Grateful Dead

The Grateful Dead, considered by many to be the greatest rock band of all time, were a monument to the hippie civilization of San Francisco and, more broadly, a monument to the psychedelic culture of the 1960s. Contrary to their image as drugged-out slackers, the Grateful Dead were one of the most learned bands ever, educated in both European and American atonal avant-garde, modal free-jazz improvisation, and the rhythms of other cultures, capable of transforming feedback and unusual meters into the equivalent of chamber instruments. Few rock musicians have undertaken such an erudite exploration of the jam form.

Their greatest invention was the long group improvisation, the rock equivalent of a jazz jam. Unlike jazz, where the jam sublimated the anguish of African-American people, the Grateful Dead�s jam was the soundtrack of LSD. But it soon came to represent an entire ideology of escape from the System, of expressive freedom, of alternative life. Garcia�s endless ascending and descending scales were among the most titanic feats attempted in rock music.

The Grateful Dead of those years sold very few records. Their expressive form was the concert, not the album. In this sense, they surpassed yet another commercial format: if the album was the preferred format of non-commercial musicians and a form of rebellion against the entire marketing apparatus of popular music (with the 45 rpm single as the starting point), the concert completely rejected the laws of advanced capitalism, relegating the business plan to the background. The first Grateful Dead concerts were large free parties, where the admission ticket (when it existed) only covered the venue costs. Even later, the Grateful Dead always preferred to express themselves live rather than codify their �songs� on vinyl. In that sense, there is no definitive version of their songs, only versions on record and versions that never made it to record. In this way, the Grateful Dead revolutionized the concept of rock music just as jazz had revolutionized the European concept of music with the idea that music could be improvised.

Their free-form jams were actually born from the meeting of two deeply American philosophies: the individualistic and libertarian spirit of the frontier, and the communal and spiritual ethos of the Quakers. The Grateful Dead�s jams, persecuted by the System, expressed better than any other musical phenomenon of the time the essence of the American nation, and perhaps for that reason, they resonated so effectively with the hearts of thousands of young people. Many of those young people became hippies to attend Grateful Dead concerts.

The Grateful Dead were born from San Francisco acid-rock but spent their adult years transforming that subcultural idiom into a universal language that transcended the hippie milieu and reached every corner of the planet. They achieved this by crafting a sort of muzak for intellectuals that reinterpreted the LSD �trip� as a cathartic escape from daily reality and liberation from urban neuroses. In practice, their work was a psychological investigation into the relationship between altered states of mind (psychedelic hallucinations) and altered states of the psyche (the neuroses of industrial society).

It was also a subtle ideological operation, as their decadent jams fused a strongly individualistic and libertarian creed (that of the Frontier fathers) with a communal and spiritual spirit (that of the Quaker settlers). That fusion was, in fact, as authentically American as anything could be. They succeeded also because one day they realized they had become skilled musicians in blues, country, and even jazz, and not just adept architects of psychedelic �trip� soundtracks. Naturally, this transition was seen as a partial betrayal by the most hardcore fans, who had seen in the Dead above all the singers of great sonic chaos. The early aging of drug addicts and the general atmosphere of retreat heightened the sense that the Grateful Dead had, for better or worse, defined the contradictory experience of the hippies.

At first, the Grateful Dead were apostles of orgy, collective orgasm, and psychedelic happenings. Lysergic acid was their religion. The Vietnam War and student unrest were completely irrelevant to their musical philosophy. Apolitical, they were always indifferent to the fate of humanity, egocentrically withdrawn into their own shell in search of psychomotor well-being independent of any ideology. Their cold cynicism aimed solely at satisfying an urgent primary need. The Grateful Dead represented rebellious youth seeking physical and mental excitement, not the construction of a better world. Their performances were exhausting and hallucinatory experiences.

At the same time, however, the Dead were part of a family of hundreds of people, mostly artists, who lived off the collective income and existed on the margins of the Establishment, rejecting its market laws. The Dead were therefore both the most decadent and Dionysian image of acid-rock and a symbol of communal life.

