felt bad for him. Yes, and they're this wonderful Italian family. All of them are merchants, butchers, grocery people, and there's this music. They celebrated everything with music, and they all loved music. And my uncle was a drummer and a butcher. My dad was probably to this day, I think of my dad, I think of like the toughest person I've ever known. And grew up, won the Golden Gloves twice, met my mother. He was a prize

fighter.

Yeah, he was a fighter, a boxer. But inside of him was this other part, which was the music. He just, he loved music. He loved the drums, but it was not in his realm. He had to support himself and raise his family. So he meets my mom, and she bought him a set of drums. She said, I won't marry you if you're going to continue to fight. And he said he loved her. He loved her so much. And she went out and went to Sherman& Clay, this music store in San Francisco, and bought him a set of drums, which was not cheap in the 1940s, you know. And they got married, so I was born and there was an instrument in the house. But San Francisco was alive because it was a big harbor, too, during the war. So it was already diverse because of all this.

And your uncle and your father would take you to clubs. You saw Count Basie. You saw Louis Armstrong.

The big ballrooms. Yeah, yeah.

They would take me out there

because they wanted to hear that music. I was just a kid. And my friends were like, well, I'm going to be home tonight. I'm getting dressed up and I'm going to the Edgewater and see Gene Krupa's band. And then I'm going to go up and talk to Gene Krupa and get some drumsticks afterwards. I'm going to talk to these guys. But you weren't always let in directly into the club, though. You'd have to sit on the Edgewater. Oh, I'd have to sit up. I went with my dad, you know. He would leave me because he would want to go up and play in the jam session. There were jam sessions. So he would leave me with this wonderful, the club was called Tin Pan Alley. And he would leave me with this wonderful policewoman, about 240 pounds. And then she would put me on a little stool by the side, so I was out of harm's way, but I could see the bandstand. She'd give me a little Shirley Temple, a little straw, and she'd say, all right, sweetie. And then all of a sudden, I'd turn around, and she'd be throwing a sailor out the door. I mean, and that was the norm. It was all there. There was prostitutes, pimps. It was the nightlife, the nightlife that that underbelly of the tenderloin but somehow when i look back on it if it was somewhat healthy or something because it wasn't didn't seem perverted to me it just seemed so fascinating and something at that age i remember that first feeling of knowing something or being a part of something that wasn't, quote, the straight world, that there was something else. Now, when I went there, soon they would invite, these musicians would all invite me up to play music.

And you used to go to the black clubs and get kicked out. I'd snuck

in.

And why were you being kicked? How old were you? The

first one was really like 13. I was 13 years old and there was a club called the Cuckoo Club on Haight Street in San Francisco. And people had told me you had to go to jam sessions. It's scary. I was terrorized, terrorized. So I went in, you know, like I get it all together, man. I'm looking. In your suit? No, I'm dressed for that. You know, I got like a sport coat. I look hip. I know how to act. I'm not acting dumb, you know, and I'm pretty much, there's a few white faces in there. But there's, at a jam session, it's always a pecking order. But when there's a moment, you can go up and play. You go up and put it on the line. So I go up there, and it's like, you know, okay. I sit down behind the drums, and I'm doing okay so far. And they call off some tune, like boom, some blues or something, you know. And I start to play in this. To me, he seemed like the largest black man I'd ever seen in my life. And he just turns around, gets up, grabs the drumsticks from my hand and says, Get up off of there, you little no-playing white mother. O-fay.

O-fay? Yeah.

Very insulting. It was a word for white people, what black people called white people. You know, you little Ofe. And literally threw me off the drum set. So I went outside and I cried just, I was sobbing. And then that thing came up. If you don't go back in there, you're done. You'll never go back in there. And I went back in. And I wish I could say I sounded great, but I didn't. And I went back in there, and they wouldn't let me play. But I stayed. I stayed and I listened. And I went back the next week and the next week. And I listened. And slowly, somebody let me play again. And I would like to say I did better, but I didn't really. You know, they just, I became so familiar that I was kind of the running joke almost, but I was a part of it. They didn't kick me out. I didn't quit. And that was going to be the pattern until I had my place. And that was the school. You see, that's, don't get that now. It was very cruel and very loving at the same time. Tell me about, I

don't know how old you were when you saw Charlie Parker, and what was that experience? I must have been 12.

