Grateful Dead

So much more than a conventional improvisational rock ensemble, the Grateful Dead developed into a self-sustaining artistic and cultural phenomenon that operated strictly according to its own principles. Emerging from the psychedelic ferment of the San Francisco Bay Area during the mid-1960s, a period marked by both sonic and pharmacological experimentation, the group soon moved beyond its initial acid-rock orientation, weaving in strands of Americana and the Bakersfield sound on understated yet expansive records such as American Beauty, issued in 1970. Their concert performances stood apart from their recorded work, relying on open-ended, jazz-derived jamming that produced lengthy explorations and constantly shifting set lists so that no two appearances were ever identical. Although the band committed only thirteen studio albums to tape from 1967 through 1989, a vast countercultural community coalesced around their relentless road schedule, and they even achieved mainstream radio penetration with an improbable single during the MTV years. The Grateful Dead effectively concluded with the passing of frontman Jerry Garcia in 1995, yet their influence persisted undiminished; splinter projects kept the spirit alive for decades afterward, while the steady issuance of archival concert documents from more than two thousand shows continues to introduce fresh generations of Deadheads to the group’s distinctive sound, theatricality, and communal ethos.

The origins of the Grateful Dead trace back to singer and songwriter Jerry Garcia, a dedicated bluegrass aficionado who first picked up the guitar at fifteen. After settling in Palo Alto, California, in 1960, he formed a friendship with Robert Hunter, whose words would later supply lyrics for many of Garcia’s signature compositions; around the same time he also met the aspiring electronic-music composer Phil Lesh. By 1962 Garcia was performing on banjo with several regional folk and bluegrass groups, and two years later he assembled Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions alongside guitarist Bob Weir and keyboardist Ron “Pigpen” McKernan; in 1965 the ensemble became the Warlocks, its roster now completed by Lesh on bass and Bill Kreutzmann on drums.

That July the Warlocks made their first electric appearance; Ken Kesey promptly enlisted them as the house band for his celebrated Acid Tests, a sequence of infamous public LSD gatherings and multimedia events staged before the substance was outlawed. As 1965 came to a close, the Warlocks adopted the name the Grateful Dead, drawn from a folk tale Garcia encountered in a dictionary; underwritten by chemist and LSD producer Owsley Stanley, the musicians soon took up residence in a collective household at 710 Ashbury Street in San Francisco, where they became fixtures on the local scene and cultivated a sizable following through numerous free concerts. The group signed with MGM and cut their earliest demos in 1966, yet the sessions proved calamitous and the label quickly released them.

During the transition into the Summer of Love in 1967, the Dead emerged as one of the Bay Area’s leading attractions, refining a wide-ranging songbook shaped by folk, country, and blues while playing regularly at premier venues such as the Fillmore Auditorium, the Avalon Ballroom, and the Carousel. In March of that year they delivered their self-titled Warner Bros. debut album, a release that fell short of conveying the expansive, cosmic character of their live sets; after appearing at the Monterey Pop Festival, the lineup expanded to six members with the addition of second drummer Mickey Hart. Their next effort, 1968’s Anthem of the Sun, succeeded more fully in documenting the free-form improvisational spirit of their concerts, but after finishing 1969’s Aoxomoxoa the band’s appetite for protracted studio experimentation left them more than one hundred thousand dollars in debt to the label.

In response, the Dead yielded to fan demand and produced their first live album, Live/Dead, issued in 1969; anchored by a twenty-three-minute version of Garcia’s “Dark Star,” the record succeeded where earlier studio efforts had not in rendering the group’s full improvisational, psychedelically charged essence. It was followed by two landmark studio releases in 1970, Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty; recorded as tributes to the band’s country and folk heritage, both albums supplied the foundation of the Dead’s concert repertoire for years to come, their most enduring numbers—including “Uncle John’s Band,” “Casey Jones,” “Sugar Magnolia,” and “Truckin’”—becoming FM-radio staples.

Even as radio exposure increased and album sales remained solid, the Dead stayed primarily a live act, and as their renown spread globally they lengthened their touring calendar, remaining on the road for most of each year. While many psychedelic contemporaries from the same era disbanded, the group drew ever-larger crowds, a portion of whom traveled with them from city to city. Known as Deadheads, these devotees became recognizable for their tie-dyed attire and prodigious drug consumption, their itinerant scene ultimately rivaling the music itself as the central attraction of each concert. Performances were widely bootlegged, and the Dead closed their Warner Bros. tenure with consecutive live albums—a self-titled set in 1971 and Europe ’72 the following year.

The latter proved to be the last Dead album to feature Pigpen McKernan, whose heavy drinking led to fatal liver failure on March 8, 1973; his successor was keyboardist Keith Godchaux, who introduced his wife Donna Jean on backing vocals. Wake of the Flood, released in 1973, marked the first title on the newly formed Grateful Dead Records; around the time of its successor, 1974’s From the Mars Hotel, the band paused its touring schedule to let members explore solo work. After resuming live activity with a 1976 tour, the Dead moved to Arista for Terrapin Station, the first in a series of ill-conceived studio projects that ended with 1980’s Go to Heaven, widely viewed as the weakest entry in their discography—so much so that seven years passed before they returned to the studio.