Jerry Garcia (born 1942) was a bluegrass banjo player, fascinated by the otherworldly style of violinist Scotty Stoneman (capable of stretching a bluegrass piece to twenty minutes with ever-longer phrases) and by the free-jazz of John Coltrane. Garcia met the poet and singer Robert Hunter at college in 1960, and together they formed a small band that also participated in a local folk festival. The Palo Alto folk scene also included the Zodiacs, led by drummer Bill Kreutzmann and pianist Ron McKernan, nicknamed "Pigpen," who were devoted to rock and roll and blues. From the meeting of these two groups arose a jug band with Garcia, Pigpen, and guitarist Bob "Weir" Hall (the Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions). Garcia picked up an electric guitar, and the group�s style evolved toward electric blues and rock, while the lineup grew to include Kreutzmann and classically trained bassist Phil "Lesh" Chapman, a prodigious violinist and electronic experimenter. Influenced like many others by the success of the Beatles (and particularly the film "A Hard Day's Night"), they adopted electric instrumentation, changed their name to the Warlocks, and performed for the first time in July 1965.

Meanwhile, Hunter had participated in Ken Kesey�s LSD studies and, reuniting with his friends as a lyricist, encouraged them to join Kesey�s Pranksters. Settling in La Honda, the Warlocks began performing at the �acid tests,� abandoning country and blues techniques in favor of electricity and rhythm, but above all giving space to free improvisation. The Warlocks played for free, helping to cement a community of hippies united by their passion for LSD. Recordings of that �space music� appear on Vintage Dead and Historic Dead (both 1966). All the material recorded by the Warlocks in 1965 and 1966 was collected on the double CD Birth of The Dead, released in the box set The Golden Road (Warner, 2002).

In October 1966, a law banning hallucinogens was passed, and Ken Kesey, pursued by the police, had to flee to Mexico. The Warlocks moved to Los Angeles to join another LSD guru, Augustus Stanley Owsley, and eventually returned to the Bay Area, taking up permanent residence in Haight-Ashbury (specifically at 710 Ashbury Street), where they changed their name to the Grateful Dead and became the center of a gathering point that soon evolved into a cultural community.

Although they shared an audience, the Grateful Dead represented a more radical fringe of the hippie public compared to the Jefferson Airplane. So much so that, instead of taking advantage of it, in June 1967 at Monterey they organized a free counter-festival to make it clear that the official festival was anything but in line with hippie ideals. The Grateful Dead lived fully within the San Francisco counterculture.

Unfortunately, their debut album, Grateful Dead, finally released in the summer of 1967 when all the psychedelic masterpieces (Doors, Velvet Underground, Pink Floyd) were already out, was a clear compromise with the record industry: instead of offering the jams that were making them a living legend, instead of documenting the unique and revolutionary phenomenon of their concerts, that album delivered a traditional repertoire with a sound cleaned of the cacophonous vulgarity that made their live performances raw and punishing: lively, tinkling guitars, clear, youthful timbre, a few unpolished backing vocals, the first epidermal tremors of the organ, orderly and timid percussion, and a curious selection of rhythm and blues, country, and rock and roll classics.

The only tracks that hint at what was happening outside the recording studios are Morning Dew, with a slower, ambiguous development, and the long Viola Lee Blues, with crooked choral singing, guitar improvisation, and a minimum of collective improvisation.

Something was still missing from their mix. The Grateful Dead were, after all, a classic rock and roll band with roots in traditional music. Far from representing a new genre, they seemed timidly in search of a reason for being in the drug era. In the second half of 1967, the Dead participated in the "North West Great Tour," during which they met percussionist Mickey Hart and electronic keyboardist Tom Constanten, Lesh�s close friend, who joined the band permanently. Tom Constanten had studied music first with composer Luciano Berio at Mills College (where he met Lesh) and then in Darmstadt with Karlheinz Stockhausen. Hart was a percussion phenomenon, not so much for virtuosity but for imagination. Their entry marked a decisive turning point in the group�s style.

Anthem Of The Sun (WB, July 1968), the album recorded by the new lineup, is one of the masterpieces of acid rock. Despite the fame of the Grateful Dead�s live concerts, the album was meticulously refined in the studio, employing all sorts of effects and techniques. The band members drew inspiration from Karlheinz Stockhausen�s electronic music, John Cage�s �prepared� instruments, and Morton Subotnick�s tape compositions. The group�s blues and country roots were grotesquely distorted by violent hallucinatory shocks. The songs expanded immensely, disintegrating traditional song structures, and each piece became a massive maelstrom of rhythms, melodies, and improvisations where rock, jazz, and avant-garde fused together.

