Bob Weir has removed his shoes and assumed the lotus position, on a couch near the bar at Manhattan’s SoHo Grand Hotel. His eyes drill into me as he answers my questions. “Come Together” by the Beatles is on the P.A. system, and I realize that, as far as rock legends are concerned, Weir, a founding member of the Grateful Dead, is one of the very few who could be considered in the same league.

He’s promoting The Other One: The Long, Strange Trip of Bob Weir, a rock-doc biography debuting later that night at the Tribeca Film Festival. The title works on two levels. It incorporates the name of Weir’s signature tune, first recorded on the Dead’s second album, Anthem of the Sun (though archivists may point to the tasty 40-minute jam from September 17, 1972, at the Baltimore Civic Center.) But it’s also a sly comment on Weir’s position to the uninitiated. He was definitely the second-in-command of the Grateful Dead to the bearded, nine-fingered lead guitarist, Jerry Garcia. If Garcia, dead almost 19 years, is the John Lennon, then Weir, very much “the cute one,” is the Paul McCartney.

The Other One is directed by Mike Fleiss, the successful producer of The Bachelor who told me he “doesn’t care if this movie makes a cent.” It’s a labor of love for a decades-long Deadhead, who, recognizing a fellow fan, itches to tell me that he was at the July 13, 1984, show—the night the band brought “Dark Star” back from a three-year hiatus. (Despite the thousands of Dead shows in the books, certain dates are frequently cited as killer shows; no one can disprove if someone says they were there, man.) He says Weir agreed to do the film so he wouldn’t have to write an autobiography.

His film is a cut above the usual slapdash bio-doc. For starters, he had the dough to do it right—recording 60 hours of interview footage with Weir, as well as accruing commentary from some unlikely sources. For every Mike Gordon of Phish, there’s a Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth or Jerry Harrison from Talking Heads. Once you get past the stank of patchouli, body odor, and cannabis, there actually is a great deal of complexity and creativity in the Grateful Dead’s music. Weir’s rich guitar playing—far more variegated than a typical rhythm instrumentalist—and his hard-rockin’ vocals are as key as Garcia’s countrified singing or liquid guitar leads. He continues to tour nonstop with his own groups and occasional reunions with former bandmates.

Below is a condensed version of my conversation with the 66-year-old singer-guitarist who joined the Grateful Dead at age 16, and is now a movie star.

VF Hollywood: In the film, you talk very openly about, in your early years, the use of drugs on the scene: Acid Tests, Ken Kesey, and how it was influential on the band in the beginning. Do you take psychedelics, still, once in a while?

Not much. Every now and again. I haven’t done it so much recently, but over the last decade, for instance, if one of the bands I’m hangin’ with, and all the guys want to take mushrooms. I’m not going to . . . you know, I’ll go there. But not a whole lot.

Have you tried Molly?

[Makes a face]

O.K., so mushrooms and psilocybin are different from the–

The chemical builds are . . . [makes a sour face] Listen, LSD was real informative to me. After a while it. . . stopped being real informative to me. There are people who maintain that I close myself off to what it has to offer…