Outlaw Life

Jerry, on the Hell's Angels, in an 1981 Musician interview:

MUSICIAN: Can you talk about your relationship with the  Hell's
Angels? I played in a band backed by them in Berkeley  and it was,
uh...an ambivalent experience.
GARCIA: Well, that's it. It is ambivalent. I've always liked them 
because they don't hide what they are, and I think all they require of
you is honesty - they just require that you don't  bullshit them - and 
if you're out front with them, I think you  don't have anything to worry
about.
 The Angels are very conscious of their roots and history, so  the
fact that we played at Chocolate George's funeral way back during
the Haight-Ashbury was really significant to them. They didn't have
many friends in those days, and so anybody who would come out for
one of their members was demon strating true friendship. And with
them, that really counts for  something.
MUSICIAN: What do you feel attracted Kesey to them in the first
place? The noble savage concept?
GARCIA: No, I think Ken saw them for what they are: a definite
force of their own which you can't hope to control. When they
come around, it's reality, and you go with it.
MUSICIAN: What about Altamont?
GARCIA: Horrible.
MUSICIAN: It sure was. But having been in the Bay area at the time, I
can understand how you might have thought it a good idea to
recommend them as security people.
GARCIA: We didn't recommend them!!
MUSICIAN: I thought the Stones people said you suggested it?
GARCIA: Absolutely not!  No, we would never do that. The Angels
were planning on being there, and I guess the Stones crew thought
this might be a good way to deal with that fact.

The Who

Garcia, in an 1981 Musician interview:

I think the Who are one of the few truly 
important architects of rock 'n' roll. Pete Townshend may be 
one of rock 'n' roll's rare authentic geniuses. And there's also
the fact that they're among our few surviving contemporaries. . . 
I'm just really glad they exist. 

Pete Townsend and the GD "Not Fade Away" 3/28/81 in Essen, Germany
Jerry and Bobby doing windmills a la Townsend during "Truckin,'"4/12/78 Cameron Indoor (Duke University).
5/31/92 in Vegas, Bobby and Steve Miller doing windmills during Baba O'Riley. The GD played Baba O'Riley 12 times (sung by Vince), mainly in the Spring and Summer of '92 (first: 5/19/93; last: 11/29/94). With the exception of 11/29/94, it was always an Encore song, played into Tomorrow Never Knows (a Beatles song).

Hamza el Din and the Nubian Desert Trip

From a 1981 Musician article, Addendum #1:

"It's so great to meet someone who could be so damn strong and yet not
exude even a trace of evil, meaness, or  fear." A few years ago, Hart
accompanied Hamza on a journey  up the Nile to visit his ancestral
village in the Nubian Desert.  "The first thing those Nubian drummers
taught me was that Bo Diddley didn't invent that beat," said Mickey.
Not speaking Arabic, Hart utilized the universal language of music to 
exchange ideas and converse with the Sudanese, who were 
impressed with his dexterity. "Hamza had taught me to play the tar,
a single-membraned African drum, and his people were really blown
out by the rhythmic exercises I'd worked  up." The Nubians would
often hold the same rhythmic groove for hours, with different
sections of the ensemble coming forward to improvise over the
basic pattern. But when Hart's turn to solo came up he met with an
unexpected reaction from his hosts. "My polyrhythms startled them
at first. I asked  Hamza why they were staring at me, and he
explained that when they heard the off beat and polyrhythms they
felt I was forcing the drum. They feel the drums should tell you what
to  do, and not vice versa, which they see as artificial. They say, 
'Excite the drum and it will tell you what to play'," reflects Hart: 
"It's a great concept, and I've found it works if you approach the
instrument with the right attitude."

