l attitudes of his parents and pp 4the conservatives of the 1950's. Jerry decided not to go back and live with his mother, maybe it was the army or the food, but something had toughened him up. About that time Garcia’s appearance began to change. He began to sport a trim mustache and a beard that made him resemble a Spanish Duke. You could tell by his appearance that he was not part of mainstream society. Moving back to Palo Alto, Jerry met his soon to be song writer Robert Hunter. At first they would just run into each other a lot, then they would repeatedly bump into each other at St. Michael’s Ally, a place they both liked to hang out. Hunter and Garcia had a lot in common; both had just recently got out of the army and had a love for music. Soon after they met, they were both living out of their broken down cars in an empty lot in East Palo Alto, California. Garcia remembered, “ Hunter had these five or six big tins of crushed pineapple that he had gotten from the army, and I had this big glove compartment of plastic spoons, and we had this little cooperative scene, eating crushed pineapples day after day and sleeping in the cars”(Troy 24).In late 1961 one of Garcia’s friends turned him on to The New Lost City Ramblers, a bluegrass style band. When Jerry started studying bluegrass music it seemed very familiar, he believed it was because of going to his grandmothers house when he was a kid and listening to country music all night. His fondness for bluegrass music gave him the incentive to learn how to play the five- string banjo. Garcia took up the banjo with a vengeance, and just a short time later he was known as the banjo picker of Palo Alto. Garcia’s mastering of the banjo was a clear indication the he had the ability of becoming a professional musician (Troy 29).Also in 1961 Garcia met another future band member named Phillip Chapmen Lesh. He was a serious musician who had...
