The Grateful Dead
During a 2004 interview on the Fresh Air radio program McLagan was asked about being offered a job with the Grateful Dead.
"You declined a chance to play with the Grateful Dead. Why was that?"
"Well I didn't actually decline the chance... it was a chance; I wasn't given the gig. A friend of mine who was a friend of Jerry Garcia's said they're looking; their current keyboard player has died and they're looking for someone else. He said they want you to play to a tape and submit it, you know. He said, 'You could make a quarter million dollars a year, you could live anywhere you want, blah, blah, blah'. I was actually on vacation at the time in San Diego with my wife and our dogs and I went out and bought a Grateful Dead CD and my wife went out to do some shopping and came back to the hotel room and I was sitting in a blue funk in a brown study in a green swarm of hell and she said, 'What's the matter?' and I said, I can't play this music — it sucks! I mean, just my personal taste, I couldn't… didn't understand it, didn't get it, still don't really. I mean I know they make a lot of money, they've got of fans. I'm sorry if I've upset anyone but…"
"It wasn't your cup of tea?"
"Wasn't my cup of tea, no more than Phish all that jam-band… so tediously boring. I like a tune, and a singer, and a solo, and now, more of the tune. I just couldn't even do it."
After the Faces split up in 1975, McLagan worked as a sideman for The Rolling Stones, both in the studio and on tour; and on various Ronnie Wood projects, including The New Barbarians. In addition, his session work has backed such artists as Chuck Berry, Jackson Browne, Joe Cocker, Bob Dylan, Melissa Etheridge, Bonnie Raitt, Paul Westerberg, Izzy Stradlin, Frank Black, Nikki Sudden, John Mayer and Bruce Springsteen.
McLagan has been a member of Billy Bragg's band since 1997.
McLagan plays piano on the studio side of the album The London Chuck Berry Sessions.
On September 25, 2010, at Stubbs in Austin, Texas, McLagan joined The Black Crowes on keyboards and vocals for their encore set. The set included two Faces songs, "You're So Rude" and "Glad and Sorry".
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Famous quotes containing the words grateful and/or dead:
“I could live without acting.... Acting is a gift I’ve received. And I’m grateful for it and I enjoy it. But it’s not the main point of my life. It never was.”
—Jeanne Moreau (b. 1928)
“He said the dead had souls, but when I asked him
How could that be—I thought the dead were souls,
He broke my trance. Don’t that make you suspicious
That there’s something the dead are keeping back?”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)