Tom Constanten

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Tom Constanten
Born (1944-03-19) March 19, 1944 (age 80)
Long Branch, New Jersey, U.S.
OriginSan Francisco, California, U.S.
GenresRock, psychedelia, classical
Occupation(s)Musician
Instrument(s)
  • Piano
  • organ
Years active1960s–present
Websitetomconstanten.com

Tom Constanten (born March 19, 1944) is an American keyboardist, best known for playing with Grateful Dead from 1968 to 1970, for which he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

Biography

Early career

Born in

Mills College. Constanten also studied piano with Mario Feninger. In 1962, he lived in Brussels and Paris, met Umberto Eco, and studied on a scholarship with members of the Darmstadt School, including Berio, Henri Pousseur, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Pierre Boulez.[1][2]

After briefly rooming with Lesh in Las Vegas and returning to the San Francisco Bay Area, Constanten performed with an improvisational quintet formed by Steve Reich. The group's unusual style was influenced by both jazz and Stockhausen. In a 1964 performance, the ensemble played serialism-influenced compositions by both Constanten and Lesh. Although he walked out from the performance, minimalist composer Terry Riley later allowed the ensemble to premiere In C. However, only Reich and one other member of the group, saxophonist-composer Jon Gibson, appeared in the performance.[3]

US Air Force service

Faced with the possibility of

mainframe computers, including the IBM 1401. By 1967, he had been promoted to sergeant. During this period, he first collaborated with the Grateful Dead as a session musician on Anthem of the Sun (1968); Constanten used several compensatory three-day passes to travel to Los Angeles to record with the band.)[4]

Tenure in the Grateful Dead

After sitting in with the band during live performances as his schedule permitted, the day after an honorable

psychedelics, they became "as close as two heterosexual males could be," shared a house in Novato, California
, and bunked together while touring.

While he had successfully contributed to their complex experimental music, his instrumental style was then grounded in classical technique and bore little consanguinity with the

Hammond B-3 in the spring of 1969; nevertheless, he was dissatisfied with the comparatively dulcet timbres of both instruments vis-à-vis guitarists Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir in a live performance context: "[T]heir sounds ranged from barely acceptable to cringeworthy. For another, I couldn't find a place for the sustained sound of an organ in a guitar band context—ahhh, for a piano! Furthermore, the action of an organ keyboard, electronic or not, was sufficiently different from that of a piano, which was all I'd known until then, to be an obstacle to my getting a feel for the music. Basically, I wasn't an organist. A Merl Saunders or a Melvin Seals could've stepped in... but they weren't there. As if that weren't enough, the amplification technology of the times was much kinder to guitars, with their direct pickups, than it was to pianos. All the electric keyboards available then, you might recall, represented some sort of cheesy compromise with the real thing..."[5]

Several band members and employees felt that he did not fit in with the Dead ethos despite his longstanding friendships with Lesh and Garcia; for example, he was a member of the Church of Scientology throughout his tenure with the band and thus declined to become re-involved with LSD and other drugs.[6][7] According to band manager Rock Scully, "He was so different. You know, he was like a crew cut. He was like a Marine in a prison camp full of Japanese. He was like our boss in a way. Nobody could go for the hard-wire technology of his brainpower. I was told I was too hard on him, too. But I had no beef."[8]

Echoing Scully's sentiments, drummer

New Orleans, Louisiana
.

Life after the Dead

After leaving the Grateful Dead, Constanten collaborated with Joe McCord, a mime who performed as "Rubber Duck." This culminated in Constanten writing the music for McCord's Tarot, a mime play based on the

Gary "Chicken" Hirsh and composer Paul Dresher) performed several shows at the Village Gate before relocating to Los Angeles, where they continued to perform as Touchstone, an instrumental rock band. During this period, Constanten worked on a proposed musical version of Frankenstein for Hair producer Michael Butler, who also considered mounting a production of Tarot. Touchstone's debut album (Tarot) was released by United Artists Records in 1972 and contained much of the music intended for the play; however, according to Constanten, "United Artists Records was cool to instrumental bands, though, so they didn’t promote the album a whole lot. The fact that the show didn’t catch fire during the New York run didn’t help. So the second album our contract mentioned (and we had material for) evaporated into the fog on the Hollywood hills."[10][11]

Shortly thereafter, Constanten held a Creative Associate fellowship in composition at the

artist in residence at Harvard University.[12][13] He has also taught at the San Francisco Art Institute. From 1986 to 1993, he was the house pianist for the radio program West Coast Weekend, playing solo piano and interstitial music.[14] In 1994, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
with the Grateful Dead.

