Grateful Dead (English for Grateful Dead) was a rock band founded in 1965 in San Francisco, centered around frontman Jerry Garcia, which played an important role in the American music scene and counterculture.
Grateful Dead became known as one of the first bands of psychedelic rock and as a jam band with nearly 3000 concerts. In addition, Grateful Dead was one of the first bands to allow the recording of concerts (but not the trading of the recordings). The focus of their later music was on country and folk rock, which they combined with other music genres.
Steady members of the band were Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, and Bill Kreutzmann. In particular, the position of keyboardist was unstable and was filled by six different musicians over the thirty-year history of the band. Even after the death of band leader Garcia, the band was active for several years under the names The Other Ones and later The Dead. The former members are still musically active to varying degrees.
Band History
1960s
The origins of Grateful Dead lie in the band Zodiac, which Jerry Garcia founded in 1963 together with guitarist Bob Weir, percussionist and keyboardist Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, and drummer Bill Kreutzmann. Two years earlier, Garcia had been playing guitar and banjo at folk and bluegrass festivals, had been working with the band’s future songwriter Robert Hunter since 1960, and had met the other band members, who had also been involved in their own projects. For personal reasons and due to serious drug problems, Hunter did not become a member of Zodiac.
Zodiac joined the band Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions in 1964, but without the drummer Kreutzmann. In addition to the remaining trio of García, Weir, and McKernan, other musicians played in the band, of whom only David Nelson was able to establish himself in the music scene. But the formation of Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions was also not lasting and was renamed Warlocks in April 1965, in which Kreutzmann also played again. In June 1965, bassist Phil Lesh joined, and the previous bassist, Dana Morgan Jr., left the band.
A month later, the writer Ken Kesey took notice of the band and booked them as the house band for the Acid Tests in a commune whose members were later called the Merry Pranksters. These Acid Tests were happenings where the then-legal drug LSD was distributed. In December 1965, the Warlocks renamed themselves again after Lesh discovered that there was already a commercial band with that name.
According to Garcia, the selection of the new band name Grateful Dead was a coincidence, as many other names were available. He opened the Encyclopædia Britannica and read the term there. The term “Grateful Dead” appears in various cultures and is used in texts such as the Tibetan Book of the Dead or the Book of Tobit.
The band settled in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district, which is still considered a magnet for the hippie and counterculture. At that time, the band met LSD producer Owsley Stanley, who financed them and became their sound engineer. Thanks to his money, the band was able to move into their own house, buy instruments, and perform at or host free concerts, which helped them gain a large fan base in San Francisco. The last member to join the band was the second drummer Mickey Hart, whose father Lenny Hart, a former musician, was the band’s manager for a time. During this time, the band members also played in the studio with other bands, including Jefferson Airplane and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, where Garcia played the pedal steel guitar intro to their hit “Teach Your Children.” In addition, Garcia, Hart, and Lesh, along with David Nelson and John Dawson, were founders of New Riders Of The Purple Sage, where they remained members until 1970, before focusing more on Grateful Dead and other projects.
As a result of the concerts, MGM took notice of the band and signed them for demo recordings in 1966. However, since the band had no studio experience, the recordings did not go well, and they were released shortly thereafter. But even without a record deal, Grateful Dead continued to play at concerts and festivals until they were signed by Warner Bros. Records in 1966 as well. In 1967, the debut album The Grateful Dead was released, but the band was not satisfied with it. At this time, the band created the pseudonym “McGannahan Skyjellyfetti,” referencing a character in Kenneth Patchen’s work Memoirs of a Shy Pornographer, to designate songs they had written together. Dan Healy joined the band as an additional sound engineer. Both Stanley and he left the band for various reasons several times and returned. Both also served as album producers.
