Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) is a man of many talents. Franken, who was reelected to the United States Senate in 2014, joined the initial writing staff at Saturday Night Live in 1975 along with his childhood friend Tom Davis, with whom he appeared as part of the comedy team Franken and Davis. Franken went on to write and star in the SNL spinoff film Stuart Saves His Family, and, after leaving the show, penned books such as Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, and served as a talk-show host on the Air America network. Throughout all of this, Franken has maintained his identity as a public Deadhead, including a notable appearance during the group’s 1980 Halloween simulcast event, which included a number of skits (including a “Help Jerry’s Kids” sketch in which Garcia offered “a special prize to the person who donates the most money”—the finger chopped off years earlier by his brother).

You’ve been a Deadhead since long before the group had much mainstream acceptance. What has it been like to watch that develop?

Well, it’s kind of amused me at times because there are people who just don’t know the music, and for some reason didn’t know that they were listening to the Dead when they liked something. [Laughs.] On my radio show, I used Garcia’s solos to play in and out of commercials. Then in 2008, I was doing a fundraiser in Minneapolis for a congressman and, as I was about to go into this house, this woman intercepted me and said: “You know, before your radio show, I thought the Grateful Dead were hard rock, but they’re not. They’re country, blues, rock and jazz. And now I listen to SiriusXM’s Grateful Dead station all the time.” I said, “Yeah, me too,” and then she goes, “And all I can think is, I missed Jerry.” She was forlorn because she realized that Jerry had been around for thousands of shows and she never went to one. It is striking that it has been 20 years since he passed. I found out that Jerry had died from my daughter who was at camp. She was about 14 years old, and I remember her going to this camp and really liking it because she liked to do glass blowing, and where she would be doing the glass blowing, they were playing the Dead. So she called me pretty early that morning and said, “Dad, is it true?” And I said, “What?” She replied, “That Jerry died?” I went, “Oh, no…” That’s when I learned about it—I learned about it from her.

She had gone to a number of concerts with me. I remember one at Giants Stadium, and we were backstage. They finished the show, and she went up to Jerry and Phil, I think, and said, “Could you guys do ‘Box of Rain’ for the encore?” [Laughs.] And they said, “OK.” They hadn’t been playing it very often, and as soon as they started it, the stadium went nuts. At the time, I think my daughter was 11 or 12, and she had that sense of power like, “I just said…” [Laughs.] But I’ll never forget that because she was so delighted about what had happened and so were 70,000 other people.

The members of the Grateful Dead rarely exhibited their sense of humor in a public setting, which is why I marvel at the sequences that you and Tom developed for the Halloween 1980 simulcast. Was it a challenge to get them to participate?

Everyone was completely game. The thing that I am kind of proudest of is that opening. It was just one camera going from us knocking on Jerry’s [dressing room] door, and there’s Jerry and Phil. I have a big, greasy spare rib in my hand, and then I hand it to Jerry, pick up his guitar and drop it. [Laughs.] We ask them to introduce us, but they won’t. Then we go to Bobby’s door and he has the hair dryer blowing. Then we go to the drummers, and finally, Brent. [The keyboardist introduces them by saying, “Sorry to have to do this… I don’t really know these guys and I don’t think they’re very funny… Anyhow, ladies and gentlemen: Frank and Dave”]. It was a dream come true for us because we were just Deadheads, just like everyone else. We were just two Deadheads who were able to do this.

They had done SNL, and that’s where we met them. We had been trying to get Lorne [Michaels] to book them, and I think Lorne was one of the people that didn’t give them street cred until he interviewed Jerry. He went out to California and did this special on The Beach Boys one year during our summer hiatus on SNL. They interviewed Jerry, who was incredibly articulate, funny and great, and Lorne went: “Oh… I get it,” and then he booked them.

What are your memories of your first show?

After I graduated from college, I drove out to LA from Boston with Tom. He started playing them in the car, and instantly, I became a fan. Then we went to go see them at an outdoor concert in Santa Barbara, California [5/25/74, Campus Stadium, UCSB]. I remember seeing four in a row at Winterland [October 1974]. They were unbelievable shows and I was hooked. It was also a great place for me to think. I did a lot of thinking. [Laughs.]

To what extent did you apply the lessons of the Grateful Dead, or your experiences seeing the Grateful Dead, to any of your campaigns?

I wish there would be that kind of vibe for a campaign. [Laughs.] That’s really hard to capture. Our team does try to treat people right and serve in an egalitarian way, which I think they did.

How would you describe the legacy of the Grateful Dead?

There are all different kind of legacies, but to me, the music is the legacy I keep going back to. I listen, and when I listen, it allows me to go anywhere in my thoughts. It also makes me a little melancholy because I wish Jerry was around, but to me, the legacy is the music. And that’s why I [attended Fare Thee Well] on July 4th weekend.