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This article is about the rock band. For the folktale, see Grateful dead (folklore).
Grateful Dead | |
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Grateful Dead in 1970. Left to right: Bill Kreutzmann, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, Phil Lesh.
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Background information | |
Origin | Palo Alto, California, United States |
Genres | Rock |
Years active | 1965–1995 |
Labels | Warner Bros., Grateful Dead, Arista, Rhino |
Associated acts | The Other Ones, The Dead, Furthur, Jerry Garcia Band, RatDog, Phil Lesh and Friends, 7 Walkers, Rhythm Devils, Donna Jean Godchaux Band, Missing Man Formation, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Old and in the Way, Legion of Mary, Reconstruction, Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band, Kingfish, Bobby and the Midnites, BK3, Heart of Gold Band, The Tubes, Bruce Hornsby and the Range |
Website | dead.net |
Past members | Jerry Garcia Bob Weir Phil Lesh Bill Kreutzmann Ron "Pigpen" McKernan Robert Hunter Mickey Hart Tom Constanten Keith Godchaux Donna Jean Godchaux Brent Mydland Vince Welnick Bruce Hornsby |
Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in Palo Alto, California.[1][2] The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock,[3][4] and for live performances of long musical improvisation.[5][6] "Their music," writes Lenny Kaye, "touches on ground that most other groups don't even know exists."[7] These various influences were distilled into a diverse and psychedelic whole that made the Grateful Dead "the pioneering Godfathers of the jam band world".[8] They were ranked 57th in the issue The Greatest Artists of all Time by Rolling Stone magazine.[9] They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994[10]
and their Barton Hall Concert at Cornell University (May 8, 1977) was
added to the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry.[11] The Grateful Dead has sold more than 35 million albums worldwide.
The Grateful Dead was founded in the San Francisco Bay Area amid the rise of counterculture of the 1960s.[12][13][14] The founding members of the Grateful Dead were Jerry Garcia (guitar, vocals), Bob Weir (guitar, vocals), Ron "Pigpen" McKernan (keyboards, harmonica, vocals), Phil Lesh (bass, vocals), and Bill Kreutzmann (drums).[15]
Members of the Grateful Dead had played together in various San
Francisco bands, including Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions and the
Warlocks. Lesh was the last member to join the Warlocks before they
became the Grateful Dead; he replaced Dana Morgan Jr., who had played
bass for a few gigs. With the exception of McKernan, who died in 1973,
the core of the band stayed together for its entire 30-year history.[16] Other longtime members of the band include Mickey Hart (drums 1967–1971, 1974–1995), Keith Godchaux (keyboards 1971–1979), Donna Godchaux (vocals 1972–1979), Brent Mydland (keyboards 1979–1990), and Vince Welnick (keyboards 1990–1995).
The fans of the Grateful Dead, some of whom followed the band from concert to concert for years, are known as "Deadheads" and are known for their dedication to the band's music.[5][6] The band and its following (Deadheads) are closely associated with the hippie
movement and were seen as a form of institution in the culture of
America for many years. Former members of the Grateful Dead, along with
other musicians, toured as The Dead in 2003, 2004, and 2009 after touring as The Other Ones in 1998, 2000, and 2002. There are many contemporary incarnations of the Dead, with the most prominent touring acts being Furthur and Phil Lesh & Friends.
Formation (1965–1966)
Phil Lesh and Jerry Garcia were brought together by Gert Chiarito in 1964 to perform on The Midnight Special, her Saturday night radio program on KPFA, Berkeley.[17]
The Grateful Dead began their career as the Warlocks, a group formed in early 1965 from the remnants of a Palo Alto, California jug band called Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions.[18] The band's first show was at Magoo's Pizza located at 639 Santa Cruz Avenue in suburban Menlo Park, California on May 5, 1965. They were known as the Warlocks although at the same time the Velvet Underground was also using that name on the east coast.[19][20]
The show was not recorded and not even the set list has been preserved.
The band quickly changed its name after finding out that another band
of the same name had signed a recording contract (not the Velvet
Underground who by then had also changed their name). The first show
under the new name Grateful Dead was in San Jose, California on December 4, 1965, at one of Ken Kesey's Acid Tests.[21][22][23] Earlier demo tapes have survived, but the first of over 2,000 concerts known to have been recorded by the band's fans was a show at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco on January 8, 1966.[24] Later that month, the Grateful Dead played at the Trips Festival, an early psychedelic rock show.
The name "Grateful Dead" was chosen from a dictionary. According to
Phil Lesh, in his autobiography (pp. 62), "... [Jerry Garcia] picked up
an old Britannica
World Language Dictionary...[and]...In that silvery elf-voice he said
to me, 'Hey, man, how about the Grateful Dead?'" The definition there
was "the soul of a dead person, or his angel, showing gratitude to
someone who, as an act of charity, arranged their burial." According to
Alan Trist, director of the Grateful Dead's music publisher company Ice Nine, Garcia found the name in the Funk & Wagnalls Folklore Dictionary, when his finger landed on that phrase while playing a game of Fictionary.[25] In the Garcia biography, Captain Trips, author Sandy Troy states that the band was smoking the psychedelic DMT at the time.[26] The term "grateful dead"
appears in folktales of a variety of cultures. In mid-1969, Phil Lesh
told another version of the story to Carol Maw, a young Texan visiting
with the band in Marin County who also ended up going on the road with
them to the Fillmore East and Woodstock.