Other highlights of the year included participating in the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967, which made the band even more famous. For the next albums, Tom Constanten joined in 1968 as the second keyboardist alongside McKernan and as the band’s pianist. By 1969, the band released two more albums, Anthem of the Sun and Aoxomoxoa, the latter of which, with production costs of 80,000, was the most expensive album by Warner Bros. Records to date. It was also the first album on which Robert Hunter worked as a permanent member.
In October 1968, Weir and Pigpen briefly left the band. They spoke out against rehearsals and often did not show up, until Garcia had them told thru band manager Rock Scully that they were out. The remaining band members initially played with their own projects like Mickey and the Heartbeats and Jerry Garcia and Friends, before Weir first and Pigpen after three shows rejoined the band.
The year 1969 was extremely successful. In addition to two albums, the band played at the Woodstock Festival, with Garcia being dissatisfied with the multi-hour performance. The performance began with St. Stephen and was soon interrupted by the band due to alleged monitor problems on stage. Due to the rain during the performance, rhythm guitarist Bob Weir suffered an electric shock from his microphone, an incident that was later depicted in a comic strip. Since the performance was deliberately neither shown in the Woodstock film nor heard on the album, it was long unknown that Grateful Dead had even played at Woodstock, especially since Jerry Garcia is seen as a visitor in the concert film. However, the complete Grateful Dead performance can be heard on the later Woodstock bootleg.
A negative highlight of the year was the Altamont Free Concert by the Rolling Stones, among others, with the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane. Since the Stones had already had good experiences with British Hells Angels at a concert in Hyde Park, they decided to hire the New York Hells Angels for the concert in exchange for a truckload of beer and ice. Jerry Garcia and Dead manager Rock Scully tried in vain to talk them out of the idea. Normally, the Grateful Dead had good contacts with the Hells Angels, as Pigpen was friends with one of the local leaders. As it turned out, at the same time there was a meeting of the various leaders of the Angels, so that the concert was almost exclusively secured by Angels candidates who were trying to profile themselves. They acted with excessive brutality against visitors and musicians, even resulting in a death when visitor Meredith Hunter was stabbed by an Angel. The Dead refused to perform that day. According to the version of the involved music journalist Stanley Booth, Rock Scully was at least a co-sponsor of the Hells Angels security idea. Musician and promoter Bert Kanegson recalled that the original idea came from Diggers co-founder Emmett Grogan.
1970s
In 1970, the band returned to their folk and bluegrass roots with their albums Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty, after their previous albums had been attributed to psychedelic rock. Constanten left the band after two years, as he saw no future as a pianist in the multitude of concerts dominated by Pigpen on keyboards. They were also invited to a tour called Festival Express across Canada with other big names in the music business at this time. In January 1970, Jerry Garcia, along with the other band members, was arrested in New Orleans for drug trafficking but was released after a few days. Manager Lenny Hart embezzled about 55,000 and disappeared. As a result, his son, drummer Mickey Hart, left the band in 1971, returning in 1975.
In the following years, the band played about 100 concerts each year and regularly released studio albums. In 1972, they decided to embark on a larger European tour, which led to the successful live album Europe ’72. This was also the first major tour and the first album with the couple Keith and Donna Godchaux, who were supposed to relieve the ailing Pigpen. However, he died in the spring of 1973 at the age of 27. While Pigpen had largely played the keyboard and Hammond organ, Keith Godchaux was a jazz-influenced pianist.
In 1973, they played with The Band and the Allman Brothers Band at the Summer Jam at Watkins Glen, which was attended by 600,000 spectators, setting a listener record that remained for many years. Shortly thereafter, at the suggestion of Bob Weir, the second songwriter John Perry Barlow joined and was already a permanent member of the band by the time of the album “Wake of the Flood.” This became the first album under their own label Grateful Dead Records, after the contract with Warner Bros. Records had expired.
