Grateful Dead Sleep Stories

The Grateful Dead Hid an 8-Year Reckoning in Plain Sight

The Grateful Dead hid their response to the death of the sixties across three songs and eight years — and almost nobody connected the dots. Two weeks after Altamont, Rob

Grateful Dead Sleep Stories | Bill Walton, the NBA Champion Who Never Stopped Going to Grateful Dead Shows and more

Tonight, one very tall man at the back of the room: Bill Walton, the redheaded kid from La Mesa who won championships at UCLA, in Portland and in Boston, and spent the re

Grateful Dead Sleep Stories | The Tapers, the Tape Trees and the First Online Deadheads and more

Tonight, not a show but the people standing at the back of it, holding microphones up into the dark: the tapers. Then their little cassettes follow them home, into envelo

How Bill Graham Changed The Dead Forever

In the late 1960s, the Grateful Dead faced a decision that didn’t look dramatic at the time—but quietly shaped everything that followed. Bill Graham believed in structur

Grateful Dead Sleep Stories | The Year the Dead Went Disco and Lowell George Made Shakedown Street and more

Tonight, one record: a Grateful Dead album from the late seventies, made in the band's own rehearsal room in San Rafael, north of the bridge, with a guest at the mixing d

Grateful Dead Sleep Stories | The Summer Bob Dylan Toured With the Grateful Dead, and Jerry's Dylan Songbook and more

Tonight, two old friends who never quite worked out how to play together: Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead. A warehouse in San Rafael where they rehearsed one spring, a su

Grateful Dead Sleep Stories | The Detroit Soul Records Jerry Garcia Carried Into the Grateful Dead and more

Tonight, one long thread through the whole story of the Grateful Dead: the soul music. The Detroit records, the rhythm and blues and the Motown hits that Jerry Garcia lov

Bill Graham's Crowd Control Became a Six-Day Tent City

Shakedown Street wasn't conjured out of thin air by hippies. In January 1978, a Bill Graham logistics man saw the same fifty faces at every show — and one porta-potty ord

Grateful Dead Sleep Stories | John Perry Barlow, the Wyoming Rancher Who Wrote Bob Weir's Cowboy Songs and more

Tonight, out to the high country: a cattle ranch in the far west of Wyoming, in Sublette County near the little town of Pinedale, where a ranch kid named John Perry Barlo

Grateful Dead Sleep Stories | Life Inside 710 Ashbury, the Grateful Dead House the Police Raided and more

Tonight, one house: a tall old Victorian on Ashbury Street in San Francisco, a few blocks up the hill from the most famous corner of the sixties, where the Grateful Dead

Grateful Dead Sleep Stories | Before the Dead: Jerry Garcia's Banjo Years, the Coffeehouses, and the Jug Band and more

Tonight, back before the beginning: a few small towns on the Peninsula south of San Francisco in the first years of the sixties, where young people with banjos, washboard

How Bob Marley’s Rejection Led To Grateful Dead’s Iconic ‘Scarlet Begonias

How Bob Marley’s Rejection Led To Grateful Dead’s Iconic ‘Scarlet Begonias #scarletbegonias #gratefuldead #bobmarley Why? Marley couldn’t reconcile joining a label calle

Grateful Dead Sleep Stories | Why the Dead Needed Two Drummers, Billy, Mickey and the Rhythm Devils and more

Tonight, two drummers: a boy in a garage in Palo Alto, and a boy in a closet in Brooklyn with his father's old sticks, who ended up side by side at the back of the same s

Grateful Dead Sleep Stories | Merl Saunders, the Organ Player Who Taught Jerry Garcia to Play Again and more

Tonight, an organ player: Merl Saunders, from the fog and the hills of San Francisco, and the guitar player who kept turning up at his side for twenty-five years, Jerry G

600 Speakers, 75 Tons, and One Problem Nobody Solved

On March 23, 1974, a critic caught himself whispering at a Grateful Dead concert. The Wall of Sound was so clean that 14,000 people could hold a conversation while the ba

Grateful Dead Sleep Stories | Bill Graham, the Fillmore, Winterland and the Dead's New Year's Eves and more

Tonight, one man and the rooms he built around a band: Bill Graham, a promoter from San Francisco with a clipboard and a temper, and the Grateful Dead, who played his hal

Grateful Dead Sleep Stories | The Summer New York Gave the Dead a Key Made of Flowers and more

Tonight, the early summer of the Grateful Dead's first record, when the band stepped off a plane in New York for the very first time. A parade down St. Mark's Place, a ke

The Album Robert Hunter Tried To Erase

Robert Hunter's Tiger Rose stands as one of the most fascinating and heartbreaking stories in Grateful Dead history - a perfect album that its creator spent 15 years beli

Grateful Dead Sleep Stories | John Kahn, the Bass Player at Jerry Garcia's Left Shoulder for Twenty-Five Years and more

Tonight, one man who almost never stood in the middle of anything: John Kahn, the bass player at Jerry Garcia's left shoulder for twenty-five years, outside the Grateful

Grateful Dead Sleep Stories | The Night Jerry Garcia Grabbed Phil Lesh, and the Birth of Anthem of the Sun and more

Tonight, the winter the Grateful Dead made the Carousel Ballroom on Market Street their own room, and the night Jerry Garcia grabbed Phil Lesh at the top of a dressing-ro