Video Interview: Larry Gottlieb

Larry Gottlieb

Interviewed by Jan Garrett

December 2022

2025.016.0004

Jan Garrett [00:00:10] Hi everybody. My name is Jan Garrett, and I am delighted to be here today with my dear friend and fellow musician Larry Gottlieb. We’re going to be talking a lot about music in Aspen, but before we do that… and beyond… but before we do that, I’m going to read a short little bio. So if you don’t already know Larry, this is interesting stuff. It says, “Larry Gottlieb completed his undergraduate work in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1967 and his master’s degree in X-ray astronomy at the University of California, San Diego in 1969. After participating actively in the anti-Vietnam War movement in San Diego, he moved to Aspen, Colorado in 1970 and began a 20-year career in the music business.” So far, so good?

Larry Gottlieb [00:01:07] So far, so good.

Jan Garrett [00:01:09] Let me go on because this is really cool. “In 1972, he found himself inquiring into the nature of consciousness and its relationship to the world we live in. Two years later, he had a profound experience that forever altered his view of how consciousness and the physical world are related. Since then, he has endeavored to explain why the world shows up the way it does. He says that ‘in doing so, I have experienced within myself the power to determine the quality of my own life.'” Wow. We want to hear more about that for sure. So I don’t know, Larry, where to begin exactly. I mean, you’ve been involved in music in Aspen for a long time. So where should we begin?

Larry Gottlieb [00:02:03] Yeah. My music began in my mother’s womb. She was a violinist in Los Angeles. She was on many, many movie soundtracks from the ’50s and ’60s. And in 1967, she was… no, ’57… she was hired to teach and perform in the Aspen Music Festival, which is how we got here. And I was a little kid. I mean, I was 11 years old and that sounded like fun. And being in Aspen in the ’50s was awesome. I mean, it was a… there was one paved road in town and no stoplight that I recall. And it was, you know, it was just swimming and going to the soda fountain after swimming in the Jerome pool and, you know, a certain amount of camping and hiking and horseback riding and all that stuff. And so that was my introduction to Aspen, and I spent those 12 summers here with her. And then I moved to Aspen in 1970, as the bio says. And I moved to Aspen to start playing folk music, actually, with a friend of mine named Jack Hardy, who was a folk hero in the… back east, and to some degree in Aspen. And then I met you and Vic Garrett and John Sommers, and we put our first band together, and, gosh, it was wonderful.

Jan Garrett [00:03:37] It was wonderful. And that was the band called…?

Larry Gottlieb [00:03:39] That was Liberty. That was the first version of Liberty.

Jan Garrett [00:03:42] Yeah. And so what’s interesting to me… so your mother was a concert violinist and very famous all over the world, but did you have, like, formal musical education or what was that like?

Larry Gottlieb [00:03:54] Well, I took piano lessons and acoustic guitar lessons, but no, I wouldn’t call it formal. My grandfather, my mother’s father, was in the Buffalo Symphony, and he was a violinist. And he taught… he was mom’s first teacher. And there’s this thing about a lineage, you know, if the grandfather passes the talent and the impetus to study the way it has to be studied in order to play the violin at that scale, it was thought that maybe that lineage would pass on to me. Mom put a half size violin in my hands when I was like four and subsequently took it back and pronounced me off the hook. I’m not sure what she said, but I think the message was, “you don’t really have it.”

Jan Garrett [00:04:51] But you have something inherent. Right. Of course you grew up with that, so there’s always been music in you.

Larry Gottlieb [00:04:58] Yeah, and dad was a cellist. I mean, I’ve only mentioned mom, but dad was a cellist. And so I have, to some degree, genes, and also I have a really good ear, you know, and I can hear differences in pitch that… mom used to say, one of her students would play a chord, and she would say, “It’s a C, D and an F sharp, but the D is flat.

Jan Garrett [00:05:24] Oh.

Larry Gottlieb [00:05:24] You know, and, I mean, it was astonishing to me how she could do that. And she had perfect pitch. I don’t have that, but I have a really good relative ear.

Jan Garrett [00:05:33] You sure do. You sure do. And your first instrument, would you say that that was guitar?

Larry Gottlieb [00:05:39] No, it was piano.