In this version, Phil said, "Jerry found the name spontaneously when he
picked up a dictionary and the pages fell open. The words 'grateful'
and 'dead' appeared straight opposite each other across the crack
between the pages in unrelated text."
Other supporting personnel who signed on early included Rock Scully, who heard of the band from Kesey and signed on as manager after meeting them at the Big Beat Acid Test; Stewart Brand,
"with his side show of taped music and slides of Indian life, a
multimedia presentation" at the Big Beat and then, expanded, at the
Trips Festival; and Owsley Stanley, the "Acid King" whose LSD supplied the tests and who, in early 1966, became the band's financial backer, renting them a house on the fringes of Watts
and buying them sound equipment. "We were living solely off of Owsley's
good graces at that time.... [His] trip was he wanted to design
equipment for us, and we were going to have to be in sort of a lab
situation for him to do it," said Garcia.[26]
Main career (1967–1995)

The Mantra-Rock Dance promotional poster featuring the Grateful Dead
One of the group's earliest major performances in 1967 was the Mantra-Rock Dance—a musical event held on January 29, 1967, at the Avalon Ballroom by the San Francisco Hare Krishna temple. The Grateful Dead performed at the event along with the Hare Krishna founder Bhaktivedanta Swami, poet Allen Ginsberg, bands Moby Grape and Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, donating proceeds to the Krishna temple.[27][28] The band's first LP, The Grateful Dead, was released on Warner Brothers in 1967.
Classically trained trumpeter Phil Lesh played bass guitar. Bob Weir, the youngest original member of the group, played rhythm guitar. Ron "Pigpen" McKernan played keyboards and harmonica
until shortly before his death in 1973 at the age of 27. Garcia, Weir
and McKernan shared the lead vocal duties more or less equally; Lesh
only sang a few leads but his tenor was a key part of the band's
three-part vocal harmonies. Bill Kreutzmann played drums, and in September 1967 was joined by a second drummer, New York native Mickey Hart, who also played a wide variety of other percussion instruments.
1970 included tour dates in New Orleans, Louisiana, where the band performed at The Warehouse for two nights. On January 31, 1970, the local police raided their hotel on Bourbon Street, and arrested and charged a total of 19 people with possession of various drugs.[29]
The second night's concert was performed as scheduled after bail was
posted. Eventually the charges were dismissed, with the exception of
those against sound engineer Owsley Stanley,
who was already facing charges in California for manufacturing LSD.
This event was later memorialized in the lyrics of the song "Truckin'", a single from American Beauty which reached number 64 on the charts.
Mickey Hart quit the Grateful Dead in February 1971, leaving
Kreutzmann once again as the sole percussionist. Hart rejoined the
Grateful Dead for good in October 1974. Tom "TC" Constanten was added as a second keyboardist from 1968 to 1970, while Pigpen also played various percussion instruments and sang.
After Constanten's departure, Pigpen reclaimed his position as sole
organist. Less than two years later, in late 1971, Pigpen was joined by
another keyboardist, Keith Godchaux, who played grand piano alongside Pigpen's Hammond B-3 organ. In early 1972, Keith's wife, Donna Jean Godchaux, joined the Grateful Dead as a backing vocalist.
Following the Grateful Dead's "Europe '72"
tour, Pigpen's health had deteriorated to the point that he could no
longer tour with the band. His final concert appearance was June 17,
1972 at the Hollywood Bowl, in Los Angeles;[30] he died in March, 1973 of complications from alcohol abuse.[31]
The death of Pigpen did not slow the band down, and they continued
with their new members. They soon formed their own record group,
Grateful Dead Records.[32] Later that year, they released their next studio album, the jazz influenced Wake of the Flood. It became their biggest commercial success thus far.[33] Meanwhile, capitalizing on Flood’s success, the band soon went back to the studio, and the next year, 1974, released another album, Grateful Dead from the Mars Hotel. Not long after that album’s release however, the Grateful Dead decided to take a hiatus from live touring.
In September of 1975 the Dead released their eighth studio album,
Blues for Allah. Their hiatus was short-lived, though, as they resumed
touring in June of 1976.[32] That same year, they re-signed with Arista Records. Their new contract soon produced Terrapin Station
in 1977. Although things appeared to be going well for the band,
problems were arising with their two newest members, Keith and Donna
Jean Godchaux. While touring during the late 1970s the band began to use
freebase cocaine.[34]
Donna frequently had excessive vocal issues while performing live, and
Keith was becoming dependent on hard drugs. Both of those issues were
causing complications with the band’s touring, and they agreed to leave
the band in February 1979.

Grateful Dead performing at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in 1987: Jerry Garcia (guitar), Mickey Hart (drums).
Following the departure of the Godchauxs, Brent Mydland joined as keyboardist and vocalist and was considered "the perfect fit". The Godchauxs then formed the Heart of Gold Band
before Keith Godchaux died in a car accident in 1980. Mydland was the
keyboardist for the Grateful Dead for 11 years until his death by
narcotics overdose in July 1990,[35] becoming the third keyboardist to die.
During the 1980s the band transformed as the talents of Mydland
helped power the group. Shortly after Mydland found his place in the
early 1980s, Garcia's health began to decline. His drug habits caused
him to lose his liveliness on stage. After kicking his drug habit in
1985, Garcia slipped into a diabetic coma for several days in July 1986.
