Airing Jerry’s Dirty Tie-Dyed Laundry

There they were, the ‘60s icon and the Mill Valley filmmaker, squaring off in a Northern California courtroom, squabbling over the spoils of a rock ‘n’ roll empire, their marriages and millions.

Jerry Garcia wife No. 2 had been living quietly in an Oregon farmhouse on more than $20,000 a month, thanks to an unconventional 1993 property settlement between the king of the Deads and Carolyn “Mountain Girl” Adams Garcia--the erstwhile acid-dropping, commune-living earth mother immortalized in “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,” Tom Wolfe’s paean to the counterculture.

Then the founder of the Grateful Dead dropped dead of a heart attack at a drug rehab center in Marin County days after his 53rd birthday in 1995, and wife No. 3--filmmaker Deborah Koons Garcia--stopped payment on the 20-year, $5-million agreement.

So Carolyn went to court, where Deborah promptly charged her with conning the patriarch of the Grateful Dead into an annoying, loveless sham of a marriage--a tax dodge, she said, and nothing more.

The result: A glimpse into the tabloid life, death and finances of the late Jerome John Garcia--an intensely private public performer--compliments of the women he loved.

Before the 14-day San Rafael trial, which alternately crackled with acrimony and bogged down in accountant-ese until its conclusion last week, Jerry Garcia had managed to shield certain segments of his life from the glare of the media. We knew about his accomplishments and addictions, but not his accountants. We knew about his banjo, but not his balance sheets.

But when the slender Koons Garcia met the roomy Adams Garcia in the Marin County courtroom of Judge Michael B. Dufficy under the watchful eyes of Court TV’s cable subscribers coast to coast, all bets were off.

Faithful Grateful Deadheads groaned in disappointment at what they perceived as the final insult, one more airing of dirty tie-dyed linen that cheapened the memory of their populist hero with the uncool emotions of anger and greed.

“Deborah Koons Garcia has every right to defend her estate,” said John Dwork, a self-styled national Deadhead spokesman and editor/publisher of the widest circulating fanzine of Grateful Dead culture. “At the same time, I know that virtually all Deadheads are questioning her tone. She speaks with this sort of vitriol, oozing out of her ears. . . . Everybody I’ve spoken to is wondering why Deborah Koons is doing this. Why, why, why? It just doesn’t make any sense.”

To the Widow Garcia, it makes perfect sense. Her late husband “did tell me the marriage was a sham and a joke,” she said in an interview by telephone and on the stand under oath. “People who knew Jerry very well knew it wasn’t a real marriage. He wasn’t unhappy in it; he wasn’t in it. He was unhappy about the $5 million.”

Dufficy, however, didn’t buy it, ruling last week in favor of Mountain Girl, in a written decision that began like a counterculture fairy tale:

“Jerome J. Garcia (hereinafter known as ‘Jerry’) and Carolyn Adams Garcia (hereinafter known as ‘Carolyn’) first met and began their relationship in the dope-filled flower child era in the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco in the 1960s.”

The reality was something else, as the lives of Jerry and Carolyn and Deborah twined together through more than two decades like the strands of an unruly triple helix. The singer loved the two women, left them and married them, not necessarily in that order.

The facts--though some are in dispute--are these: Carolyn met Jerry in 1965 and gave birth to their daughters in 1970 and 1974. Sometime around then Jerry met and began a relationship with Deborah.

Carolyn and Jerry married in 1981 and she moved to Oregon, returning in 1986, when Jerry lapsed into a diabetic coma. They parted again in 1990 and divorced in January 1994. Less than a month later, Jerry and Deborah were wed.

Carolyn defends her marriage as loving, committed and unorthodox, just like the two human beings inhabiting it. Why marry a man who, she admits, had “needs for companionship (that) were great”?

“We loved each other,” she said in an interview. “We had children.”

Why divorce him? “In 1990, I just kind of got tired. . . . Jerry had other interests at the time. I decided to let go.”

Three years later, the unconventional couple met twice to divide their property in advance of their divorce and Jerry’s marriage to Deborah.

According to Carolyn’s attorney, David C. Phillips, the unruly Garcia set down the rules: No attorneys. No disclosure of his worth. So Carolyn drew up the 13-line agreement that formed the basis of the just-concluded trial.

“By this agreement, Jerome promises speedy payment of the settlement monies, at a rate of no less than 250,000 dollars per year from the date of the signing of this agreement,” it reads. “When the settlement is paid in full, both Carolyn and Jerome agree to hold each other blameless and free.”

Of the financial documents that spilled forth during court proceedings, Carolyn told Court TV: “Most of this stuff, of course, I’ve never seen before.”

Sure, Garcia’s will is on the World Wide Web, available through any number of Dead-related home pages; anyone with a personal computer can find out that he provided for his four children by three different women and for Adams Garcia’s first child--Sunshine May Walker Kesey, the daughter of author Ken.

And yes, we know he has sold an abundance of neckwear, that the Grateful Dead has been among America’s top grossing acts in the decade since Garcia came out of his coma and licensed his name as an ice cream flavor.

What we did not know formed a legion of details mostly about finances--but also about females. Viewers of the case file can see the divorce decree dissolving Garcia’s marriage to Mountain Girl or a copy of the love letter to “Sweet Lights” (Carolyn) from “your devoted ugly jer.”

Because of the litigation, there is a better feel for the artist’s dollar value and for what he did with his money. We now know that the often absentee father paid $24,000 in family support to Adams Garcia and her girls but at other times was both Deadhead and deadbeat dad.

We know that Jerry Garcia gave Koons Garcia $22,000 a month for “maintenance”--at a time, his widow testified, when he was struggling financially and the two, though married, had separate houses.

If we read the estate’s “Valuation of Jerry Garcia Songwriter, Artist and Merchandising Royalties,” we know that as of Dec. 31, 1993, Garcia was worth an estimated $4.2 million: $1.5 million in songwriting royalties, $900,000 in artist royalties and $1.8 million in merchandising earnings.

Deborah figures that the estate might someday be worth around $6 million. Carolyn and attorney Phillips say such estimates fall far, far short of reality.

And as Deborah considers appealing her loss, Carolyn celebrates, sips champagne and works on her memoirs.

“It’ll pick up where the ‘Kool-Aid Acid Test’ left off. I’ve been working on it the last few months. I’m trying to get it all down before it gets lost in that haze.”