Grateful Dead

L-R: Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart of the rock group The Grateful Dead hang outside their practice studio the New Potrero Theatre in 1968 on Potrero Hill in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Malcolm Lubliner/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images).

Founded
1965
Founding Members
Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Ron McKernan, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann
Discography
The Grateful Dead (1967), Anthem of the Sun (1968), Aoxomoxoa (1969), Live/Dead (1969), Workingman’s Dead (1970), American Beauty (1970), Grateful Dead (Skull & Roses) (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)
Notable Awards
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, Rock and Roll Hall of Famers

As a bumper sticker once famously read, “There is nothing like a Dead concert.” In the history of rock & roll, there was also nothing quite like the Grateful Dead itself. Emerging from the heady San Francisco music scene of the mid Sixties, the Dead revolutionized rock & roll musically, culturally, even technologically. From songs that continue to be covered to the very idea of a super-devoted fan base, the Dead left innumerable fingerprints on the music.

Originally called the Warlocks, the Dead came together in 1965, its members rooted in seemingly incompatible styles: guitarist Jerry Garcia came from the bluegrass and folk worlds, bassist Phil Lesh from classical and avant-garde music, Bill Kreutzmann from a jazz background, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan from blues, and guitarist Bob Weir from country and folk. Later joined by drummer Mickey Hart, the Dead began pushing rock & roll to its outer limits by using their songs and covers as starting points for lengthy, swirling improvisations. “Dark Star,” an early highpoint, could extend for up to an hour, with Garcia’s sweet, twinkly guitar and Lesh’s rumbly, unconventional bass usually leading the way.

At the same time, the Dead—especially Garcia and his longtime friend and lyricist Robert Hunter—began writing songs steeped in country, folk music, and Old West Americana tall tales. The result was a songbook—“Casey Jones,” “Uncle John’s band,” “Bertha,” “Friend of the Devil,” “Ripple”—that established Hunter and Garcia as one of the American music’s most enduring songwriting teams.

Long before Internet stans, the Dead also developed a passionate following known as Deadheads, many of whom saw hundreds of their shows and followed them around the country, if not the world. The Dead were also ahead of their time technically: Although the public saw them as hippie stoners, the Dead’s focus on state-of-the-art sound systems, their own ticketing office, and MIDI put them on the cutting edge of live music tech.

By the mid Eighties, the Dead were in a musical and personal rut, and Garcia was grappling with drug addiction. After he nearly died, the Dead regrouped and in 1987 had its biggest hit with the relatively bouncy “Touch of Grey.” With it, the group had a second wind, pulling in a new generation of Deadheads that reinvented the band for the MTV era.

After Garcia’s death of a heart attack in 1995, the surviving members of the Dead continued playing the band’s music in various combinations; offshoot bands included the Dead, Furthur, Phil Lesh & Friends, and Dead & Co., with John Mayer filling in for Garcia in the latter. The band’s legacy was also seen and heard in tribute bands and the ongoing jam band scene, from Phish to later bands like Goose, that continued the Dead’s loosy-goosey, nebulous approach to rock & roll.  —David Browne