After he recovered, the band released In the Dark in 1987, which resulted as their best selling studio album release, and also produced their only top-10 chart single, "Touch of Grey". Also that year, the group toured with Bob Dylan, as documented on the album Dylan & the Dead.
Inspired by Garcia's improved health and a successful album, the
band's energy and chemistry peaked in the late 1980s and 1990.
Performances were vigorous and as a result, every show exceeded its
maximum audience capacity. The band's "high time" came to a sudden halt
when Mydland died after the summer tour in 1990. The band now had to
rebuild. Both Vince Welnick, former keyboardist for The Tubes, and Bruce Hornsby,
who had a successful career with his own band The Range, joined the
band on keyboards and vocals. Welnick joined as a proper member of the
band and stayed with the band until Garcia's death, but he was never a
member of The Other Ones or The Dead. He did, however, play in early incarnations of Ratdog with Bob Weir. Welnick died on June 2, 2006, reportedly a suicide.[36] Hornsby was a member until March 24, 1992, and has participated in various post-Grateful dead projects, notably The Other Ones.
Aftermath (1995 to the present)
Following Garcia's death in August 1995, the remaining members
formally decided to disband. Since that time however, there have been a
number of reunions by the surviving members involving various combinations of musicians.
In 1998, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, and Mickey Hart, along with several other musicians, formed a band called The Other Ones. The Other Ones performed a number of concerts that year, and released a live album, The Strange Remain,
the following year. In 2000, The Other Ones toured again, this time
with Bill Kreutzmann but without Lesh. After taking another year off,
the band was active again in 2002. With Lesh's return for this go-round,
The Other Ones then included all four former Grateful Dead members who
had been in the band for most or all of its history.
In 2003, The Other Ones changed their name to The Dead. The Dead toured the country in 2003 and 2004. In 2008, members of The Dead played two concerts, called "Deadheads for Obama" and "Change Rocks". In 2009 The Dead performed on a spring tour, and were at the Rothbury Music Festival on July 4, 2009.
Following the 2009 summer reunion tour bandmates Lesh and Weir formed the band Furthur which debuted in September 2009.[37] Joining Lesh and Weir in Furthur are Jeff Chimenti (keyboard), John Kadlecik (guitar), Joe Russo (drums), Sunshine Becker (vocalist), and Jeff Pehrson (vocalist).
In 2010, Hart and Kreutzmann re-formed the Rhythm Devils, and played a summer concert tour.
Since 1995, the former members of the Grateful Dead have also pursued solo musical careers. Bob Weir & RatDog have performed many concerts and released several albums, as have Phil Lesh and Friends.
Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann have each led several different bands
and have also released some albums. Recently Mickey Hart has been
working with his Mickey Hart Band and Kreutzmann has been touring with BK3, and with 7 Walkers, a band he formed with Papa Mali. Donna Godchaux has returned to the music scene, with the Donna Jean Godchaux Band, and Tom Constanten also continues to write and perform music. All of these groups continue to play Grateful Dead music.
Musical style
The Grateful Dead formed during the era when bands such as The Beatles, The Beach Boys and The Rolling Stones
were dominating the airwaves. "The Beatles were why we turned from a
jug band into a rock 'n' roll band," said Bob Weir. "What we saw them
doing was impossibly attractive." Former folk-scene star Bob Dylan
had recently put out a couple of records featuring electric
instrumentation. "I couldn't think of anything else more worth doing,"
Garcia said.[38] Grateful Dead members have said that it was after attending a concert by the touring New York City band The Lovin' Spoonful
that they decided to "go electric" and look for a dirtier sound.
Gradually, many of the East-Coast American folk musicians, formerly
luminaries of the coffee-house scene, were moving in the electric
direction.[citation needed] It was natural for Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir, each of whom had been immersed in the American folk music revival of the late 1950s and early 1960s, to be open-minded toward electric guitars. Their first LP (The Grateful Dead, Warner Brothers, 1967), was released in the same year that Pink Floyd released The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
The Grateful Dead's early music (in the mid-1960s) was part of the process of establishing what "psychedelic music"
was, but theirs was essentially a "street party" form of it. They
developed their "psychedelic" playing as a result of meeting Ken Kesey in Palo Alto, California and subsequently becoming the house band for the Acid Tests he staged.[39]
The Dead were not inclined to fit their music to an established
category such as pop rock, blues, folk rock, or country/western.
Individual tunes within their repertoire could be identified under one
of these stylistic labels, but overall their music drew on all of these
genres and, more frequently, melding several of them. It was doubtless
with this in mind that Bill Graham said of the Grateful Dead, "They're not the best at what they do, they're the only ones that do what they do."[40] Often (both in performance and on recording) the Dead left room for exploratory, spacey soundscapes.
Their live shows, fed by their improvisational approach to music,
made the Grateful Dead different from most other touring bands. While
most rock and roll bands rehearse a standard show for their tours that
is replayed night after night, city after city, the Grateful Dead never
did. As Garcia stated in a 1966 interview, "We don't make up our sets
beforehand. We'd rather work off the tops of our heads than off a piece
of paper."[41]
They maintained this operating ethic throughout their existence. For
each performance, the band drew material from an active list of a
hundred or so songs.[41]
The 1969 live album Live/Dead did capture more of their essence, but commercial success did not come until Workingman's Dead and American Beauty,
both released in 1970. These records largely featured the band's
laid-back acoustic musicianship and more traditional song structures.