The entire instrumentation is used innovatively: the percussion beats obsessively and in multiple forms to reproduce the lysergic pulses; electronic effects paint the nightmares and ecstasy of the psychedelic journey in vivid colors; the dark and mysterious keyboards press forward with a continuous catacombal lament; guitars sting and rave; voices float, soft and depraved. The instrumentation is greatly expanded beyond a typical rock ensemble, including harpsichord, trumpet, timpani, gongs, bells, prepared piano, celeste, and tape. The sound is complex, dense, and thick, overflowing with lines and tones, aiming to merge and expand Zappa�s thematic chameleonism, Pink Floyd�s harmonic experimentation, Cream�s instrumental improvisation, and Sun Ra�s cosmic existentialism.

The first experiment is That's It For The Other One, a four-part suite: the soft country ballad Cryptical Envelopment; the hammering, chaotic, boiling blues-rock jam Quadlibet For Tender Feet; the furious reprise of the opening leitmotif The Faster We Go; and the spectral, lugubrious We Leave The Castle, an orgy of ghosts complete with chains, bells, creaks, and detunings. Producer Dave Hassinger overdubbed multiple performances of the piece to achieve a �multi-dimensional� effect, a kind of extreme version of Spector�s �wall of sound.� The Dead were the first to use noise so explicitly: thanks to Hart and Kreutzmann�s multiple percussions and Constanten�s surreal imagination, these noises create an oppressive sense of anguish. Pigpen�s organ, a hybrid of gospel church organ and Kooper�s folk-rock �bass� organ, reinforces the atmosphere of terror while repeating familiar blues patterns to maintain musicality. The Dead also created rock music based on two rhythms that were not always in harmony: Hart and Kreutzmann did not just play two different percussion instruments�they played with two almost diametrically opposed styles.

But the elements contributing to a song�s identity are endless. New Potato Caboose begins with a gentle, fluid jazz atmosphere, punctuated by Pigpen�s vibraphone chimes and the languid chime of guitars, swells with a spacey Garcia solo, and explodes in the final duet of modal guitar and jazz organ.

Classically trained Lesh inspired the quarter-hour chamber piece Alligator: after a chaotic and boisterous country introduction, with drunken gospel harmonies and a trumpet making funny noises, African percussion and distorted voices provide the sonic foundation for a frenzied ritual dance leading to a state of collective hypnosis, pierced by Garcia�s guitar shrieks. The organ drives all instruments to the peak of their �uproar� in a disjointed jam.

The Dead were masters of playing in a state of musical rarefaction where rhythm and melody no longer existed, only psychophysical excitement, in the spirit of tribal dance and raw primitivism. They threw everything into the pot: South American rhythms can be recognized, and the finale is devoted to a wild blues with breathtaking drum cadences.

Caution relies on an organ crescendo that soon explodes into a concert of piercing dissonances, with Constanten�s electronics prominently featured. Screams, stretched sounds, clamor, hisses, silences, drops, and animalistic cries erase the last traces of music and sink lifelessly into the subconscious, wrenching out the darkest, bloodiest part of the heart.

This �Anthem of the Sun� is the first example of astral dark music, intended to explore the void of the stars, the dark fire/bright ice born in the womb of the cosmos; that is, it seeks to capture the emotions of the dark and hidden side of the soul.

The technique behind the songs is always the same: they start from the roots of American music (country or blues), beginning with popular reality, external life, and arrive at an improvised tantrum crowned by guitar and underlain by the moaning organ - a tantrum that often spills into totally dissonant and percussive chaos; in other words, reaching the inner life. More than hallucinations, Jerry Garcia�s guitar lines are delicate embroideries expressing a yearning for the infinite (this is where cosmic music is born).

In the middle of the recording, David Hassinger was replaced by Dan Healy, who worked in the studio with Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, and Tom Constanten to complete the production. The result is a collage of many tricks contributed by at least four studio �engineers.�

The traditional roots of the Dead�s acid-rock are more evident in Aoxomoxoa (WB, June 1969). Here, the bastardly and barbaric sound of Anthem Of The Sun partially reassembles, the songs take on forms closer to the ballad, country and blues merge seamlessly with psychedelia, and the percussion rediscovers the orthodox meaning of the word �rhythm.�

Almost all the tracks are concise experiments in eccentric arrangement on traditional foundations, with careful but precious use of instrumentation, so that at times it feels like listening to The Band of Robertson. St. Stephen alternates between a powerful, syncopated gospel-rock, a lysergic lullaby (with the singers� distorted whispers and the harpsichord-like chime of keyboards), and the fiery drive of a boogie. Dupree�s Diamond Blues pays homage to 1920s orchestras and street organs, vaudeville ragtime (banjo included), and the carnivals of medicine shows. Likewise, Doin� That Rag features abrupt tempo changes and a passionate crooner tone. Rosemary is even a serenade, but with a voice distorted by a filter. These are songs of formal perfection unparalleled in the Bay Area, adapting two centuries of American music to the spirit of the hippies.