After various concerts, shows, and the recording of Grateful Dead from the Mars Hotel, the band took a break from October 1974 to early 1976, during which they gave only a few concerts and the individual members worked on solo projects. They ended the hiatus with the album Blues for Allah, in which Hart participated again. At that time, the band increasingly played folk rock and rock jazz. With the album Terrapin Station, they opened their new record contract with the label Arista Records, which was also to release all further studio albums. In 1978, Grateful Dead had a three-day performance at the Pyramids of Giza, which was released in October 2008 as a double album including a DVD under the name Rocking the Cradle: Egypt 1978.
The Godchaux couple left the band in February 1979 because they saw no future for themselves there; Keith Godchaux died in July of the following year, 1980, in a car accident. Brent Mydland joined the band as the new keyboardist and played the Hammond organ and synthesizer, as Pigpen had done before him. This lineup gained widespread attention across Europe thanks to the TV live broadcast of a multi-hour Rockpalast concert in Essen in 1981.
1980s
In the 1980s, Grateful Dead became increasingly popular and played in larger and larger stadiums and halls, even tho the Dead did not release a single studio album between 1980 and 1987. In 1985, Garcia was busted in Golden Gate Park for drugs. His punishment included performing a benefit concert. In 1986 he fell into a coma, recovered and led a somewhat healthier life for a time. In 1987, Grateful Dead recorded the album In the Dark. It became, alongside the compilation album Skeletons from the Closet: The Best of Grateful Dead, the most commercially successful album, and for the first time in the band’s 22-year history, the musicians had a top-ten single with Touch of Gray. At that time, the band was already playing in the largest stadiums in the USA, which also led to the release of various live albums.
1990s
From 1990 to 1992, the pianist Bruce Hornsby was also part of the formation, but he was not considered a permanent member. He replaced the longtime keyboardist Brent Mydland, who died in July 1990 after taking a drug cocktail. Hornsby frequently played as a special guest at various shows, but declined to join the band to pursue his solo career. Hornsby was the band’s third pianist after Tom Constanten and Keith Godchaux. Instead of Hornsby, Vince Welnick was hired. He was also a member of the band from 1990 to 1992, so that at the concerts they played with both two drummers and two keyboardists. During Mydland’s time, the band recorded their last studio album called Built to Last, so Hornsby and Constanten can only be heard on live albums. In addition to the live albums, the band also began to process old concert recordings and release them as so-called Vault albums or albums from the Dick’s Picks series. Primarily responsible for this was Dick Latvala, who was the band’s official recording archivist from 1985 until his death in 1999.
In 1994, 12 members of Grateful Dead were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This includes all the musicians except Bruce Hornsby and Hunter. Hornsby hosted the award ceremony.
Grateful Dead played around 3000 concerts with the official, spontaneous, and unofficial performances.
On July 9, 1995, the Deads played their last concert at the historic Soldier Field in Chicago. It was also Jerry Garcia’s last performance. He died of a heart attack on August 9, 1995, at the age of 53. After the autumn tour had already been canceled, the band announced their official breakup on December 8.
Since 2003, the surviving band members have been touring again in a slightly altered lineup as The Dead. Previously, they toured from 1998 to 2003 under the name The Other Ones in a different lineup. In addition, most band members have their own projects, including Phil Lesh & Friends and Bob Weir’s Ratdog.
In 1997, the tribute band Dark Star Orchestra was founded, featuring Grateful Dead members as guest musicians. Dark Star Orchestra aims to recreate the live shows at original venues, with original equipment, and with the original setlists.
2000s
On June 2, 2006, Vince Welnick committed suicide, making Constanten the last surviving official keyboardist of the band.
Revival, Anniversary & Farewell
Almost exactly 20 years to the day after their “last concert” on July 9, 1995, the remaining band members Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, and Mickey Hart came together for 5 anniversary performances under the motto “Fare Thee Well: Celebrating 50 Years of the Grateful Dead.” Accompanying musicians were Trey Anastasio of Phish on guitar, Jeff Chimenti on keyboards and Bruce Hornsby on piano. With concerts on June 27 and 28 at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, and on July 3, 4 and 5 at Soldier Field in Chicago, Illinois, Grateful Dead said goodbye to the concert stage after 50 years in front of tens of thousands of fans. More than half a million people had tried online to get tickets for the “Fare Thee Well” finale. In total, there were more than 360,000 viewers over the three days, generating revenue of $52.2 million.