Jan Garrett [00:05:39] Oh, piano. But then when you started playing folk music or that sort of thing, it was guitar?

Larry Gottlieb [00:05:46] Well, all during my high school time, I was listening to electric guitar. I was listening to surf music. I was listening to The Ventures, in particular. And I have always been the sort of musician that wanted to replicate the sound that I heard. So the first sound that I heard that I wanted to do that with was a Fender guitar, playing surf music with all this reverb and all that.

Jan Garrett [00:06:17] Yeah.

Larry Gottlieb [00:06:18] And I asked my parents if I could do that, if they… and my father was really a purist. And so he said essentially, no. And so I studied piano and later on I studied guitar with a Spanish guitarist in Los Angeles, but I never got that electric guitar until I graduated high school. I got one as a high school graduation gift. And then I went off to MIT, and I joined a fraternity, and there were a couple guys there, who I am still in close touch with, whom I dearly loved, and they had good voices. So when the latest Beatles record came out, I would go buy it, bring it back to the frat house, and we… and I would learn the chords and George Harrison’s guitar licks, and then I would teach Michael and Barry the harmonies or the vocal parts, and then we would perform for the fraternity.

Jan Garrett [00:07:18] Oh, I love that.

Larry Gottlieb [00:07:20] That was ’65 through ’67.

Jan Garrett [00:07:22] But did you sing yourself?

Larry Gottlieb [00:07:24] Yeah, I sang as a member of a vocal trio. I never sang lead, unaccompanied or otherwise.

Jan Garrett [00:07:32] Yeah.

Larry Gottlieb [00:07:33] I still don’t.

Jan Garrett [00:07:35] Well, that’s an incredible back story. To get to Aspen… again, because Larry and I and my former husband, Vic Garrett, started playing in this band we called Liberty. We were joined by John Sommers, and that’s when the four of us… first it was Jan and Vic, no Vic and Jan; then when Larry started playing, it was Vic and Jan and Larry; and then when John Sommers started sitting in, we thought, that’s a great sound, but Vic and Jan and Larry and John?

Larry Gottlieb [00:08:09] Cumbersome.

Jan Garrett [00:08:10] A cumbersome name. So how did we come up with the name Liberty, you remember?

Larry Gottlieb [00:08:14] It was an old fiddle tune, and John Sommers came to us with a wealth of fiddle tunes in his repertoire. And I think it came down to two. It came down to Liberty and Gold Rush. And there were these other folks in town, and they were watching us, and we chose Liberty, and they said, “Okay, we’ll take Gold Rush.”

Jan Garrett [00:08:37] I didn’t… well, there’s a bit of history, I didn’t know.

Larry Gottlieb [00:08:38] That’s my memory of it.

Jan Garrett [00:08:39] Wow. I’ll go with that. My memory is like a steel sieve, so only the important things stick out to me. One thing that I’m really interested in is that once, for example, Liberty started, and there were a lot of other great bands in town or people beginning to form great bands in town, starting, again, like at the beginning of the ’70s. And all through the ’70s, as we were playing music, I just felt like there was a sense of… there was something really special happening in Aspen with the music, but also kind of the family that we all were involved in, of other musicians. Right? Would you say that?

Larry Gottlieb [00:09:25] I would say that. And it was astonishing the wealth of talent that came through Aspen, musical talent that came through Aspen. And I started with the Aspen Music Festival because it started with classical, but also jazz, and there were jazz bands, and I remember some of that. And bluegrass and blues and later country… well, folk, as I mentioned before. So there were lots of these threads, and the people who came through were amazing. Some of them went on to be luminaries, you know: John Denver and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and the Eagles put together their first record in Aspen.

Jan Garrett [00:10:11] Wow.

Larry Gottlieb [00:10:12] It was a magical place.

Jan Garrett [00:10:13] It was a magical place and a magical time.

Larry Gottlieb [00:10:16] Indeed.

Jan Garrett [00:10:17] So I guess what I’m trying to get down to was, what was the sort of impetus behind that for you? Was it just the music? Was it something that inspired the music in the playing? Was… I mean, what was that?