As the band and its sound matured over thirty years of touring,
playing, and recording, each member's stylistic contribution became more
defined, consistent, and identifiable. Lesh, who was originally a
classically-trained trumpet player with an extensive background in music
theory, did not tend to play traditional blues-based bass forms, but
opted for more melodic, symphonic and complex lines, often sounding like
a second lead guitar. Weir, too, was not a traditional rhythm
guitarist, but tended to play jazz-influenced, unique inversions at the
upper end of the Dead's sound. The two drummers, Mickey Hart
and Kreutzmann, developed a unique, complex interplay, balancing
Kreutzmann's steady beat with Hart's interest in percussion styles
outside the rock tradition. Hart incorporated an 11-count measure to his
drumming, bringing a new dimension to the band's sound that became an
important part of its emerging style.[42] Garcia's lead lines were fluid, supple and spare, owing a great deal of their character to his training in fingerpicking and banjo.
The band's primary lyricists, Robert Hunter and John Perry Barlow,
commonly used themes involving love and loss, life and death, gambling
and murder, beauty and horror, chaos and order, God and other religious
themes, travelling and touring, etc. Less frequent ideas include the
environment and issues from the world of politics.[citation needed]
Merchandising and representation
Hal Kant
was an entertainment industry attorney who specialized in representing
musical groups. He spent 35 years as principal lawyer and general
counsel for the Grateful Dead, a position in the group that was so
strong that his business cards with the band identified his role as
"Czar".[43]
Kant brought the band millions of dollars in revenue through his management of the band's intellectual property
and merchandising rights. At Kant's recommendation, the group was one
of the few rock 'n roll pioneers to retain ownership of their music
masters and publishing rights.
In 2006, the Grateful Dead signed a ten-year licensing agreement with Rhino Entertainment.
Rhino is managing the Dead's business interests, including the release
of musical recordings, merchandising, and marketing. In 2011 Rhino and
Grateful Dead Productions began working with Curious Sense to develop an
online and mobile social game built on the band's legacy.[44] The band retains creative control and keeps ownership of the music catalog.[45][46]
Live performances
The Grateful Dead toured constantly throughout their career, playing more than 2,300 concerts.[47] They promoted a sense of community among their fans, who became known as Deadheads,
many of whom followed their tours for months or years on end. In their
early career, the band also dedicated their time and talents to their
community, the Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco, making available
free food, lodging, music and health care to all comers; they were the
"first among equals in giving unselfishly of themselves to hippie
culture, performing 'more free concerts than any band in the history of
music'.[48]
With the exception of 1975, when the band was on hiatus and played
only four concerts together, the Grateful Dead performed many concerts
every year, from their formation in April, 1965, until July 9, 1995.[49] Initially all their shows were in California, principally in the San Francisco Bay Area and in or near Los Angeles. They also performed, in 1965 and 1966, with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, as the house band for the Acid Tests. They toured nationally starting in June 1967 (their first foray to New York), with a few detours to Canada, Europe and three nights at the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt in 1978. They appeared at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, and at the Woodstock Festival in 1969. Their first UK performance was at the Hollywood Music Festival in 1970. Their largest concert audience came in 1973 when they played, along with The Allman Brothers Band and The Band, before an estimated 600,000 people at the Summer Jam at Watkins Glen.[50] The 1998 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records recognized them with a listing under the heading, "most rock concerts performed" (2,318 concerts).[51]
They played to an estimated total of 25 million people, more than any
other band, with audiences of up to 80,000 attending a single show.[51]
Many of these concerts were preserved in the band's tape vault, and
several dozen have since been released on CD and as downloads. The Dead
were known for the tremendous variation in their setlists from night to
night—the list of songs documented to have been played by the band
exceeds 500.[52]
Their numerous studio albums were generally collections of new songs
that they had first played in concert. The band was also famous for its
extended musical jams, which featured both individual improvisations as
well as distinctive "group-mind" improvisations during which each of the
band members improvised individually while simultaneously blending
together as a cohesive musical unit. Musically, this may be illustrated
in that the band not only improvised within the form of songs, but also
with the form. The Grateful Dead have often been described as having
never played the same song the same way twice. The cohesive listening
abilities of each band member made for a transcendence of what might be
called "free form" and improvisation. Their concert sets often blended
songs, one into the next (a segue).
Concert sound systems
The Wall of Sound was an enormous sound system designed specifically for the Grateful Dead.[53][54]
The band was never satisfied with the house system anywhere they
played. After the Monterey Pop Festival, the band's crew 'borrowed' some
of the other performers' sound equipment and used it to host some free
shows in San Francisco.[55] In their early days, soundman Owsley "Bear" Stanley designed a public address (PA) and monitor system for them. Bear was the Grateful Dead's soundman for many years; he was also one of the largest suppliers of LSD.[56]
Stanley's sound systems were delicate and finicky, and frequently
brought shows to a halt with technical breakdowns. After Stanley went to
jail for manufacturing LSD in 1970, the group briefly used house PAs,
but found them to be even less reliable than those built by their former
soundman. In 1971, the band purchased their first solid-state sound system from Alembic Inc
Studios. Because of this, Alembic would play an integral role in the
research, development, and production of the Wall of Sound. The band
also welcomed Dan Healy into the fold on a permanent basis that year. Healy would mix the Grateful Dead's live sound until 1993.