Style
Over the course of their 30-year career, the band eclectically mixed various styles. Grateful Dead incorporated influences from bluegrass, jazz (especially John Coltrane), blues, folk rock, country rock, space music, and last but not least, psychedelic rock.
Each of the musicians had different musical roots and preferences. While Garcia and Weir came from the folk and bluegrass scene, and Garcia was additionally enamored with rock ‘n’ roll, Lesh was interested in art music, for which he also learned the violin, new music, jazz, and electronic instruments. Pigpen had blues and R&B roots thru his father and was also interested in gospel, while Kreutzmann had a rock background. Hart was interested in any form of percussion. The band’s live performances are characterized by long improvisations that transition from one song to another. Songs like “Dark Star” often reached a length of 30 minutes on stage. A constant feature of the shows were the so-called Drums and Space. Drums referred to the solos of the two drummers Kreutzmann and Hart, while Space referred to the improvisation of the other musicians. These parts were mostly omitted from live albums until Infrared Roses was released, an album compiled from these parts.
While the band’s live shows offered sprawling improvisations and musically moved between folk, blues, and rock, the early psychedelic albums Anthem of the Sun and Aoxomoxoa acoustically reflected the band’s drug experiences. The music was assembled in the studio from numerous concert and session recordings with electronic sounds into “bizarre collages, where sound shocks and horror miniatures often severely disrupted the flow of the music.” The sales figures of the experimental albums were initially very modest. It was not until the fifth album, Live/Dead, that they began to turn a profit, and they achieved commercial success in the 1970s with Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty. Both albums show a departure from psychedelic rock back to folk and country music, which remained a root of the band.
After Pigpen’s death, the newcomers Keith and Donna Godchaux contributed to a newly changed band sound. With the singer Donna Godchaux, a woman joined the band for the first and only time. The band continued with a mix of country, folk, and psychedelic rock in the next albums. “Folk rock had now absorbed the gentle, pulsing drive of the Allman and Doobie Brothers.” On the 1975 album “Blues for Allah,” jazz and art rock sounds were added to the band’s sound. In the following years, the band returned to the tried-and-true folk rock and West Coast music.
When the Godchaux couple left the band and were replaced by Brent Mydland, the band was enriched with a high harmony voice, and a Hammond B-3 organ as well as a synthesizer were reintroduced into the band’s sound. The live double album Reckoning, which offered a purely acoustic performance of Dead songs and country-blues classics, was complemented in 1981 by the double album Dead Set, which featured an electric concert. With the studio rock album In the Dark, the band celebrated their greatest commercial success in 1987. The single “Touch of Gray” reached a top position on the charts. However, this was surpassed in 1995 by the 1974 album Skeletons from the Closet: The Best of Grateful Dead, when the best-of compilation reached triple platinum.
Despite this success, critics agree that the band could only realize their potential live.
Thru their tours and live shows, the band Grateful Dead is considered a pioneer of jam bands, having given more free concerts than any other band and representing the musical and cultural spirit and counterculture of San Francisco.
Wall of Sound
When the band’s promoter and sound engineer Owsley “Bear” Stanley first heard the band, he thot none of them could sing, but he attributed part of the blame to the poor sound system:
“I could play you tapes of the early Dead that would make you cringe they’re so bad. They couldn’t sing for shit. Any one of them could sing on his own okay, but they sounded terrible together, and I think part of that was the fact that the technology of on-stage monitors was pitiful.”