Constanten continues to tour as a solo pianist. He has also played with the reconstituted lineup of

Heroes of Woodstock tour; several of his performances with the group are showcased in the Mick's Picks series of live albums.[15] He has also sat in with a variety of Grateful Dead tribute bands, including Dark Star Orchestra and Terrapin Flyer. As of 2015, Constanten is a member of Alphonso Johnson's Jazz Is Dead, an instrumental Grateful Dead cover band that interprets classic Dead songs with jazz influences.[16] After meeting Grateful Dead sound engineer Bob Bralove at Jerry Garcia's memorial service, the duo formed Dose Hermanos, a showcase for their improvisational keyboard work; since 1998, they have toured irregularly and released five albums.[17] In 2017, he performed with the Airplane Family & Friends with Live Dead & Riders '69, a band which focuses on the "San Francisco sound" similar to the Dead.[18]

Philosophy

In 2002, Tom Constanten stated in an interview:[2]

I know of no path that is better marked than the study of music. Maybe I just think so because it's the path I'm on. There's the old question "How come there's never enough time to do it right, but there's always enough time to do it over." Well, here's an answer. Settle down. Do it right. However long it takes. That's the direct route to the fast lane!

Personal life

Constanten currently[

heart attack.[19] On August 16, 2016, Constanten reported on Facebook that he was in the hospital with a broken neck, after slipping and falling on wet cement on August 10, while walking to the post office from his car in a heavy rain.[20]

Discography

Citations

  1. ^ Prendrergast, p. 242
  2. ^ a b Digital Interviews
  3. ^ Strickland, Minimalism: Origins, p. 185–186.
  4. ^ Budnick, Dean (December 22, 2023). "Tom Constanten: Dark Stars, Dead Bolts and Dose Hermanos". Relix Media. Archived from the original on December 22, 2023. Retrieved 2024-04-16.
  5. ^ a b "Constanten on Constanten". Grateful Dead Guide. July 7, 2010. Retrieved June 6, 2017.
  6. ^ McNally, p. 352
  7. ^ Jackson, p. 179
  8. ^ Brown, Toni (April 2016). "Rock Scully: Living with the Dead". ToniBrownBand.com. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved June 6, 2017.
  9. ISBN 978-1-250-03379-6
    . Retrieved June 6, 2017.
  10. ^ "tHrouGh The Looking Glass - Tom Constanten". Archived from the original on 2002-12-26.
  11. ^ "Grateful Dead Family Discography: Tarot".
  12. ^ "Log In · Digital Collections - University at Buffalo Libraries".
  13. ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-07-14. Retrieved 2014-12-26.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  14. ^ "Rock N Roll Hall of Famer". Tom Constanten. Retrieved 2014-08-20.
  15. ^ "Tom Constanten | Credits". AllMusic.
  16. ^ "Jazz is Dead to Reform with Tom Constanten". 9 June 2015.
  17. ^ "Bob Bralove and Tom Constanten: Dose Hermanos' Acoustic _Batique_". 19 May 2014.
  18. ^ [email protected], Benjamin Cassidy (October 25, 2017). "Past is very much present for Grateful Dead keyboardist Tom Constanten". The Berkshire Eagle. Archived from the original on April 16, 2024. Retrieved April 16, 2024.
  19. ^ "Walter Tunis: Former Grateful Dead keyboardist returns to region | Lexington Herald-Leader". Archived from the original on 2016-08-15.
  20. ^ //http://www.antimusic.com/news/16/August/17Grateful_Dead_Star_Breaks_His_Neck.shtml

General references

External links

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