Tapes
Like several other bands during this time, the Grateful Dead allowed their fans to record their shows. For many years the tapers
set up their microphones wherever they could. The eventual forest of
microphones became a problem for the official sound crew. Eventually
this was solved by having a dedicated taping section located behind the
soundboard, which required a special "tapers" ticket. The band allowed
sharing of tapes of their shows, as long as no profits were made on the
sale of their show tapes.[57]
Sometimes the sound crew would allow the tapers to connect directly to
the soundboard, which created exceptional concert recordings. Recently,
there have been some disputes over which recordings archive.org
could host on their site. Currently, all recordings are hosted, though
soundboard recordings are not available for download, but rather in a
streaming format.[58] Of the approximately 2,350 shows the Grateful Dead played, almost 2,200 were taped, and most of these are available online.[59]
Concert set lists from a subset of 1,590 Grateful Dead shows were used
to perform a comparative analysis between how songs were played in
concert and how they are listened online by Last.fm members.[60] In their book Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn From the Most Iconic Band in History,[61] David Meerman Scott and Brian Halligan identify the taper section as a crucial idea in increasing the Grateful Dead's fan base.
Artwork

Owsley "Bear" Stanley wrote that the "dancing bears" designed by Bob Thomas for History of the Grateful Dead, Volume One (Bear's Choice) are marching, not dancing.[62]
Over the years, a number of iconic images have come to be associated
with the Grateful Dead. Many of these images originated as artwork for
concert posters or album covers.
- Steal Your Face skull
- Perhaps the best-known Grateful Dead art icon is a red, white, and blue skull with a lightning bolt through it. The lightning bolt skull can be found on the cover of the album Steal Your Face, and the image is sometimes known by that name. It was designed by Owsley Stanley and artist Bob Thomas, and was originally used as a logo to mark the band's equipment.[63]
- Dancing bears
- A series of stylized marching bears was drawn by Bob Thomas as part of the back cover for the album History of the Grateful Dead, Volume One (Bear's Choice). Thomas reported that he based the bears on a lead sort from an unknown font.[64] The bear is a reference to Owsley "Bear" Stanley, who recorded and produced the album. Bear himself wrote, "the bears on the album cover are not really 'dancing'. I don't know why people think they are; their positions are quite obviously those of a high-stepping march."[62]
- Skull and roses
- The skull and roses design was composed by Alton Kelley and Stanley Mouse, who added lettering and color, respectively, to a black and white drawing by Edmund Joseph Sullivan. Sullivan's drawing was an illustration for a 1913 edition of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Earlier antecedents include the custom of exhibiting the relic skulls of Christian martyrs decorated with roses on their feast days. The rose is an attribute of Saint Valentine who according to one legend was martyred by decapitation. Accordingly, in Rome, at the church dedicated to him, the observance of his feast day included the display of his skull surrounded by roses.[65] This was discontinued in the late 1960s when Valentine was removed from the Roman Catholic canon along with other legendary saints whose lives and deeds could not be confirmed. Kelley and Mouse's design originally appeared on a poster for the September 16 and 17, 1966 Dead shows at the Avalon Ballroom.[66] Later it was used as the cover for the album Grateful Dead. The album is sometimes referred to as Skull and Roses (or Bertha).[67]
- Dancing terrapins
- The two dancing terrapins first appeared on the cover of the 1977 album Terrapin Station, which was drawn by Kelley and Mouse, but based on a drawing by Heinrich Kley. Since then these turtles have become one of the Grateful Dead's most recognizable logos.
- Uncle Sam skeleton
- The Uncle Sam skeleton was devised by Gary Gutierrez as part of the animation for The Grateful Dead Movie.[68] The image combines the Grateful Dead skeleton motif with the character of Uncle Sam, a reference to the then-recently written song "U.S. Blues", which the Dead are seen performing near the beginning of the film.
- Jester
- Another icon of the Dead is a skeleton dressed as a jester and holding a lute. This image was an airbrush painting done by Stanley Mouse in 1972. It was originally used for the cover of The Grateful Dead Songbook.[69][70]
Deadheads
Main article: Deadhead
Fans and enthusiasts of the band are commonly referred to as Dead Heads. While the origin of the term may be unclear, Dead Heads were made canon by the notice placed inside the Skull and Roses album by manager Jon McIntire:
"DEAD FREAKS UNITE
Who are you? Where are you?
How are you?
send us your name and address
and we'll keep you informed
Dead Heads
PO Box 1065, San Rafael, California 94901."
Who are you? Where are you?
How are you?
send us your name and address
and we'll keep you informed
Dead Heads
PO Box 1065, San Rafael, California 94901."
Many of the Dead Heads would go on tour with the band. As a group,
the Dead Heads were considered very mellow. "I'd rather work nine
Grateful Dead concerts than one Oregon football game," Police Det. Rick
Raynor said. "They don't get belligerent like they do at the games."[71]
Donation of archives
On April 24, 2008, members Bob Weir and Mickey Hart, along with Nion McEvoy, CEO of Chronicle Books, UC Santa Cruz chancellor George Blumenthal, and UC Santa Cruz librarian Virginia Steel, held a press conference announcing that UCSC's McHenry Library
would be the permanent home of the Grateful Dead's complete archival
history from 1965 up to the present. The archive includes
correspondence, photographs, fliers, posters, and several other forms of
memorabilia and records of the band. Also included are unreleased
videos of interviews and TV appearances that will be installed for
visitors to view, as well as stage backdrops and other props from the
band's concerts.