For him, it was the starting point of the Wall of Sound project. Stanley eventually assembled a sound system known as the Wall of Sound. When Ampex developed the first 16-track recorder in 1968, the band experimented with the possibilities it offered. In 1969, Owsley approached Ron Wickersham, who founded Alembic Inc. that same year, making electric guitars, basses and microphone systems. Wickersham was to develop a microphone splitter that could record both vocals and instruments without distortion or loss of quality. However, it was not only necessary to filter out any distortion but also to set up a monitoring system. To this end, six individual sound systems were combined, each running on its own power supply and having its own functions. In addition to Owsley and Wickersham, Dan Healy and Mark Raizene from Grateful Dead, as well as Rick Turner and John Curl from Alembic, worked on the project, which was officially launched in 1971 under the name Wall of Sound.
For this purpose, 98 transistor amps with 300 watts of music power each and three 350-watt tube amplifiers were used, so the speakers ran with a total of 26,400 watts RMS. With this power, the sound could be heard outdoors at a distance of 150–200 meters in excellent quality and up to about 400 meters in average quality. Other sound systems could achieve this volume with less power consumption, but not with comparable quality. Thru the six different sound systems, vocals, lead guitar, rhythm guitar, keyboard and piano, bass, and drums were played. The bass was played in quadraphonic sound, meaning each string of the bass was transmitted thru its own channel and amplifier. The performance of the Wall of Sound included eleven channels, 48 amplifiers, and 641 speakers.
The Wall of Sound worked as its own monitoring system and was set up behind the band for this purpose, so the musicians could hear exactly what the audience heard. To prevent feedback resulting from this setup, Stanley and Alembic designed a special microphone system. They placed two condenser microphones 6 cm apart, one above the other, and operated them out of phase. The singers sang into the upper microphone, while the lower one picked up the other sounds in the stage environment. The two signals were mixed, and due to the phase inversion, all external noise that was picked up equally by both microphones was canceled out – thus, only the voice was amplified.
The complete Wall of Sound made its debut on March 23, 1973, at a concert at the Cow Palace in Daly City, California. To transport all the stage equipment, which weighed 72 tons, the band needed five trucks, which is why the Wall of Sound was dismantled in 1976 and a more conventional sound system was used.
Successes and Awards
While the band is no longer particularly recognized in Europe, their songs still make up part of the radio stations’ programming in the USA, where they have sold 17.5 million albums. The band, and Garcia in particular, are also referenced in various media. This includes Scott Adams’ Dilbert comic strips or sitcoms like Roseanne or That ’70s Show. The band is also referenced in such diverse films as Spider-Man 2, Color of Nite, Little Miss Sunshine, Fletcher’s Vision, Cocaine Cowboys, and Footloose. In addition, the band or individual members have contributed to the soundtracks of films such as Zabriskie Point, Apocalypse Now, The Mask, Masked and Anonymous, The Bride Who Didn’t Dare, and The Dreamers from 2003. In addition, the members themselves also appeared on camera. These were mostly documentaries like Woodstock – 3 Days of Love & Music, Festival Express, or Gimme Shelter, but also feature films and TV movies like Petulia or Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
The music magazine Rolling Stone ranked the band 57th among the 100 greatest musicians of all time. In addition, it included the albums Live/Dead, American Beauty, Workingman’s Dead, and Anthem of the Sun in the list of the The 500 greatest albums of all time and chose Jerry Garcia for the list of the top 100 guitarists, as well as, together with Robert Hunter, for the list of the 100 greatest songwriters of all time. According to Rolling Stone, the covers of the albums Aoxomoxoa and “American Beauty” also belong to the top 100. The songs Dark Star and Uncle John’s Band, written by Garcia and Hunter, were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, along with 12 band members.
After the band initially did not consider releasing singles, they were persuaded by the then-director of Warner Bros. Records, Joe Smith. However, the singles only had moderate success. Only with the successful album “In the Dark” could “Touch of Gray” achieve the first and only top placement in the charts. On this occasion, the song was the first for which the band made a music video. The subsequent single “Hell in a Bucket” reached the top ten, as did the single “Foolish Heart” from the album Built to Last; however, none of the singles matched the success of “Touch of Grey.” To date, Grateful Dead albums have been certified gold 19 times, platinum six times, and multi-platinum four times in the U.S.