Larry Gottlieb [00:10:35] I think it was just what we wanted to do, what we were called to do. I mean, I felt it as something that I couldn’t not do, you know? It was, I had whatever talent I had, I had whatever instruments I had, I could hold my own in a band. I knew that from playing rock and roll in college. And so it was just playing music with friends. And at the time, it wasn’t business. It wasn’t serious. It wasn’t important. It wasn’t going somewhere. It was just playing with friends. And as I recall, there was a whole lot of mixing and matching going on. It’s like, “Oh, we’re doing this gig over here. Can you join us?” “Sure!” And I referred to the Eagles putting together their first record in Aspen, And I remember John Sommers coming back to where we were playing with Bernie Leadon and saying, you know, “Bernie brought his banjo. He wants to play with us.” Great. I didn’t know who Bernie Leadon was.

Jan Garrett [00:11:42] Right.

Larry Gottlieb [00:11:43] You know, but we played bluegrass that night, and it was wonderful.

Jan Garrett [00:11:45] Well, what did Bernie Leadon go on to do?

Larry Gottlieb [00:11:47] He went on to do lots of things. Well, he was one of the original Eagles. And then he did the… was it the Burrito Brothers? Something like that? And for a short period of time. he was with the Dirt Band, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. And I don’t know what the rest of his…

Jan Garrett [00:12:05] That’s okay. I mean…

Larry Gottlieb [00:12:07] …what the rest of what he did was.

Jan Garrett [00:12:09] Yeah, but the idea kind of is that everybody was happy to sit in with everybody else and just… whatever the music called for, or that particular song would call for.

Larry Gottlieb [00:12:22] And I remember people saying, or discovering that, “Oh, these guys have a gig. These guys are playing, guys and gals, are playing over there. Let’s take a break and go listen to them.”

Jan Garrett [00:12:36] Exactly.

Larry Gottlieb [00:12:36] And they would show up on their break. And it was this wonderful, wonderful assemblage of free spirit talent, musical talent. Later on, it started to get serious, and it started to be, “Well, we could actually do something with this.” And it wasn’t so much fun for me anymore.

Jan Garrett [00:12:58] Aha! Would that be kind of by the time we were… because Liberty started playing… Well, Liberty was playing at a lot of places in town, including the Red Onion and the Blue Moose. And Jake’s Abbey, I think, maybe?

Larry Gottlieb [00:13:13] Yes. Jake’s Abbey was a subterranean club, and I remember very clearly, “Oh, let’s play Jake’s. Oh, we need a piano. Oh, how are we going to get the piano down those stairs into Jake’s Abbey?” I don’t remember what happened, but I remember that, standing on the sidewalk saying, “How are we going to get this piano down there?

Jan Garrett [00:13:38] And I don’t think we ever did, as a matter of fact.

Larry Gottlieb [00:13:39] I don’t remember.

Jan Garrett [00:13:40] So we had to rely more on our guitars and our bass and whatever else happened. Wow. And then John Denver showed up at one point and listened to our band and liked the band. And I think at that point, he invited us to come and do an opening act at something.

Larry Gottlieb [00:13:56] Well, first he invited us to New York to play on his “Farewell Andromeda” album. And John Sommers had written a song called “River of Love.” And I remember we were rehearsing at the Blue Moose, which was also downstairs, and we took a break, and I went up the stairs to the sidewalk to maybe go get a cup of coffee or something. And there was John. And this was a time where John… this was a time when John Denver could walk down the sidewalk, and everybody would leave him alone. And he said, “I heard you guys the other night, and who wrote that song?” And I said, “John Sommers.” He said, “I’d like to record that song.” I said, “Well, we’re all downstairs, come on down.” So I turned around and brought John down with me, and three days later, we were in New York recording the song. So it was magical, and you couldn’t… I mean, if you wrote this script, everybody would roll their eyes. But it just… stuff happened that you couldn’t predict.

Jan Garrett [00:15:03] Yeah. And going on with the John Denver theme, we did become opening act for a lot of his… places that he was playing with larger audiences, et cetera, going on into the sort of earlier ’70s… ’73…

Larry Gottlieb [00:15:20] ’73, ’74, ’75. We did a six-week nationwide tour with him, opening for him. I think the largest crowd we played for on that tour was like 22,000 people. And I remember, being on stage with the lights, you couldn’t see beyond the fourth or fifth row. And so you could sort of pretend that it was a small crowd until the applause happened, and then it kind of hits you in the chest, you know?