Blumenthal stated at the event, "The Grateful Dead Archive[72]
represents one of the most significant popular cultural collections of
the 20th century; UC Santa Cruz is honored to receive this invaluable
gift. The Grateful Dead and UC Santa Cruz are both highly innovative
institutions—born the same year—that continue to make a major, positive
impact on the world." Guitarist Bob Weir stated, "We looked around, and
UC Santa Cruz seems the best possible home. If you ever wrote the
Grateful Dead a letter, you'll probably find it there!"
Professor of music Fredric Lieberman
was the key contact between the band and the university, who let the
university know about the search for a home for the archive, and who had
collaborated with Mickey Hart on three books in the past, Planet Drum (1990), Drumming at the Edge of Magic (1991), and Spirit into Sound (2006).[73][74][75]
The first large-scale exhibition of materials from the Grateful Dead Archive was mounted at the New-York Historical Society in 2010.
Membership
Lead guitarist Jerry Garcia
was often seen both by the public and the media as the leader or
primary spokesperson for the Grateful Dead, but was reluctant to be
perceived that way, especially since he and the other group members saw
themselves as equal participants and contributors to their collective musical and creative output.[76][77] Garcia, a native of San Francisco, grew up in the Excelsior District. One of his main influences was bluegrass music, and Garcia also performed—on banjo, one of his other great instrumental loves, along with the pedal steel guitar—in bluegrass bands, notably Old and in the Way with mandolinist David Grisman.
Bruce Hornsby
never officially joined the band, because of his other commitments, but
he did play keyboards at most Dead shows between September 1990 and
March 1992, and sat in with the band over one hundred times in all
between 1988 and 1995.[78][79]
Robert Hunter and John Perry Barlow were the band's primary lyricists. Twelve members of The Grateful Dead (the eleven official performing members plus Robert Hunter) were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, and Bruce Hornsby was their presenter.[6]
Band lineups
Main article: List of Grateful Dead band members
(June 1965 – September 1967) |
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(September 1967 – November 1968) |
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(November 1968 – January 1970) |
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(January 1970 – February 1971) |
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(February 1971 – October 1971) |
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(October 1971 – March 1972) |
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(March 1972 – June 1972) |
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(June 1972 – October 1974) |
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(October 1974 – February 1979) |
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(April 1979 – July 1990) |
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(September 1990 – March 1992) |
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(May 1992 – August 1995) |
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Timeline

Awards
In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked the Grateful Dead No. 57 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.[81]
On February 10, 2007, the Grateful Dead received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. The award was accepted on behalf of the band by Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann.[82]
It was announced on May 23, 2011, that the Dead's Barton Hall Concert
at Cornell University (May 8, 1977) would be preserved in the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry.
Discography
Main article: Grateful Dead discography
- The Grateful Dead (1967)
- Anthem of the Sun (1968)
- Aoxomoxoa (1969)
- Live/Dead (1969)
- Workingman's Dead (1970)
- American Beauty (1970)
- Grateful Dead (1971)
- Europe '72 (1972)
- History of the Grateful Dead, Volume One (Bear's Choice) (1973)
- Wake of the Flood (1973)
- From the Mars Hotel (1974)
- Blues for Allah (1975)
- Steal Your Face (1976)
- Terrapin Station (1977)
- Shakedown Street (1978)
- Go to Heaven (1980)
- Reckoning (1981)
- Dead Set (1981)
- In the Dark (1987)
- Dylan & the Dead (1989)
- Built to Last (1989)
- Without a Net (1990)
Video game
A Grateful Dead video game titled Grateful Dead Game – The Epic Tour,[83] was released in April 2012 and was created by Curious Sense.[84]
See also
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References
- Meriwether, Nicholas G. (2012). Reading the Grateful Dead: A Critical Survey. Scarecrow Press. p. 280. ISBN 0-8108-8371-6.
- Metzger, John (1999). "Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions". The Music Box. The Music Box, Inc. Retrieved August 21, 2012.
- "purveyors of freely improvised space music"—Blender Magazine, May 2003
- ""Dark Star," both in its title and in its structure (designed to incorporate improvisational exploration), is the perfect example of the kind of "space music" that the Dead are famous for. Oswald's titular pun "Grayfolded" adds the concept of folding to the idea of space, and rightly so when considering the way he uses sampling to fold the Dead's musical evolution in on itself." -- Islands of Order, Part 2,by Randolph Jordan, in Offscreen Journal, edited by Donato Totaro, Ph.D, film studies lecturer at Concordia University since 1990.
- Santoro, Gene (2007). "Grateful Dead". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. Retrieved February 4, 2007.
- "Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum – Grateful Dead detail" (asp). Inductees. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Inc. Archived from the original on November 23, 2006. Retrieved January 16, 2007.
- Kaye, Lenny (1970). "The Grateful Dead – Live/Dead". Rolling Stone. Retrieved October 18, 2010.
- Garofalo, pg. 219
- "The Greatest Artists of all Time". Rolling Stone.
- "The Grateful Dead: inducted in 1994". The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. Retrieved April 9, 2012.
- "New Entries to the National Recording Registry". Library of Congress. Retrieved July 25, 2013.
- "The Grateful Dead Biography". rockhall.com. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. Retrieved 2014-05-07.
- Robin Sylvan (2002). Traces of the Spirit: The Religious Dimensions of Popular Music. NYU Press. pp. 86–. ISBN 978-0-8147-9809-6.