Elsewhere, the harmonic experiments become more complex and disorienting. Mountains Of The Moon is a vision of lunar craters, of boundless ash deserts where calm and silence reign; it is a tender, anguished, and epic country ballad tainted by Elizabethan song, with a harpsichord chime elevating it to a celestial prayer�a digression into the dark stars that populate our inner universe. Equally daring are the harmonic juxtapositions in China Cat Sunflower, with a beach organ, a surf choir, a gospel lullaby, and the deafening blues counterpoint of the guitar. Typical of the �expanded� style in which classic genres are reinvented, Cosmic Charlie drifts along with the pace of a lazy, �lived-in� blues, with a gorgeous �Hawaiian� chirp from Garcia in the background and Lesh�s contrapuntal bass.

The final testament of their extremism is What�s Become Of The Baby, a catacombal Tibetan-mass litany, alone in a macabre resonance of galaxies, in a dark abyss populated by dull, somber noises, rejecting the formula of acid-danceability in favor of a radical subconscious cacophony.

Overall, Aoxomoxoa reduces improvisation but condenses energy, and its work of synthesis definitively cements acid-rock. Tracks like Mountains Of The Moon establish them as some of the greatest arrangers of the century, regardless of affiliation.

The group�s natural element was live performance, during which the Grateful Dead became the psychedelic equivalent of a chamber quintet or a free-jazz combo, playing oceanic versions of their classics. At the end of 1969, recordings of some of these memorable, titanic performances were released on a double album titled Live Dead (WB, November 1969). The atmosphere is electric and heightened; the tracks are sprawling cauldrons of nightmares; the nocturnal mood evokes both the foulest and the softest vibrations; each piece is a progression that could continue indefinitely, a serpent of sound cells blazing intermittently, a coitus interruptus repeated without end.

While Garcia�s long masturbatory ritual in The Eleven and the atmospheric gospel of Death Don�t Have No Mercy do not go beyond psychedelic entertainment, Feedback, Turn On Your Love Light, and Dark Star represent the supreme theses of music for dark stars�a thread of rock from which hang filthy webs of delirium.

Feedback is a single, long, piercing thicket of guitar�a clump of pain plunged headfirst into the dark magma of the mind; it is the boldest experiment Garcia attempted in his career as a guitarist, a sharp edge between music and noise, a central, intergalactic tension with no other purpose than to screech; a sonata for dissonant guitar, a disorienting piece of the absurd, an abstract and informal painting.

Turn On Your Love Light is a tribal, visceral rhythm-and-blues, attacked from all sides by ferocious instruments and vocals: percussion like grinding whirlpools, an ejaculating voice, stripped-down guitar, repeated syncopations, with long purely percussive-vocal pauses in the purest African folk style; the tumult lasts twenty minutes of sonic mud, lust and rock, lycanthropy and animalism.

As spectacular and revolutionary as these tracks are, they pale before the majestic twenty-three minutes of Dark Star�a free reinterpretation of a mediocre 1968 single, the Grateful Dead�s masterpiece in which all their instrumental and collective improvisation techniques are sublimated. Composed in 1967 and released as a single in 1968, Dark Star is the Grateful Dead�s�and all acid-rock�s�terminal �trip,� the luminous quintessence of darkness guided by excruciating harmonic progressions led by the soloist. Essential and penetrating, the music sways between sweetness and mystery, now soft, now rough, clear and murky, earthly and cosmic, external and internal. Visions and tantrums, a muted solo and a concert of dissonances, a discontinuous flow of sound. The mind is lulled and awakened by a treacherous magic, led by the hand into the void and abandoned to sidereal winds, to solar storms; the dark star spews carcinogenic lava, teems with infernal flames, and within it an immense force, with a dark, eternal moan, sucks the light and forges fire. It is Jerry Garcia�s last great psychedelic fresco, the most legendary guitarist of the Bay Area.

The era of acid tests, expanded consciousness, and happening concerts came to an end with the 1960s. The collapse of the Bay Area scene also affected Garcia and his companions, who, more than anyone else, felt the need to breathe fresh air and detox from the intoxicating fumes of the past.