The early 1980s brought considerable turbulence: the Godchauxs departed the lineup in 1979, and Keith died in an automobile accident on July 23, 1980. Keyboardist Brent Mydland took his place. Following a pair of live albums in 1981, Reckoning and Dead Set, the group issued no new recordings until 1987, concentrating instead on the road; despite the absence of fresh material, the Dead continued to sell out venues, attracting audiences that spanned multiple generations. Functioning as much like a self-contained enterprise as a band, they traveled with an extensive road crew and dozens of friends and relatives, many of them employed staff members who received health insurance and other benefits.

Nevertheless, the Dead were still perceived largely as a long-running cult act until the arrival of In the Dark in 1987; their first studio album since Go to Heaven, it became the year’s most unexpected commercial success when the single “Touch of Grey” became the first Dead song to reach the pop-chart Top Ten. Suddenly their videos received regular MTV airplay, and virtually overnight the ranks of Deadheads swelled dramatically as countless newcomers flocked to the shows. Concert tickets grew scarce even for longtime followers, and more troubling consequences emerged—the influx of new attendees altered the audience atmosphere, and once-relaxed crowds gained notoriety for both heavy drug use and violent clashes with police.

Additional difficulties beset the group: in July 1986, Garcia—fresh from a drug-treatment program the previous year—fell into a near-fatal diabetic coma triggered by ongoing substance issues, regaining awareness five days later. Health concerns lingered in subsequent years, yet the Dead toured more extensively than ever, including a series of dates with Bob Dylan that produced the live album Dylan & the Dead. Their final studio release, Built to Last, appeared in 1989. Tragedy struck again that October when a fan suffered a fatal neck injury outside a show at the New Jersey Meadowlands; two months later, a nineteen-year-old fan under the influence of LSD died while in police custody at the Los Angeles Forum.

As always, the Dead themselves were not spared personal loss—on July 26, 1990, Mydland died of a drug overdose, the third keyboardist in the band’s history to meet that fate; he was succeeded by ex-Tubes keyboardist Vince Welnick as well as satellite member Bruce Hornsby, a longtime admirer who joined the group on tour frequently. In autumn 1992 Garcia was hospitalized once more with diabetes and an enlarged heart, prompting the Dead to postpone their upcoming tour until year’s end; he eventually resumed performing in noticeably better condition. Few were surprised, however, when it was reported on August 9, 1995, that Garcia had been discovered dead in his room at a substance-abuse treatment center in Forest Knolls, California; the fifty-three-year-old’s passing was ruled a heart attack.

Although Garcia’s death marked the conclusion of the Dead as an ongoing creative force, their story continued. While the surviving members dispersed to consider future directions, the band’s merchandising operation accelerated—alongside Dick’s Picks, a series of archival live releases, licensed merchandise ranging from T-shirts to sporting goods to toys inundated the market. Plans were also announced for Terrapin Station, an interactive museum project. In 1996 Weir and Hart launched the first Furthur Festival, a summer tour spotlighting their respective groups RatDog and Mystery Box; in 1998 they reunited with Lesh and Hornsby for a tour under the name the Other Ones.

The Other Ones toured again in 2000, this time without Lesh but with Kreutzmann; all surviving Dead members reconvened for a 2002 performance, leading the collective to adopt the name “The Dead” for that tour and subsequent outings throughout the 2000s. As the decade wound down, the band split into separate camps, with Weir and Lesh forming Furthur while Hart and Kreutzmann focused on their long-running project the Rhythm Devils. The two factions remained apart until 2015, when they reunited for a pair of farewell concerts titled Fare Thee Well: Celebrating 50 Years of the Grateful Dead. Enlisting Phish’s Trey Anastasio to fill Garcia’s role and recalling keyboardists Bruce Hornsby and Jeff Chimenti, the group performed warm-up shows in Santa Clara, California, before a Fourth of July weekend finale at Chicago’s Soldier Field. The Chicago performances were issued as the live album Fare Thee Well in November, preceded by the exhaustive eighty-disc box set 30 Trips Around the Sun, an archival collection presenting one unreleased concert from each year of the band’s existence; a condensed four-disc edition containing one live recording from every year was also released.

By the time these live albums appeared in late 2015, Weir, Kreutzmann, and Hart had announced a tour called Dead & Company, featuring John Mayer in the Jerry Garcia slot, Oteil Burbridge of the Allman Brothers Band on bass, and RatDog’s Jeff Chimenti on keyboards. Dead & Company toured through the summer of 2016, and in 2017 the Grateful Dead issued several significant archival releases. First, the band’s 1967 debut received a double-disc expanded reissue for its fiftieth anniversary; then the celebrated May 8, 1977, concert at Cornell University’s Barton Hall—a performance already inducted into the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry in 2012—was given its first official release, both standalone and as part of Get Shown the Light, an eleven-disc box containing every show from May 1977. Also in 2017, the Dead became the subject of a four-hour Martin Scorsese-produced documentary titled Long Strange Trip.