- Barnes, Luke (2013-06-26). "UC Santa Cruz's Grateful Dead archive offers a reason to visit the campus this summer". santacruzsentinel.com. The Santa Cruz Sentinel. Retrieved 2014-05-07.
- Rolling Stone, pg. 332
- Garofalo, pg. 218
- "Thank you, Grateful Dead and John Meyer . . . I'm eternally grateful!". Thankyouoneandall.co.uk. Retrieved July 16, 2011.
- Metzger, John. Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions album review, The Music Box, May 1999.
- "Magoo's Pizza Parlor – May 5, 1965 | Grateful Dead". Dead.net. Retrieved July 16, 2011.
- Tony Bove. "Rockument's Rise and Fall of the Haight-Ashbury". Rockument.com. Retrieved February 27, 2007.
- "Big Nig's House – December 4, 1965 | Grateful Dead". Dead.net. Retrieved July 16, 2011.
- Stanton, Scott (2003). The Tombstone Tourist. Simon and Schuster. p. 102. ISBN 0-7434-6330-7.
- Herbst, Peter (1989). The Rolling Stone Interviews: 1967-1980. St. Martin's Press. p. 186. ISBN 0-312-03486-5.
- "Grateful Dead Live at Fillmore Auditorium on 1966-01-08 : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive". Archive.org. Retrieved July 16, 2011.
- Weiner, Robert G. (1999). Perspectives on the Grateful Dead: Critical Writings By Robert G. Weiner. Greenwood Publishing. p. 145. ISBN 0-313-30569-2.
- Troy, Sandy, Captain Trips: A Biography of Jerry Garcia (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1994). DMT, p. 73; Acid King p. 70; Watts+ p. 85.
- Bromley, David G.; Shinn, Larry D. (1989), Krishna consciousness in the West, Bucknell University Press, p. 106, ISBN 978-0-8387-5144-2
- Chryssides, George D.; Wilkins, Margaret Z. (2006), A reader in new religious movements, Continuum International Publishing Group, p. 213, ISBN 978-0-8264-6168-1
- "Drug Raid Nets 19 in French Quarter", The Times-Picayune, February 1, 1970
- Scott, Dolgushkin, Nixon, "Deadbase X", New Hampshire, p.23. ISBN 1-877657-21-2
- McNally, Dennis, "A Long Strange Trip", New York 2002, p.584. ISBN 0-7679-1186-5
- The Grateful Dead | View the Music Artists Biography Online | VH1.com
- Pore-Lee-Dunn Productions. "The Grateful Dead". Classicbands.com. Retrieved July 16, 2011.
- Blair Jackson (August 1, 2000). Garcia: An American Life. Penguin. p. 272. ISBN 978-0-14-029199-5.
- "Grateful Dead Member Died Of Overdose, Coroner Rules". New York Times. August 12, 1990.
- Carolyn Jones, (June 3, 2006). "Grateful Dead's last keyboardist, Vince Welnick, dies at 51". San Francisco Chronicle.
- "Lesh, Weir, Russo, Lane, Chimenti: New Group "Furthur" for Sept". Allaboutjazz.com. Retrieved July 16, 2011.
- Jackson, Blair (1999). Garcia: An American Life. Penguin Books. p. 67. ISBN 0-14-029199-7.
- Wolfe, Tom (1968). The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Farrar Straus & Giroux
- "Bjerklie, Steve. "What are They Worth?", MetroActive". Metroactive.com. Retrieved July 16, 2011.
- The Grateful Dead: Playing in the Band, David Gans and Peter Simon, St Martin Press, 1985 p. 17
- Cavallo, Dominick. A Fiction of the Past: The Sixties in American History. St. Martin's Press (1999), p. 160. ISBN 0-312-21930-X.
- Barnes, Mike (October 22, 2008). "Grateful Dead lawyer Hal Kant dies". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved October 24, 2008. (subscription required)
- "Curious Sense – Producing Digital Products with Entertainment Companies » Grateful Dead Digital Games". Curioussense.com. Retrieved December 10, 2011.
- Light, Alan (July 10, 2006). "A Resurrection, of Sorts, for the Grateful Dead", New York Times. Retrieved December 12, 2008
- Liberatore, Paul (August 4, 2006). "Only the Memories Remain: Grateful Dead's Recordings Moved", Marin Independent Journal. Retrieved December 12, 2008
- Deadbase Online Search, ver 1.10
- Garofalo, pg. 219, quote in Garofalo, cited to Roxon, Lillian Roxon's Rock Encyclopedia, 210
- Scott, Dolgushkin, Nixon, Deadbase X, ISBN 1-877657-21-2
- McNally, Dennis, "A Long Strange Trip", New York 2002, p.455-58. ISBN 0-7679-1185-7
- Weiner, Robert G. (1999). Perspectives on the Grateful Dead: Critical Writings By Robert G. Weiner. Greenwood Publishing. p. xvii. ISBN 0-313-30569-2.
- "deadlists home page". Deadlists.com. Retrieved July 16, 2011.
- "Pechner Productions- powered by SmugMug". Pechner.smugmug.com. Retrieved July 16, 2011.
- "Alembic History – Long Version". Alembic.com. August 22, 2001. Retrieved July 16, 2011.
- "May–June 1967 Grateful Dead Itinerary Overview". lostlivedead.blogspot.com. January 1, 2010. Retrieved October 16, 2011.
