yes! and it is quite possible what Jerry and Phil were asking Weir for was "hey man, we want to do all the noodling for hours, can you just provide the bottom end so we can fly?"
Y'gotta read his Wiki page:
"The incident apparently led to a period of significant growth in Weir's guitar playing. Phil Lesh said that when drummer Mickey Hart left the band temporarily in early 1971, he was able to hear Weir's playing more clearly than ever and "I found myself astonished, delighted and excited beyond measure at what Bobby was doing." Lesh described Weir's playing as "quirky, whimsical and goofy" and noted his ability to play on the guitar chord voicings (with only four fingers) that one would normally hear from a keyboard (with up to ten fingers)"
Re: Roots of "noodling":
It's pretty commonly agreed the seminal extended psychededlic jam was "East-West" on the Butterfield Blues Band album of the same name released in August '66.
From Wiki page for
East-West:
"In 1996, original Butterfield Blues Band member Mark Naftalin (keyboards)...released a CD on his own 'Winner' label entitled East-West Live". Noted music critic and prolific author Dave Marsh contributed a substantial essay in the liner notes regarding the historic importance of the song, both the original 1966 recording and the live versions.[6]
Marsh, interviewing Naftalin, notes that the tune was inspired by an all-night LSD trip that "East-West"'s primary songwriter Mike Bloomfield experienced in the fall of 1965, during which the late guitarist "said he'd had a revelation into the workings of Indian music."
Marsh's expansive liner notes observe that the song "East-West" "was an exploration of music that moved modally, rather than through chord changes. As Naftalin explains, "The song was based, like Indian music, on a drone. In Western musical terms, it 'stayed on the one'. The song was tethered to a four-beat bass pattern and structured as a series of sections, each with a different mood, mode and color, always underscored by the drummer, who contributed not only the rhythmic feel but much in the way of tonal shading, using mallets as well as sticks on the various drums and the different regions of the cymbals. In addition to playing beautiful solos, Paul [Butterfield] played important, unifying things [on harmonica] in the background - chords, melodies, counterpoints, counter-rhythms. This was a group improvisation. In its fullest form it lasted over an hour."
In his summation, Marsh points out that "'East-West' can be heard as part of what sparked the West Coast's rock revolution, in which such song structures with extended improvisatory passages became commonplace."
In the IMDB page for "
Riot on Sunset Strip", a user describes the tune's influence on Garcia:
"The party music is "East-West" which appears on the 1966 Paul Butterfield Blues Band album titled "East-West." The 13 plus minute jam is acknowledged by most to be the first psychedelic jam song. The band's guitar virtuoso Michael Bloomfield adjust the tone of his guitar to sound like a sitar on parts of the song. The version used on the soundtrack is slightly different from the take used on the Butterfield Blues Band album".
(Actually it's a lot different and I suspect it may actually be from early Electric Flag audition/rehearsal sessions, but the point is made)
"When the Butterfield Blues Band toured San Francisco Bay area early in 1966, an aspiring rock guitarist, Jerry Garcia heard them play "East-West", and he loved the tripped-out sound of the song so much he decided to use the psychedelic jam format used on "East-West" as the musical foundation for his newly formed band, the Grateful Dead"
That comment about "newly formed band" isn't quite correct, but it's true that in 1965 as the Warlocks they were basically a pop(Beatles)/Folk-rock(Dylan, Byrds) and blues/soul (Pigpen's influence: "Lovelight") cover band playing pizza parlor gigs.
They were even still the Warlocks for their first gigs at Kesey's acid test parties on his property in the La Honda redwood forests on the SF Peninsula in '65.
Where they met
Augustus Owsley Stanley commonly known as "Owsley", or "Bear".
And the rock music world was forever changed.
This concludes today's lesson of "Music of the '60s".
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