Jan Garrett [00:15:53] Yeah.

Larry Gottlieb [00:15:54] And I remember that real clearly.

Jan Garrett [00:15:59] But that was really fun. And we were taken care of. It was kind of first class.

Larry Gottlieb [00:16:03] It was.

Jan Garrett [00:16:04] You know, we got to fly from city to city on a very fancy private jet as I remember. And staying in pretty great hotels and stuff, right?

Larry Gottlieb [00:16:14] Yeah, it was first class.

Jan Garrett [00:16:16] It was first class. And it was like stardom or something like that. And I remember going, “Wow, man, this is great.” And, you know, we’d eat out at cool places and, you know, all that stuff. Not realizing, of course, no one was really the business part of our band, that everything that we did would then later be subtracted from the money they gave us up front.

Larry Gottlieb [00:16:42] Well, and I remember we went to visit with John before the tour, and he wanted to know, “Okay, how much is this going to cost me to have you guys?” which was a topic we had not discussed.

Jan Garrett [00:16:56] Right.

Larry Gottlieb [00:16:56] And so nobody said anything. And he said, “Okay, I’ll pay you $500 a show.”

Jan Garrett [00:17:02] For all of us?

Larry Gottlieb [00:17:03] Yeah.

Jan Garrett [00:17:04] Larry, I don’t remember this. It’s a good thing I don’t remember that. Okay.

Larry Gottlieb [00:17:08] That’s what he said. If we had talked about it in advance, I think it would have been a different number.

Jan Garrett [00:17:15] Right.

Larry Gottlieb [00:17:15] And we didn’t know. I mean…

Jan Garrett [00:17:17] The innocence.

Larry Gottlieb [00:17:18] The innocence.

Jan Garrett [00:17:19] The innocence.

Larry Gottlieb [00:17:20] And that was my point before. I mean, it was just fun. It was a time in our lives where we were just blessed to be able to do what we love to do with people that we love to do it with, and make some money at it. Make some money meaning: pay the rent, and eat, and all that stuff. My rent in downtown Aspen in 1972 or ’73 was $75 a month.

Jan Garrett [00:17:47] Wow. Well, that would be… and that, again, is something to pay attention to because that’s like, we could all feel free to play music and be with other people and have fun because we could afford to live here. And as time went on, and as more and more people discovered this beautiful paradise of Aspen, the rents went up, and there were fewer places to play because the clubs couldn’t afford… et cetera, et cetera. And then we went on from there. I mentioned… there was a place in your bio where you mentioned that there was… something happened that changed your consciousness. Now, I will mention that in that early part of the ’70s, some friends that we knew, in fact the band Goldrush, came through, and these guys had discovered an Indian teacher, a guru, and they had learned how to do certain meditation techniques. And at that point, like in probably 1972 or something, I thought that would be a great idea for me. And I ended up going through all the steps that I needed to go through so that I too could, you know, get those techniques or receive those techniques and the energy behind them from a long lineage of Indian masters actually. That’s what it was, because at that time, you couldn’t just waltz into a bookstore or a library and get a book about how to do meditation from a long line of masters of… you know. You couldn’t do that. So you really had to go, you know, to the source. I did that, and then I think I kind of turned you guys on.

Larry Gottlieb [00:19:38] I watched you do it.

Jan Garrett [00:19:39] Yeah.

Larry Gottlieb [00:19:39] And I thought, okay, this looks good. I’ll try that as well. And that was in 1973.

Jan Garrett [00:19:45] Wow. Okay. So you already had that inner connection going on?

Larry Gottlieb [00:19:53] Well, yeah. There was something about watching you, Jan, learn these techniques and then watching you day by day… and we saw each other every day in those days… and just watching how you progressed in your utilization of those techniques and what they did for you and how you were coming out of yourself, you know, and I wanted that as well. So I did that. I learned those techniques as well.

Jan Garrett [00:20:24] Yeah. And then you had sort of other experiences, you mentioned that in your bio, that let you know what?