In 1970, a historic shift toward country occurred. Constanten, the main proponent of exoticism and electronics, was abruptly fired; for the record, he would completely leave the rock scene, dedicating himself to off-Broadway shows and chamber compositions (solo piano and string quartet). Freed from destabilizing influences, Garcia took up the twelve-string and slide guitar (the first rock musician to do so), shed his guru�s robes, and donned a cowboy hat. Eccentric arrangements disappeared entirely, and suddenly the sound became understated and crystalline, far from the boisterous, anarchic style it had been.

Workingman�s Dead (WB, 1970) is thus even an album in the Bakersfield country vein, particularly reminiscent of Buck Owens and Merle Haggard (Owens� guitarist, Don Rich, had been one of Garcia�s main influences, especially his way of starting a song on the �wrong� chord). This collection of gentle country ballads strides confidently along the backward trajectory traced by Aoxomoxoa, putting away the hallucinogenic tools and sharpening (figuratively) the banjos and mandolins. It is as if the hippies were making solemn amends for the �highs� of the past.

Garcia and Hunter�s compositional skill remains prodigious: the eight tracks on the album could each serve as a Nashville (or better, Bakersfield) standard.

The opening track, Uncle John�s Band, aligns with the typically Californian vocal and guitar harmonies that Crosby, Stills & Nash were reviving in Los Angeles and serves as something of a manifesto for the new direction. Behind tracks like High Time and Black Peter, one can sense the structure of the long acid-rock pieces, but instead of lysergic Sabbaths, carnivals of dark stars, and sublime desolations, Garcia�s voice and guitar prefer to stretch out in lazy, calm, relaxed ditties with imperceptible melodic syncopations (in the second at most approaching a muted spiritual). Constanten is gone, and Pigpen is carefully watched.

Dire Wolf and Cumberland Blues (modeled on Buck Owens� Working Man Blues) are canonical in this acoustic, choral dimension�perfect appendages to centuries of old-time music, fully in line with all the relevant stereotypes (bluegrass pulse, vocal harmonies, interwoven string instruments). The darker atmospheres, reminiscent of the psychedelic horror of earlier times, appear in the swampy gospel rhythm of New Speedway Boogie and the voodoo dance of Easy Wind. But the classic that closes the album is Casey Jones, another carefree hybrid of country, vaudeville, and gospel.

American Beauty is even more acoustic and orderly, bordering on baroque country to the point of excess. Trucking and Sugar Magnolia, representing post-acid tracks and sweet, pastoral tunes respectively, are the classics the Dead added to their repertoire. Nostalgic and philosophical ballads like Attics Of My Life, or fairy-tale-like ones such as Candy Man, risk turning acid rock into parlor kitsch.

The internal crisis within the band began with Mickey Hart leaving in 1971 (he would return four years later, having become a world-music intellectual). Garcia, for his part, played with Paul Kantner and helped launch the New Riders of the Purple Sage.

Jerry Garcia�s solo album, Garcia (WB, 1972), is far more significant than American Beauty. The album is a sublime tribute to psychedelic culture at the moment it was splitting schizophrenically between a return to country-rock roots and the unrestrained experimentalism of art-rock. In reality, the album contains two �albums,� one per side: a country side (featuring two superbly crafted songs, The Deal and the sorrowful Loser, pierced with delicate steel-guitar flourishes) and an electronic side. The latter is a stellar concert beginning with the dissonances of Spider Gowd, progressing through the piano sonata of Eep Hour�quilted with a repeated melodic phrase first on synth and then on steel in a psychedelic crescendo�and culminating in the almost Jefferson Airplane-like epic of The Wheel. Following this atypical album were other minor solo works, balancing between country-rock and songcraft, and an impressive series of collaborations with small groups and forgotten Bay Area figures.

Much more disappointing was the subsequent Hooteroll (Douglas, 1971), a collaboration with keyboardist Howard Wales, later followed by the mediocre Compliments (1974) and Reflections (1976). Weir also released a solo album, Ace in 1972 (on which all the Grateful Dead actually played) and formed Kingfish (1976); within a few years, Lesh tried as well (Seastones, 1975, an atonal electronic music album) and even the lyricist Hunter (Tales Of The Great Rum Runners, 1974; Tiger Rose, 1975).

In March 1973, Pigpen died, having already been sidelined from the band for months; he was replaced by Keith Godchaux. Pigpen had been the true inspiration behind acid rock.

In the early years of the decade, the Grateful Dead produced only live albums, the best of which was the first Live Dead of 1971, featuring the suite The Other One, the swan song of acid rock and of Pigpen, and one of their finest ballads, Wharf Rat. The monumental Europe 72 (WB, 1972) primarily summarizes their career. More interesting is Hundred Year Hall (Grateful Dead), released posthumously, containing material from the same concerts, including the 36-minute Cryptical Envelopment.

