Nobody Has Ever Loved Rhythm More Than the Grateful Dead’s Mickey Hart

No two Grateful Dead concerts are ever alike, but the point where they fully diverge from reality as we know it is often the same. Five songs into the second set, the band sets their instruments down and all non-rhythm section members — in its current iteration as Dead & Company, that includes longtime frontman and rhythm guitarist Bob Weir, lead guitarist and vocalist John Mayer, and keyboard wizard Jeff Chimenti — exit the stage. Electronic music loops begin to play as the band’s two drummers and bassist, collectively known as the Rhythm Devils, engage in an improvisational ritual featuring hundreds of different drums from around the world. The extensive drum interlude sees them devising a new beat from scratch, mirroring how our tribal ancestors created music in the first place.

'We Live in Time' to Make U.S. Premiere at HIFF 2024

Soon after, two more people exit the stage. The section of the show referred to as “Drums” on every setlist is over, and we’ve moved onto something that, for the past half century, has been described only as “Space.” All that remains is an 80-year-old man in long white gloves who hunches over an eight-foot aluminum rectangle with 13 bass strings on it. He rubs, strums, and wails on the one-of-a-kind instrument — lovingly referred to as The Beam throughout the band’s history — to create an ambient sequence of room-shaking vibrations that can be as life affirming or frightening as his heart desires. It’s the kind of avant-garde performance art that would normally be confined to half-empty black box theaters, but stadiums filled with Deadheads line up for it night after night.

The man with the beam is Mickey Hart, the percussionist who has held the role of drummer, sonic explorer, and chief mischief maker for the Grateful Dead and its many subsequent re-brandings since 1967. The band has always utilized two drummers, with one man holding down a beat to keep the band in time and Hart using his extensive knowledge of percussion to add texture to their sprawling jams.

Hart is an instantly recognizable pillar of the Grateful Dead and one of the last two original members still performing with Dead & Company, but his creative endeavors extend far beyond the legendary jam band. For years, he has quietly carved a niche for himself as perhaps America’s most prominent student of rhythm. He spends his time off between tours and residencies traveling to remote corners of the world to record undocumented methods of drumming from different cultures. He composed music for Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now,” and released an album for it called “The Apocalypse Now Sessions.” His 1991 book “Planet Drum: A Celebration of Percussion and Rhythm” spawned a Grammy-winning album and a separate percussion-only band that Hart continues to perform with as a side project. And he’s a prolific abstract painter who uses sound vibrations to splatter paint on canvases in order to visualize the curious patterns of the world’s rhythms.

Hart’s lifelong search for the beat is the centerpiece of the new ESPN documentary “Rhythm Masters: A Mickey Hart Experience,” which explores his multi-faceted career and the lasting impact of the Grateful Dead through the lens of sports. Originally conceived as a documentary about basketball legend and obsessive Deadhead Bill Walton, the film expanded into a meditation on the ethereal connection between rhythm and sports. Footage of Hart reflecting on his career and working in his recording studio is interspersed between interviews of athletes reflecting on their own relationships with music and rhythm, all of which is laid over an original score by Hart himself. It’s the kind of project that Hart is constantly seeking out in his lifelong quest to prove that his obsession with drumming has value that transcends the stage.

“Rhythm is everywhere. It’s everything,” Hart said over Zoom during a recent conversation with IndieWire. “The air you breathe is filled with rhythm. The trees, your life, everything that’s alive has a rhythm. You just have to be able to perceive it. So, is rhythm important? Well, it’s not only important, it’s essential. Vibration is one of the bases for life. So, vibration is rhythm. If you’re alive, got rhythm.”

While Hart is the star of the film, the shadow of Walton looms large over it. The former UCLA center and NBA All Star was a fixture at Grateful Dead concerts throughout his life, attending over 1000 of the band’s performances and frequently making cameos on stage during New Year’s Eve shows. Hart, who called Walton his “best friend” in an Instagram post after the NBA legend’s death in May, says that he began ruminating on the connection between sports and music after Walton pointed out to him that the swish of a basketball going through a net sounded like a stringed instrument. His life of philosophical conversations with Walton prompted him to team up with director Torey Champagne on a film exploring Walton’s legacy, which eventually turned into “Rhythm Masters.”