Larry Gottlieb [00:20:35] That let me know that my understanding of how the world works and what a human being is was completely inadequate to explain my experience. I’ve written about that extensively. I don’t want to try to tell that whole story…

Jan Garrett [00:20:52] No, you don’t have to.

Larry Gottlieb [00:20:55] …but that story is in both the books that I’ve already published.

Jan Garrett [00:20:58] Can you tell me the names of the books?

Larry Gottlieb [00:21:00] Well, the first one is called “The Seer’s Explanation,” and the second one is called “Hoodwinked.” And hoodwinked refers to my discovery or the awareness that settled in in me that we, growing up in our culture, bought into a whole bunch of stuff that isn’t real. And when you’re walking around trying to deal with something that isn’t real, it sort of conjures, you know, Don Quixote tilting at windmills. It’s like, it’s not very effective. It doesn’t really get you where you’re trying to go. So I think we’ve all been hoodwinked in that respect.

Jan Garrett [00:21:43] May I just stop you there? Did your training as a physicist help at all with this or…?

Larry Gottlieb [00:21:51] It did. And I’m writing about that and have written about that rather extensively. You know, in earning those degrees in physics that you read about in the bio, I took courses in quantum mechanics, which is the bedrock of what every physics student learns. And it was really interesting to me, but after a while, it didn’t evoke enough juice or passion in me to continue. Decades later, when I started to have experience that showed me that the world isn’t what it looks like, you can’t understand the world by reducing it to its smallest component parts, because when you get down to that scale, the whole thing just kind of turns into an energy soup that… It’s like, well, how do we get objects out of that, you know? So, and then I started reading about quantum mechanics because it seemed like that would be relevant. And as I did that years, decades after I earned those degrees, it was like, “Oh, I see. I see how these two things relate. I see how that discipline of quantum physics and what I’ve experienced and what I am experiencing in meditation and in trying to answer my question of how does this all work anyway?” They started to fit together beautifully, and I thought, “Oh, okay, I see why I left the physics back all that distance in the past” because I had to have some experience, personal experience, in order to assimilate all that.

Jan Garrett [00:23:43] Wow. Right. And as… well, this is my experience. Songwriting especially, but even playing music, to get to that point where when you’re in the thick of singing, playing, performing, and there’s an audience out there, there’s a sense of, I would say, just a camaraderie, an energy exchange that happens. And that’s my experience, knowing that and finding out how to get into that place where… the way I would say it for myself is that, it’s not like I’m up on stage kind of showing off. It’s like, how can I be an instrument for what I know is this universal energy, this kind of consciousness? However you’d say that. That incredible, the essential invisible heart of all creation, you know, how can I let that come through?

Larry Gottlieb [00:24:42] I’ve heard you talk about that for decades, and what comes up for me when I hear you do that is, yes, and you have to discover how to get out of the way for that to happen.

Jan Garrett [00:24:53] Exactly.

Larry Gottlieb [00:24:53] And I observed you, have observed you, over all these years, getting out of the way in a profound manner that I’m still working on.

Jan Garrett [00:25:05] Oh, wow.

Larry Gottlieb [00:25:06] I’m still working on getting out of the way. I still get up on stage to play with people, and I have to work at getting out of the way. Somehow, as soon as I get up there and get tuned up and all that, I find myself in a place that could be labeled like, this is somehow about me and whether I’m up to this, and whether I can do this, and whether I deserve to be here. And all of that noise is right in front of me, and I have to spend some time getting that out of the way so that I can be the instrument that you just mentioned. And I’ve always admired you for just being able to get up there and do that, whereas I feel like I have to work at it.

Jan Garrett [00:25:56] I think it takes a lot of practice. And I think for anybody who is a musician, or aspires to be a musician or a performer of any kind, even a speaker or a teacher, I suppose, it takes a lot of practice.

Larry Gottlieb [00:26:09] It does.

Jan Garrett [00:26:10] And time.

Larry Gottlieb [00:26:12] And courage and willingness to fall flat on your face, which occurs sometimes when you lose your train of thought or you forget the words or…

Jan Garrett [00:26:21] Yeah.

Larry Gottlieb [00:26:22] …start the song in the wrong key, or… I’ve done all of that.

