Secrets from My Grateful Dead Vaults

Just when you think the Grateful Dead phenomenon has peaked, you realize that it never really does. It’s become as much a part of American life and culture as hot-dog-eating contests.

That thought occurred to me again this past weekend. Tied to what would have been Jerry Garcia’s 84th birthday, NPR launched a multi-part series on the band’s legacy. I also caught up with Summer Tour, the new documentary about next-generation Deadeads who drove around the country following Dead & Co. during what would be that band’s final tour in 2023. Yesterday was also the first anniversary of Bob Weir’s last performance with Dead & Co.

Watching Gen Zers and millennials in Summer Tour dress like their ’60s Deadheads predecessors, then twirl and dance and sell goods in Shakedown Street in the same way, solidified the idea that Deadhead culture is reborn every so often. I’d witnessed a degree of that at Dead & Co. and Furthur shows and also at the Fare Thee Well performances in Chicago in 2015. But seeing so many twentysomething Deadheads on screen in Summer Tour was a learning experience.

This wasn’t the first time I’d acquired knowledge about the Dead and its world. Starting when Rolling Stone asked me to review In the Dark (more on that later) and then sent me to cover a Dylan and the Dead show, I’ve been reporting on the Dead world on and off ever since. (And happily so—I discovered their music at 13 and had been listening ever since.) I hung out backstage during the band’s 2009 reunion tour and then at Furthur shows and interviewed each surviving member (and later ones) for various stories as well. I also wrote a book, So Many Roads: The Life and Times of the Grateful Dead, published in 2015.

So, in the spirit of educational experiences about the Dead some 31 years after Garcia’s death, I thought I’d share a few things I gleaned along the way.

In 1972, the Dead parted ways with Warner Brothers, their first label, and went indie by launching their own Grateful Dead Records (and Round, a subsidiary). One piece of Dead lore I kept hearing connected to that adventure involved a unique idea for getting their albums out into the world.