Airto Moreira

In a 1981 Musician interview, Hart talks about Airto:

"Airto gave me this Brazilian stringed instrument called the berimbau. He gave me a
quick lesson in how to play it, and I took it home to practice on.
Well, I wound up just staring into the fire  and playing this thing for
weeks. It just took over; I wouldn't accept phone calls or anything,"
laughs Hart. "Three weeks later I called up Airto and asked him what
the hell was going on!" and he explained that in Brazil the berimbau
was used to induce an altered state of consciousness for practicing
the  martial arts." Hart pauses. "The weird thing is that I've been
into the martial arts for years, but had let it go for a while, and 
then got back into it when I started playing the berimbau . . . And 
there was Airto talking about how this jungle instrument could take
you without you even knowing it!"

Francis Ford Coppola and Apocalypse Now

From Musician article in 1981, Addendum #1:

along with with bassist Phil Lesh, Airto, Flora Purim and others, accepted a
commission from Francis Ford Coppola to compose the score for Apocalypse Now: The Rhythm Devils Play River Music. 

Hart's marching orders from Coppola were short and to the point: "All
Francis said was 'you know what I want¿you know how to make
magic.  Do it!"' recalled  Hart. "I watched the film constantly. I had it
on video cassette in my kitchen, in my bedroom, and in the studio. It
played  continuously for three months." Their task was complicated 
by the fact that the battle sound effects Coppola brought back from
the Phillipines sounded unconvincing. In the end they were asked to
find a way of simulating the cacophony of war in the studio. "Try
reproducing the sounds of a napalm attack using wooden instruments
and bells;" suggests Hart wryly.  "The artillery sounded like cheap
firecrackers, so we had to reinforce that, too, with steel drums I
had built, and other  percussive devices. We had over fifteen hours of
material!"

John Coltrane

In a 1981 Musican magazine interview with Jerry, Jerry says:

I never sat down and stole ideas from him; it was more his sense of flow that

I learned from. That and the way his personality was always right there, the

presence of the man just comes stomping out of those records. It's not

something I would've been able to learn through any analytical approach,

it was one of those things I just had to flash on.

In a 1981 interview for BAM! magazine with David Gans and Blair Jackson (as found in Gans' book Conversations with the Dead, p. 65-66), Jerry elaborates Coltrane's influence:

I've been influenced a lot by Coltrane, but I never copied his licks or sat down, listened to records and tried to play his stuff. I've been impressed with that thing of flow, and of making statements that to my ears sound like paragraph--he'll play along stylistically with a certain kind of tone, in a certain kind of syntax, for X amounts of time, then he'll like change the subject, then play along with this other personality coming out, which really impresses me. It's like attitude's changing. But it changes in a holistic way, where the tone of his axe and everything changes.

Perceptually, an idea that's been very important to me in playing has been the whole "odyssey" idea--journeys, voyages, you know? And adventures along the way. That whole idea has been really important to me...

 I can't remember where I read it, but Jerry once said his favorite Coltrane album was The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings. Here is "Impressions (A)."

According to an interview with Reverb Music, Coltrane was a big influence of Bobby's, age 19:

The John Coltrane record that had ‘Tunji’ on it, ‘Coltrane,’ had me hugely enamored with his rhythm section –- Elvin Jones and Jimmy Garrison –- and the way they worked together. It was great the way they played off McCoy Tyner. Whereas a lot of guitarists cite other guitarists as primary influences, I listened to a lot of McCoy Tyner and what he had to say. It was Phil (Lesh) who turned me onto Coltrane.

McCoy Tyner was a huge influence on Bobby.

Django Reinhardt

In an 1981 interview with Musician:

[GARCIA]...You can actually hear him
shift mood...  
MUSICIAN: The humor in his solo on "Somewhere Beyond  the Sea" is
amazing...
GARCIA: Anger, too. You can hear him get mad and play some nasty,
mean little thing. It's incredible how clearly his personality comes
through. It's one of those things I've always been impressed with in
music. There's no way to steal that, but it's something you can model
your playing on. Not in the sense of copying someone else's
personality, but in the hopes that maybe I could learn how to let my
own personality come through.