Jan Garrett [00:26:25] And that has happened.

Larry Gottlieb [00:26:26] Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It has to be, you have to get to where that’s okay.

Jan Garrett [00:26:31] Exactly. So all this time that Larry and I have been talking, we’re trying to get to the center, the core, or… what I’ll just say is, Larry, what else do you have to say?

Larry Gottlieb [00:26:43] Well, I want people to feel, and hopefully you all feel, the love that we share. And also in our recounting of those days in the ’70s, first of all, I appreciate the opportunity to get back in touch with that feeling of doing what you love to do, unencumbered by society’s rules and strictures about what you’re supposed to, how you’re supposed to do it and where you’re supposed to do it, and what you’re supposed to be doing it for, and how much you’re supposed to be getting paid and all that. I mean, all of that is part of life. It’s all… there’s nothing wrong with that. But there’s also this thing about how it feels to get together with people that you love and do what you all love to do. And that’s an opportunity that we were given back then that, for me, once in a while it comes back, but it’s certainly not with the focus and the length of time that we were blessed to enjoy that back in the ’70s.

Jan Garrett [00:27:54] Right. And would you say that when you’re in that place… I mean, people talk a lot about athletes or artists or musicians getting in the zone. Would you say that that’s what you’re talking about?

Larry Gottlieb [00:28:06] Yeah. And I think getting in the zone involves getting out of the way. You don’t have to go anywhere to get in the zone. You just have to be who you are and allow all that noise that I was talking about before to subside. And there are many techniques for doing that, you know. I don’t know that I sit down at my pedal steel on stage and meditate “per se,’ with quotes around the word, but somehow you have to bring yourself back to the center. You have to bring yourself back to knowing that, “Hey, this is it. This is me. This is what I got.” Warts and all, as they say. And here you go. And I find that when I do that, it doesn’t even matter if I make mistakes or start songs in the wrong key or something like that, because the audience is allowed to relax and enjoy what they’re doing as well. And that’s why they came there.

Jan Garrett [00:29:08] That’s great. That’s great. I love that. So would you say, yeah, when you’re in that zone place, you don’t have to think about what you look like or… because again, you’re getting out of the way and something’s coming through in the moment.

Larry Gottlieb [00:29:22] Yes. And let me add one thing. The instrument that I play, the pedal steel guitar, is a very complex machine. If I think about it, I’m toast. If I think about, “Alright, how do I lower that string or how do I raise this one to change the chord?”, the song’s over already.

Jan Garrett [00:29:43] Oh, wow.

Larry Gottlieb [00:29:44] You know, you have to be in the moment to play that instrument. You can’t have all that stuff going on and pay attention to it. It can sort of nibble back here, but it has to stay back there.

Jan Garrett [00:29:57] But you would have to have practiced in advance.

Larry Gottlieb [00:30:00] Yeah, well, the last 50 years have accomplished that, you know. At least to some degree.

Jan Garrett [00:30:05] Yeah.

Larry Gottlieb [00:30:06] Yeah.

Jan Garrett [00:30:06] It’s practicing the instrument. And if the instrument is this {indicates her body/self}, it’s practicing that as well.

Larry Gottlieb [00:30:12] Sure. Yeah. You have to gain a certain level of competence in transferring what you hear within yourself into what your hands and your voice and all that do. But at some point, you have to let all that go and just be in the moment and do what you do.

Jan Garrett [00:30:31] Right, right. So for me, I will just say, as we end this particular segment, to just invite all of you guys and give you a sense of hope, encouragement to find that. What is it that you really love? You know, some people might say, like if you’re doing a vision quest, they might say, “What is it that you came here to do?” It doesn’t have to be just one thing, but what’s the direction of that? What is it that you get passionate about? What it is that feels easy, that feels generous to do? Maybe? And then do that?

Larry Gottlieb [00:31:07] And you deserve to do that. You don’t have to earn the right to do that. You don’t have to know the right people in order to do that. You deserve to do it just by virtue of who you are.

Jan Garrett [00:31:19] Oh, what a relief. So thank you. Thank you, Larry.

Larry Gottlieb [00:31:24] Thanks, everybody.

Jan Garrett [00:31:24] Thanks, all you guys. Stay in touch.