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Grateful Dead Band Members


Dark Star: An Oral Biography of Jerry Garcia by Robert Greenfield
Published in 1996, Robert Greenfield’s "Dark Star" is an oral biography of Jerry Garcia built from the memories of the people who knew him. Instead of a single narrator steering the ship, Greenfield lets a chorus handle the navigation: family, friends and bandmates who sometimes harmonize, sometimes contradict one another, and often do both in the same breath. Individual recollections range from a couple of sentences to the occasional full page. The result is living portrait.
Stuart Ake
Feb 73 min read


Deal: My Three Decades of Drumming, Dreams, and Drugs with the Grateful Dead by Bill Kreutzmann
Bill Kreutzmann’s Deal is not a historian’s chronicle of the Grateful Dead. It reads like a field recording from the drummer’s stool told by the man who held the beat. Co-written with journalist Benjy Eisen, the book is exceptionally candid, percussive and sometimes messy in a way that feels honest rather than careless.
Stuart Ake
Jan 184 min read


Searching for the Sound: My Life with the Grateful Dead by Phil Lesh
Phil Lesh approaches memory like he approached music—with precision, curiosity and the occasional dissonant note. Searching for the Sound isn’t a tell-all or a nostalgia trip. It’s the bassist’s attempt to trace the arc from Palo Alto jam sessions to the strange, mythic machinery the Grateful Dead became.
Stuart Ake
Dec 26, 20252 min read
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