High Notes

A music agent's coast-to-coast cultural coming of age from the 1960s to the 1980s when rock music was a movement. Hosting Liberace in a summer tent theater, bailing Jim Morrison out of jail, working with the Jefferson Airplane, managing Jerry Garcia and masterminding the Grateful Dead's legendary concert at the foot of the pyramids in 1978 are only a few of Loren's often surreal, rite-of-passage experiences in the music business .

High Notes is a collection of fun stories. Seen through the eyes of an agent, a manager, a fan and a friend, these stories are the varied, true experiences of one man’s coming of age in the music business from 1966 to 1981. Rock ‘n’ Roll icons of the 60s and 70s who inspired a generation were the author’s personal mentors, business partners, and friends. His experiences offer music and pop-culture lovers a reflective insider’s perspective on these amazing artists in one of the most compelling periods of American history. From his tumultuous days on the road with Jim Morrison, to brunch with the Kennedys, to managing Jerry Garcia, to coked-out days with the Grateful Dead, run-ins with the Hells Angels and juke joints along the Mississippi, agent/manager Richard Loren recalls his journey through the turbulent era of rock’s ascendency. His humorous and heartfelt anecdotes illuminate music history and provide telling insights into some of the most notable entertainment personalities of the late Twentieth Century. High Notes offers a broad look at the cultural era and focuses not on the glamour of the music industry but on its more human and vulnerable side as experienced, at first, by a twenty-one year old who adored music and was just getting his first taste of celebrity, big business and the countercultural movement. Eminently readable and authentic, readers will find this insider’s account fascinating and satisfying. High Notes is a collection of fun stories. Seen through the eyes of an agent, a manager, a fan and a friend, these stories are the varied, true experiences of one man’s coming of age in the music business from 1966 to 1981.

Richard Loren began his professional life in the music business in 1966, as a music agent for the Agency for the Performing Arts (APA) in New York. He found and promoted new talent and represented a wide variety of musical artists and headline bands, notably—Jefferson Airplane, The Doors, the Chambers Brothers, and Tim Buckley. In 1970, he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and became Jerry Garcia’s personal manager. He managed the Garcia Bands and worked with the Grateful Dead from 1974 to 1981, first as their agent and then their manager. While working for the Dead, he initiated several industry firsts—simulcasting live shows to select theaters nationwide, orchestrating a series of concerts at the great pyramids in Egypt on a stage in front of the Sphinx, and booking the Grateful Dead into Radio City Music Hall in New York—for a series of eight sold-out shows—commemorating the Grateful Dead’s fifteenth anniversary and giving the band the distinction of being the first rock ‘n’ roll band to play at the historic venue. He has produced numerous large-scale special events nationally and internationally, contributed to, and edited, Ken Kesey ‘s Spit in the Ocean: The Pyramid Issue, A Search for the Secret Pyramid, Produced The Grateful Dead: Dead Ahead, filmed at Radio City Music Hall in New York, Co-executive Produced The Grateful Dead Movie, Executive Produced the CD/DVD Grateful Dead: Rocking the Cradle Egypt 1978, and directed “The Vacation Tapes” segment of the DVD.