Ron “Pigpen” McKernan
Gijsbert Hanekroot/RedfernsRon “Pigpen” McKernan at the Tivoli Concert Hall in Copenhagen, Denmark. April 1972.
Ron McKernan — better known as “Pigpen” — was born on Sept. 8, 1945, in San Bruno, California. His father was one of the first white rhythm and blues disc jockeys, and so McKernan grew up amidst black music and culture, which would influence him later on. He also honed his biker image, taught himself piano, harmonica, and guitar, and fatefully met Jerry Garcia when he was 14 years old.
McKernan joined Garcia in forming The Grateful Dead in 1965 and played an integral part of the original lineup. In fact, he had the most musical knowledge of anyone in the group, according to Garcia. Likewise, band manager Rock Scully described McKernan as the man who kept the band on track:
“Onstage, Pigpen is the anchor. When things get truly bizarre, they can always look at Pig and know he is straight. Might have had a few drinks, but he is ground base. He is seeing things as they really are.”
Gijsbert Hanekroot/RedfernsRon “Pigpen” McKernan of The Grateful Dead at the Tivoli in Copenhagen, Denmark. April 1972.
As Scully suggested, McKernan was never into the psychedelic drugs that the rest of the band indulged in so freely. That said, he was a heavy drinker who’d started when he was only 12 years old — but alcohol wasn’t what brought him into the 27 Club. It was primary biliary cholangitis, a rare autoimmune disease that ate away at him through the last three years of his life.
McKernan had forced his girlfriend to leave him, telling her: “I don’t want you around when I die.” With no one by his side, he laid on the floor, dead, for two days before his landlady stumbled upon his body on March 8, 1973.
“After Pigpen’s death,” Jerry Garcia said during his funeral, “we all knew this was the end of the original Grateful Dead.”