“Bill Walton was a unique person,” Hart said. “There’s nobody, there was nobody like Bill Walton. I mean, the man was so famous, but he would take the time to talk to anybody who would address him, and he would just take the moment and make everybody feel like they were important. A kind man, really sensitive. He was a big man, powerful man. But he was very kind and sensitive and caring about a lot of things. Very deep, very deep thinker.”

Hart turning his attention to sports is simply the latest extension of his lifelong devotion to finding the rhythm in every facet of our lives. Over the course of our conversation, his infectious enthusiasm made it clear that he sees rhythm not as a source of aesthetic pleasure, but as a vocation that might just help our warring cultures understand each other.

Fantastic Fest 2024 Lineup Includes 'Apartment 7A' and 'Terrifier 3' World Premieres

“Every culture has a music on this planet. That’s the one universal. Every culture has some music. I mean, that’s essential to the culture,” Hart said. “And you go into the desert, you go into Sudan or Egypt, or you go into the deep rainforests, or Bali, or Thailand, or even the Arctic Circle. All these cultures that I visited and recorded actually had their unique take on rhythm and it was universal. That was the one thing that you don’t sing the same melodies, you don’t sing the same harmonies, but one thing they share is the rhythm. You can pick up on it and you can pick up on their rhythm and together you can have a rhythmic moment with anybody that cares to engage in that kind of a dialogue. I haven’t found any culture that I couldn’t share the rhythm with.”

A recurring theme in the documentary is Hart’s ability to position himself squarely between the past and the future. He’s just as enthralled with new advancements in electronic music as primitive drumming techniques — and his latest gig required him to push himself to his limits in pursuit of blazing new sonic trails. Dead & Company recently completed a 30-show residency at Sphere Las Vegas, which allowed them to pair their trademark jam-filled shows with immersive visuals and a new suite of audio toys for Hart to play with.

“It was a challenge. And I like challenges,” Hart said. “Challenges are good. It keeps you on the edge. And at my age you need the edge in order to be happy in life and to move forward. ‘Onward’ was the only word that I thought of. When I play, that’s the thought, ‘onward.’”

Formed in 2015, Dead & Company now has the kind of impossible-to-fake chemistry that only forms when a band plays together for a decade. Hart says the group’s free-flowing ethos is only possible because of their extensive practice and technical skills — but he still takes pride in making up his Drums and Space sequences without a net as he goes along.

“You really prepare for it and then you have to let it all go and then you have to get loose because it’s improvisational,” he said. “My zone is improvising. That’s what I do. That’s my specialty. I am able to create on the spot, just jam as they say in the trade. And so you train, train, train, train, and then you have to just breathe deep and see what happens each night. So it in itself is a great adventure for not only them, the audience, but for me, as well. So I don’t really know what I’m going to do until I do it. And I keep it like that for a reason.”

Why does a man so fixated on new adventures keep returning to the same songbook? The enduring appeal of the Grateful Dead lies in its ability to exist on the fulcrum between newness and repetition. Every performance features a combination of brand new music being pulled out of the earth before the audience’s eyes and singalongs of songs they’ve heard a thousand times. When I asked him why he can’t seem to stop playing this music, Hart gave credit to the group’s longtime lyricist Robert Hunter. He explained that Hunter’s poetry, often paired with the melodies of Jerry Garcia and the musical contributions of the band as a whole, allowed the band to straddle the line between psychedelic exploration and traditional poetry and folk music to create something truly timeless.

“Robert Hunter, who wrote the words, he was a wordsmith. He wrote the magic words. There’s a few people in the world that could do that. Bob Dylan is one of them, and Robert Hunter is the other that can write songs that are so meaningful that it’s beyond words. He puts in words things that are beyond words and explains situations and moments in your life that are unexplainable,” Hart said. “So it kind of all came together in just a cascade of high energy, emotion, and brilliance on his part, for sure. I mean, the words, the songs are strong and they’ll last for a long, long, long time, and they’re not one of those we never had hits, we never had those kind of things that are here and then disappear. These songs are more emotional and you internalize them and they’re more meaningful than the hit-driven people, which sometimes are disposable. Other times there’s some music that lasts. The Grateful Dead was built to last, and that’s what I think that is taken away from the music.”

“Rhythm Masters: A Mickey Hart Experience” premieres tonight at 9pm E.T. on ESPN, after which it will stream on ESPN+. Watch the new trailer, an IndieWire exclusive, below .