Where

was that? Earl

Father Hines had a club, famous piano player in San Francisco. My uncle took me. He said, we're going to go hear bebop. Come on, you won't understand. I said, okay, and I went. It was like the earth opening up, the sky opening up, to hear him, to hear that music.

I

had no idea, but I knew. I've always felt that we're blessed as human beings, and I've felt blessed that I could recognize musical truth. What was the song that you remember that he played then? I didn't even know the name of it. I know it was faster, and it was more notes than I'd ever heard. There appeared to be no rules that I knew of. They were all gone, and I didn't understand a thing, but I just knew that that was startlingly amazing. Like walking in and seeing a Picasso, and you have no idea, but it takes your breath away, and you know you're staring at the truth. And that's what it was like for me. And then began the journey of learning that, how to be a part of that.

So it was around the age of 20. Yeah, that's 20. When you caught the attention of Vince Guaraldi. People

brought me to his

attention. People brought you to his attention. Well, that's because you're incredible. What was it about this young Jerry Grinelli that caught his attention? It was pure

spirit, man. You know, I'm 22 years old. I've got all the chops in the world. I'm not bragging, but Joe Morello, that's who I was studying with. One

of the greatest drummers.

Yeah, technically the greatest. Nobody had more technique on the instrument than him at that time. And me. And I just come in there I'm you know I'm red hot man I got a job with a trio with a hit record we're working every night I'm looking pretty good you know this is it this is part of the dream and I come in there to set the forest on fire and Vince just stops me one night he He goes, hey man, come here. And I thought, oh shit, he's going to fire me. And, which was always a threat. And he goes, look, and he was so sweet. He said, I don't need all that shit you're bringing me. What I need is that fire that makes you want to play it. Just bring me that. And there's that lesson, early on lesson, only give the music what it needs.

So at the height of the fame with the Vince Guaraldi trio, you left.

When I left, I really left. I went in a completely different direction. You

went to free jazz.

I followed the music that I knew was mine. I followed the music that I knew was mine. Made great records, made a name, whatever this thing is that I am or reputation. I made all that.

Open jazz, free jazz, yeah.

Yeah, really is spontaneous composition. That's what we perfected. That's what we grew into. And that even went into psychedelic. It just was a wonderful journey in my life. I became, someone pushed me, and there's 25 or 28 records that I became a leader in the model of Max Roach, being a composer, a leader. Yes, you're

in the rock and roll hall of fame for psychedelic. Yeah,

creating psychedelic music, yeah. Right. So I got to be on all this wonderful stuff. I got to work with all the great Ginsberg as a buddy.

Yeah, Alan Ginsberg. I

had been through all that. I'd been through the wildest things you can possibly imagine, you know, fun, great things. Oh, give me one example. Well, you know, how about end of 1970, Grateful Dead, there's a promoter in Europe who decided that he wants to bring the Dead and Us, Light Sound Dimension Band, was playing with Light show and everything, to France.

So this is a band you were playing in that had a light artist who was doing light.

Yeah, we had come up with, we were just playing, making our own electronic instruments. We had our theater. Psychedelic jazz. Yeah, and with visuals. Right. And the audiences were like Pink Floyd, all these bands who would come to San Francisco would come to hang out.

And so you went on tour with the Grateful Dead.

