A Shroom-Addled Woody Harrelson Nearly Derailed Grateful Dead Concert

Even though Woody Harrelson considers himself an honorary member of the Grateful Dead — “Why not?” — he hasn’t always served the band’s best interests. In fact, he told Stephen Colbert this week, he almost stopped one Dead concert in its tracks. 

Improbably for a man of Harrelson’s habits, he wasn’t always a Deadhead. He was introduced to the scene by “a guy who was doing some carpentry for me” who asked Harrelson if he knew the Dead. “Not really,” shrugged the comic actor. That wouldn’t stand, and the handyman arranged a trip to northern California to catch a concert.

“We imbibed some fungi,” Harrelson confessed, as one does at such events. After an indeterminate haze of hanging out, he says, they went backstage to talk “to everybody back there.” How did Harrelson’s carpenter have backstage access to a Dead concert? Unknown.

“Before you know it, I’m meeting the Dead,” Harrelson said. “We chat for a minute. They were like, ‘We’ve got to get out there!’” 

In his shroom-addled memory of the events, Dead band members huddled up to decide which song would lead off the concert — “Tennessee Jed” — and reminded each other how the chord progressions went. You’d think the Dead would have those down decades into their career, but Harrelson remembers what Harrelson remembers. 

The band plotted out the rest of the show — “We’ll do what we always do — make it up!” — then took the stage. Except for Jerry Garcia. He was more interested in engaging Harrelson in mind-blowing thought experiments than joining his bandmates for an umpteenth round of “Stella Blue.” “Do you ever think about the fact that the universe is expanding?” he asked Harrelson. The actor had not considered the possibility.

Garcia’s right-hand man, a dude named Steve, urged the musician to get out on stage, but Garcia was in mid-ramble: “If the universe is expanding, isn’t time expanding?” 

The backstage crew grew more frantic, pleading with Garcia to join the band. As their screaming reached a fever pitch, Garcia finally relented. “I’ve got to go.”

And we haven’t even gotten to the “derailed” part of the show yet. Now Harrelson found himself at the side of the stage, chatting up musician Bruce Hornsby. The two were commiserating, angry about George W. Bush and his war efforts, when Hornsby sat on the back of his chair. Looks cool, thought Harrelson, who decided to hop up on the back of his chair as well.

Then suddenly, Harrelson hears “this wild, discordant cacophony of crazy notes. Well, I think to myself, kind of genius,” he remembered. “Granted, things (i.e., fungi) are kicking in.”

Despite his drug-addled stupor, Harrelson was clear-minded enough to see Garcia, Bob Weir and the rest of the band looking directly at him from the stage. “If it was your dream, you’d be like ‘Whoa!’” he explained. “And in life, I was like ‘Whoa!’”

Suddenly, Harrelson was rushed by roadies. The crazy discordant cacophony was caused by Harrelson sitting on one of the band’s keyboards.

“You were doing an ass solo,” observed Colbert.

Harrelson corrected him: “I jammed with the Dead.”