- McNally, Dennis, "A Long Strange Trip", New York 2002, pp.118-19. ISBN 0-7679-1185-7 and Brightman, Carol, "Sweet Chaos", New York 1998, p. 100-104. ISBN 0-671-01117-0
- "Internet Archive: Grateful Dead". Archive.org. Retrieved July 16, 2011.
- "Grateful Dead Concert Recordings on the Internet Archive", November 30, 2005
- Ratliff, Ben. "Bring Out Your Dead", The New York Times, April 10, 2009
- Rodriguez, Marko; Gintautas, Vadas; Pepe, Alberto. "A Grateful Dead Analysis: The Relationship Between Concert and Listening Behavior", First Monday, January 2009
- Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn From the Most Iconic Band in History. ISBN 0-470-90052-0.
- "Creation of the dancing bear, as told by Owsley "Bear" Stanley". Thebear.org. Retrieved July 16, 2011.
- "Creation of the lightning bolt skull, as told by Owsley "Bear" Stanley". Thebear.org. Retrieved July 16, 2011.
- "Back cover of ''History of the Gateful Dead Vol. 1 (Bear's Choice)'' on". Dead.net. July 6, 1973. Retrieved July 16, 2011.
- Rome: A Holiday Magazine Travel Guide. Random House, New York. 1960
- du Lac, J. Freedom, "The Dead's Look Is Born", Washington Post, April 12, 2009, page E-8.
- "''Grateful Dead (Skull and Roses)'' on". Deaddisc.com. Retrieved July 16, 2011.
- McNally, p. 499
- ""Grateful Dead Songbook (Front)" on". Dead.net. November 5, 1972. Retrieved July 16, 2011.
- ""Mouse Grateful Dead Songbook Jester" on". Rockpopgallery.com. Retrieved July 16, 2011.
- Brock, Ted (June 26, 1990). "Morning briefing: In Oregon, they're grateful for all the extra cash they get". Los Angeles Times. p. C2.
- "Grateful Dead Archive News | University Library". Library.ucsc.edu. Retrieved July 16, 2011.
- Scott Rappaport (April 24, 2008). "Grateful Dead Donates Archives to UC Santa Cruz". UC Santa Cruz News and Events.
- Green, Joshua. "Management Secrets of the Grateful Dead" The Atlantic, March 2010
- "Goodreads: Fredric Lieberman". Retrieved June 29, 2011.
- "The way it works is it doesn't depend on a leader, and I'm not the leader of the Grateful Dead or anything like that; there isn't any fuckin' leader." Jerry Garcia interview, Rolling Stone, 1972
- "Garcia's influence on the overall chemistry of the band was surprisingly subtle, McNally tells NPR's Scott Simon. 'Jerry was not the leader, except by example... He was a charismatic figure.'"Simon, Scott. "'A Long Strange Trip': Insider McNally Writes a History of the Grateful Dead", NPR Music, January 11, 2003
- McNally, Dennis, "A Long Strange Trip", New York 2002, p.447. ISBN 0-7679-1186-5
- Scott, Dolgushkin, Nixon, "Deadbase X", New Hampshire, p.79. ISBN 1-877657-21-2
- Scott, John W.; Dolgushkin, Mike; Nixon, Stu. (1999). DeadBase XI: The Complete Guide to Grateful Dead Song Lists. Cornish, NH: DeadBase. p. 565. ISBN 1-877657-22-0.
- Haynes, Warren. "100 Greatest Artists of All Time: Grateful Dead". Rolling Stone issue 946. Retrieved May 8, 2011.
- Zeidler, Sue (February 11, 2007). "Death Permeates Grammy Lifetime Achievement Awards", Reuters, via the Wayback Machine. Retrieved May 7, 2014.
- Browne, David (January 19, 2012). "Business Is Booming for the Grateful Dead". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 12 November 2013.
- Riefe, Jordan (April 20, 2012). "Grateful Dead plan new "Epic Tour": in videogame". Reuters. Retrieved 12 November 2013.
Further reading
- Dodd, David; Spaulding, Diana (2001). The Grateful Dead Reader. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-514706-5.
- Gans, David (2002). Conversations With The Dead: The Grateful Dead Interview Book. Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-81099-9.
- Garofalo, Reebee (1997). Rockin' Out: Popular Music in the USA. Allyn & Bacon. ISBN 0-205-13703-2.
- Gerould, Gordon Hall (1908). The Grateful Dead: The History of a Folk Story. D. Nutt, London.
- Harrison, Hank (Various Editions 1972-1992). The Dead Vol 1 & Vol 2. Arkives. ISBN 0-918501-12-1.
- Lesh, Phil (2005). Searching for the Sound. Little, Brown and Co. ISBN 0-316-00998-9.
- McNally, Dennis (2002). A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead. Broadway Books. ISBN 978-0-7679-1186-3.
- Tuedio, James A.; Spector, Stan (2010). The Grateful Dead in Concert: Essays on Live Improvisation. McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-4357-4.
- Ward, Ed; Geoffrey Stokes and Ken Tucker (1986). Rock of Ages: The Rolling Stone History of Rock and Roll. Rolling Stone Press. ISBN 0-671-54438-1.
- Weiner, Robert G. (1999). Perspectives on the Grateful Dead: Critical Writings. Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-30569-2.
External links
Find more about Grateful Dead at Wikipedia's sister projects | |
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Database entry Q212533 on Wikidata |
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