Deadhead Forever by Scott Meyer

 Published 2001 by Running Press Book Publishers

"When we met with JB after the show, he introduced us to Fry and Cat, a couple from Brooklyn. Now we were a crew, driving across Minnesota and Wisconsin. We stopped at a rest area and learned all about sphagnum moss. Josh walked up to a light swarming with moths and bugs - and stood calmly as they flew into his bushy hear and beard."

You buy an old VW microbus. While cleaning it out, you discover a Deadhead’s scrapbook; part tour diary, part time capsule, part reliquary. That's the premise of Deadhead Forever: Property of Haze, a fictional journal presented as “found” ephemera. It's packed with musings, newspaper clippings, setlists, Ticketron stubs, photos, “Dupree’s Diamond News”-styled odds & ends and a hundred scraps that stitch a surprisingly cohesive narrative. The story is invented, but the details are rooted in the Dead reality of dates, setlists, venues and memorabilia. 

The real author, Scott Meyer, leans hard into the illusion. His name is absent from the cover experience, replaced by “Haze,” the owner of the scrapbook. Even the usual front-of-book landmarks (title page, copyright, dedication) are absent... as if you’re not reading a book so much as politely trespassing through someone’s private archive. 

That commitment pays off immediately. You open to handwriting, Haze’s scrawl, detailing the Giants Stadium parking lot, mid-party and the sudden realization that the band is already onstage. You get the little human errors that make a journal feel authentic: a setlist note with an arrow, a correction rendered in ink, a thought that trails off. The humor is warm and the voice feels like someone you’ve met at a show, or at least someone you might share a post-show grilled cheese with.

The book’s best trick is how convincingly it mimics the way actual Heads document their lives, not in clean linear chapters, but in artifacts... creases, torn corners, half-legible notes penned in the dark. One of my favorite examples is the ticket stub from the “Formerly the Warlocks” Hampton shows: nearly ripped in half, a small but perfect nod to the famously aggressive ticket-tearing terrors during the two-night run. If you were there, you’ll grin. If you weren’t, you’ll still feel like you’re holding evidence.

"Every room at the Red Roof Inn in Noblesville, Indiana looked lit up by the time Larissa and I got back to our room after the second Deer Creek show. A guy wearing nothing but a pair of shorts was in the hallway across from our room, holding two buckets of ice. He invited us to a party in his room at the other end of the hall. The ice in his hands and the glaze in his eyes suggested the party was already in full swing."

That “found object” feeling can be uncanny. When I first moved to Berkeley, a friend somehow came into the possession of an actual journal from a well-known author. When she loaned it to me, I read the pages with equal parts fascination and guilt—like I was trespassing into someone else’s private universe.. Deadhead Forever isn’t like that. It captures the intimacy of a real tour journal without the queasy ethics of reading something never meant for you. It’s an artifact with consent.

If looking for a musicological deep dive or a rigorous history of the scene, this isn’t that book. Deadhead Forever is more scrapbook than scholarship: a playful, cluttered celebration of the culture around the band, presented with enough authenticity to make you almost forget it’s constructed. It’s full of winks, nods and random ephemera that reward slow flipping and repeat visits. 

For readers who want “real” tour journaling in a more straightforward documentary mode, Hollie Rose’s When Push Comes to Shove is a better companion on the shelf. But if you want a book that feels like you found it under a seat, like it’s already lived a life, Deadhead Forever has a place in the canon of Dead-adjacent weirdness and wonder.

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* This book is out of print and may be only available via scouring the shelves of used bookstores or trawling auction sites. Like tracking down an elusive show on cassette in the before days, the hunt is half the fun.

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