However, when audiences discovered the band�s natural inclination for excitement and good vibes, the group suddenly became an international attraction. They held colossal concerts almost everywhere (600,000 people at Watkins Glen in 1973, and even a show among the pyramids of Egypt) and began climbing the sales charts. In short order, the Dead came to rival the Pink Floyd (with whom they competed for years in amplification size) for the title of the greatest live spectacle in rock history.

The new direction of Wake of The Flood (1973) showcases an elegant, sweetened sound, supported by the band�s consistently remarkable craftsmanship and painstaking production work. The music of this period of crisis can be divided into two streams: rock songs, sometimes slipping into kitsch, and long, soft jazz-orchestral suites.

The first stream includes Eyes Of The World, Stella Blue, and Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodleoo from Wake of The Flood (1973); China Doll, Unbroken Chain, and Pride Of Cucamonga from From The Mars Hotel (1974); The Music Never Stopped and Franklin's Tower from Blues For Allah (1975); Passenger from Terrapin Station (1977); Shakedown Street, Fire On The Mountain, I Need A Miracle, and If I Had The World To Give from Shakedown Street (1978); and Alabama Gateway from Go To Heaven (1980).

The second stream includes the Weather Report Suite from Wake of The Flood; Blues For Allah (1975); Terrapin Station (1977), orchestrated by Paul Buckmaster; Drums/Space, one of their live ritual pieces; and Althea (1979). Common to all is an aura of mediocrity that significantly diminishes the impact of the band and of Jerry Garcia.

In 1979, Keith Godchaux left the group (he would die the following year in a car accident), replaced by Brent Mydland.

Solo projects during this decade include Garcia�s Cats Under The Stars (1978); Weir�s Heaven Help The Fool (1978), Bobby and the Midnights (1980), and Where The Beat Meets The Street (1981); and Robert Hunter�s Jack O'Roses (1981).

The decade is crowned by Dead Set, yet another live self-commemoration.

With the epic, nostalgic country-rock of Hell In A Bucket (written by Weir), West L.A. Fadeaway, Black Muddy River, Throwing Stones, and especially Touch Of Grey, on In The Dark (1987), the Grateful Dead finally achieved chart success. It was their first studio album in seven years, partly due to Garcia�s fragile health and his drug addiction.

Built To Last (Arista, 1989) was unexpectedly entrusted to keyboardist Brent Mydland, who wrote half of the compositions, including the weak soul piece Foolish Heart (Garcia still contributes Standing On the Moon, and Weir continues his personal saga with Victim Or The Crime, perhaps his masterpiece). Once again, the decade was capped by a monumental live album, Without A Net (Arista, 1990). Mydland also died, but of an overdose.

Jerry Garcia Band (Arista, 1991) contains only cover songs, as did his numerous collaborations with David Grisman.

Finally, Infrared Roses (Grateful Dead, 1992) is a collection of instrumental jams, one of their most eccentric albums and the only one that connects back to Anthem Of The Sun.

Jerry Garcia died on August 9, 1995, of a heart attack while at a drug rehabilitation center. He was 53 years old.

Bob Weir and Mickey Hart formed Ratdog. Keyboardist Vince Welnick formed the Missing Man Formation. Drummer Billy Kreutzmann took a seaside vacation.

Garcia�s death triggered a wave of commemorative releases. Phil Lesh curated a collection of previously unreleased live recordings from 1967 to 1995, Fallout From The Phil Zone (Grateful Dead, 1997), including a thirty-minute version of the Wilson Pickett classic In The Midnight Hour (recorded in 1967).

The double anthology The Arista Years (Arista) collects the band�s hits from the later years.

One From The Vault and Two From The Vault present tapes of concerts from the golden era. The numerous volumes in the Dick's Picks series, each consisting of two CDs, collect more rare and previously unreleased material.

So Many Roads (Arista, 1999) is a five-disc box set of additional rarities.

Grayfolded is an interesting collage created by avant-garde musician John Oswald, who stitched together the �exceptions� from various live performances of the classic Dark Star.

The live triple-disc Dozin' At The Knick (Arista, 1996) delivered to future generations three of their final performances.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Grateful Dead, Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh, and Bob Weir reunited in 2015 for a live concert.

Robert Hunter died in 2019. Phil Lesh died in 2024. Bob Weir died in 2026.