Fan community
The members of the Grateful Dead fan community referred to themselves as “Deadheads.” The term dates back to 1971 and was used in the Grateful Dead album’s liner notes. There, Hank Harrison, the father of Courtney Love, who was seen on the album cover of Aoxomoxoa, proposed the following text:
“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, P.O. Box 1065, San Rafael, CA 94901.”
Grateful Dead supported the Deadheads by compiling a newsletter for the resulting feedback.
The fanbase consisted of hippies dressed in tie-dye shirts and devoted to hallucinogenic drugs, who followed their idols on tours across the entire USA to experience the different setlists and stage shows. The Deadheads, in their most extreme form, created a cultural phenomenon by organizing their entire lives around the band’s tour cycle. Many of them made a living by selling handmade crafts, fan merchandise, and “soft” drugs. This movement also had some followers in Germany, who flew to the USA once a year. Once part of the counter culture of the 1960s, the Deadhead phenomenon survived until at least the mid-1990s, but came to an end when Jerry Garcia died in 1995 and the band broke up. Today, fans follow the tours of the successor band, “The Dead.” Even in Europe, Deadhead gatherings continue to take place, often featuring cover bands like Dark Star Orchestra.
Bootlegs on the Internet
None of the band members had a particular affinity for computer and network technology. Nevertheless, the band is, in many ways, part of the development of the internet. This is mainly due to the Deadheads, who often came from engineering programs. The proximity to the development sites of Silicon Valley also contributed to the use of new techniques. In the influential early mailbox system The WELL, there was soon a dedicated discussion forum, the Grateful Dead Conference. One of the first Usenet newsgroups was rec.music.gdead.
Unlike many modern musicians who pursue bootlegs by all legal means, Grateful Dead took a different path. Like other bands of their time, they allowed fans to record concerts and set up the microphones they needed to do so. It was not the musicians, but the stage crew who objected after a while, as the countless microphones made their work more difficult. Therefore, special areas behind the soundboard were designated for fans (“taping areas”), where fans could set up their portable equipment to record the concerts. For this area, they needed a tapers ticket. These recordings were and are being exchanged among fans; many have also been released on vinyl or CDs. This was allowed as long as no profit was made from it. Despite this approach, Grateful Dead was one of the highest-earning bands in the USA for many years.
With the advent of the MP3 format and the first file-sharing platforms, the digitalization and worldwide distribution of enormous amounts of music became possible overnight. Grateful Dead was the first to respond with a business policy that extended its tape-friendly stance to the Internet and became a model for other bands. As a result, several websites emerged that took care of the distribution of the music. For years, the band considered selling their concert recordings (“Vault”) over the internet. The disputes were resolved with the end of the dotcom bubble. In 2004, the band chose Apple’s iTunes Music Service and its own website as the release venue.
At the end of November 2005, a change in the friendly attitude toward bootleggers seemed to be emerging: Allegedly at the urging of the remaining band members, the Internet Archive, which until then had offered a multitude of Grateful Dead bootlegs for download, completely removed the recordings made directly at the mixing console (so-called “Soundboard Recordings” or “Soundboards”) from the internet; recordings made with external microphones (also referred to as “Audience Recordings”) were no longer available for download, but only as live streams.
After the protest from the fan base, this decision was partially reversed in early December 2005: In a posting on his website, bassist Phil Lesh stated that he had not known about the decision that had led to the stopping of the downloads, and that he supported the free, non-commercial distribution of the music by the fans. The Internet Archive, on the other hand, stated that it had apparently been mistaken in believing that its actions were in accordance with the band’s wishes. The audience recordings have since been made available for download again; however, soundboards, which were previously also available for download, are now only offered as streams.