Yeah, the dead are like, he wants you guys to come too. So we're, okay. So we get tickets. We land in Paris. Now, nobody in Paris had seen that many people with that long beards and hair. I mean, totally the amounts of LSD in us and proceeded to go across France like that. You know, every day, one day we don't have a place to stay. The next day we're staying at the funky Chateau. There's tape still out there. Phil Leash talks about it in his. The next day we're playing for this entire French village for free for the summer solstice. And we're doing this concert overnight, giving everybody in this French town acid. Oh my Lord. You know, they're just, and everybody's so happy. And I'm, you know, I'm standing at Swiss Air, because I have to go home because my son is going to be born. My wife called me, Jackie. She said, hey, man, you know. And I'm standing there, and all I've got are these beautiful rocks, trying to convince this woman that she should let me on the plane.

You're going to give her rocks?

I'm going to give her these really precious rocks.

And she does. Wow. You paid high on LSD. You paid for a plane ticket with rocks. Is that what you're telling me? Yeah, yeah. What did finally getting sober and completely sober and free of drugs in the 80s? 87? Yeah. What did that do to you as a musician? It scared the hell out of me. First. But

again, it wasn't about the music. What scared the hell out of you? First time I had to play without any substance in me. I hadn't done that since I was a child. Yeah, but I mean, I could, all the records I made, all those things, all those concerts, you know, we were usually high on something. But it didn't affect the music. It was never about affecting the music. It was helped learn it. I would not recommend it. But that was just that part. But when I was sober, that was a whole other, maybe getting sober had more some fruition to the Buddhist work that I had done before. It's about being a human being and how you work with others and how do you work with your own fears. And so I had never been taught to deal with any of that. I was protected from dealing with my own fear. And you lost so many

friends who didn't become human.

Sure, man. I mean, you know, so many great talents we lost in this life, great genius artists that we've lost because they had no human training they had no way to deal with those things as a human being and music

can give you sort of a natural high that's what that's what jimmy hendrix said you knew jimmy

yeah jimmy was like trying to deal with the whole thing he just wanted to make that music He went through whatever he went through to, you know, to try to deal with money, try to rip you off. He had his own personal pain. He was a sweetie. Was he? But he wasn't, he didn't have the skills or the help. How did you know him? In the wild days of San Francisco, in the Fillmore, you know. All those things that became an industry, well, at first, because we were playing so crazy, we started to play on H Street in rock clubs, the hippie club. I was too old to be a hippie. But because those kids were open to this crazy ass music, jazz clubs weren't.

The psychedelic jazz, the free jazz.

Yeah, we were playing free. We had our own instruments. Bill Graham had a club called The Matrix. And just like, get us out of his hair. He said, come to work at the club. I'll give you guys a gig, you know. But the opening band was Janis Joplin and the Sons of Champlin, big brother in a holding company. Janis had just joined them. They could barely play. In the middle was myself, Fred Marshall, and Noel Jukes. We were playing completely out. Free music. Spontaneous music. Yeah, just like sounds people hadn't heard because of these instruments and out. No rules, it seemed. And then the third band was Jefferson Airplane. Oh, my Lord. Gracie had just joined them. We were all making $8 a night. Bill Graham put up with us in the middle. So it was family. It was a community. It was kids. I mean, the dad'd come in and they'd be like, how the hell are you doing that? Because, you know, those days, those rock and rollers didn't know how to play. They were all artists who got... It was another social thing. But we could play. We were musicians. I was making... I was supporting myself because those managers would hire me to go teach the Sons of Champlin, the Quicksilver Messenger Service drummers, all those people. I was teaching them how to actually play the drums. But it was so wonderful because that scene was so open, we weren't no longer constricted by suits and ties and jazz clubs and those terrible rules, all those rules, you know. What

was Jimmy like to listen to? Oh, it

was wonderful. It was the same as listening to Charlie Parker. He was just, he was a force of that music. The music represents itself, the spirit of that music, I think it represents itself in different people at different times. I don't necessarily get in trouble. I don't necessarily hear it coming through quote-quote jazz right now. I hear it coming through, what's his name, Kendall? Great rapper, man, DJ.

Oh. Lamar

Kendall, is it? Oh, Kendrick

Lamar. Yeah. I heard

him and I went. Why?

Just

because I was like,

man, that's a reincarnation

of Duke Ellington.