The Grateful Dead Posters

The tie-dyed rock 'n' roll sideshow known as the Grateful Dead was known as much for its masses of "Deadhead" followers and accompanying drug parties as it was for its endless, improvisational concerts and inconsistent album releases. Since the band's humble beginnings in late-'60s San Francisco, Deadheads have loyally maintained the happy-hippy ethos of that bygone period, both in fashion and in hedonistic "Summer Of Love" sensibility. Unfortunately, the death of co-founder Jerry Garcia in August of 1995 effectively ended the Dead's Pied Piper-like following, though subsequent incarnations--Bob Weir's Rat Dog and percussionist Mickey Hart's Planet Drum--promise to keep the Dead flame lit.

The Grateful Dead began as a folk and bluegrass outfit in 1965, headed by roots music aficionado Jerome "Jerry" Garcia on guitar, "Pigpen" McKernan on keyboards, Bob Weir on guitar, Phil Lesh on bass and Bill Kreutzmann on drums. Weir, Garcia and McKernan originally played together as early as 1964 in an ensemble called Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions. From the beginning, the group's sound reflected the varying influences of its members, including Garcia's banjo/bluegrass background and McKernan's affection for blues.

In 1965, after joining with electronic musician Lesh, the band picked up electric instrumentation, became known as the Warlocks, and took a gig as the house band at Ken Kesey's notorious "acid test" parties before LSD was outlawed. The fast-growing acid rock and psychedelia popular at the time helped the band blend a more modern sound with its affinity for folk and bluegrass. And of course, the drugs helped their music become that much more alluring.

In 1966, Garcia took a new name, the Grateful Dead (from a song about a pauper's funeral), and signed with Warner Bros. They released a couple of uncomfortable studio efforts shortly thereafter, but it wasn't until they hired lyricist Robert Hunter, who debuted with the lyrics he contributed to "Alligator" from 1968's Anthem Of The Sun, that the Dead began to develop a consistency in imagery and tone, with Hunter's lyrics matching the intricacies of the band's fast-developing improvisational skills.

Though the subsequent Live Dead produced the Dead's most requested song in "Dark Star," the two following recordings, Workingman's Dead and American Beauty, were the band's best and most commercially viable, yielding tracks like "Uncle John's Band," "Casey Jones," "Sugar Magnolia" and the concert staple "Truckin'."

The Dead's unprecedented ethic of touring six months of every year took hold throughout the '70s and '80s; they consistently finished among the top-grossing live acts annually. With no top 40 singles and little radio airplay, the band contented itself almost entirely on the concert circuit, and became one of rock 'n' roll's premier improvisatory, and highest-profile, collectives. Like the band itself, followers of the Dead considered the concert, not the album, as essentially important. Albums in the late '70s, like Shakedown Street and Terrapin Station, both commercial realizations, didn't register sales-wise.

In 1985, Garcia was arrested for heroin possession in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. A year later in '86, after playing a few dates with Bob Dylan (which in 1987 would lead to the Dylan/Dead tour that produced the fine Dylan & The Dead album), Garcia collapsed into a dangerous, five-day diabetic coma brought on not by excessive drug use, but (ironically) by his diet. Upon his recovery, the Dead recorded In The Dark, an excellent return to the studio that yielded "Touch Of Grey," their most successful single. But Garcia continued his narcotic habit, and the customarily mellow legion of Deadheads following the band began encountering the long arm of the law; many were arrested in violent clashes with the police.

Throughout their career, the band was struck frequently by tragedy. Founding member McKernan died of a liver disease in 1973, and was replaced by keyboardist Keith Godchaux (who brought along his wife Donna as a backing vocalist). Godchaux left the band in early 1979 and was replaced by Brent Mydland; Godchaux died in a car accident in 1980, while Mydland died of an overdose a decade later in 1990 (Bruce Hornsby then sat in on keyboards occasionally). And the granddaddy of all Deadheads, Jerry Garcia, died in 1995 of heart failure, ending an impressive reign of gigs, drugs and rock 'n' roll. Of course, the legacy of the Grateful Dead lives on in bands like Phish, the Dave Matthews Band and Blues Traveler, bands who also pride themselves on energetic improvisation, tireless touring, and a lust for roots, blues and folk-based rock 'n' roll.

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