Captain Trips: A Biography of Jerry Garcia

What brand was Jerry Garcia's first guitar? What went wrong with the Grateful Dead's set at Woodstock? These esoterica sustain Troy's (One More Saturday Night) biography of Garcia, the Grateful Dead's famed guitarist and leader. As a celebration of the Garcia legend, Troy's book is a total success-seemingly every detail of the musician's career is catalogued. Other elements of the 52-year-old Garcia's life-such as his three marriages and four children-are given shorter shrift, reflecting perhaps the reality of life in a band renowned for its ceaseless touring. Troy has a pedestrian narrative style and the pace is often slow. Not even Garcia's diabetic coma in 1986 earns dramatic urgency. In tracing the guitarist's life, Troy does little to explore beyond his myth, but his interviews and anecdotes supply fodder to expand on it. Photos not seen by PW. (Nov.)