Deadheads Photographs by Jay Blakesberg Curated by Ricki Blakesberg

"I borrowed my dad’s Pentax camera and photographed the Grateful Dead for the first time. I took 2 or 3 photos of the Deadheads in the audience. I didn’t know it at the moment, but this would be the very beginning of my lifelong quest to document the modern day hippie tribe."

Presented as an upscale fanzine, Deadheads is a collection of photographs capturing the parking lot, hallway experience and overall scene through the lens of Jay Blakesberg. Featuring black and white and color images mostly from the 80s, the viewer gets a sense of the inspired, quirky, and somewhat chaotic traveling circus that followed the band from venue to venue. In Deadheads, the veteran rock photographer turns his camera away from the stage lights and toward the crowd, capturing the living, breathing organism that sustained the Grateful Dead for thirty years. What unfolds is less a concert chronicle than a love letter to the tribe itself: sunburned pilgrims, roadside vendors, cosmic hitchhikers and wide-eyed dreamers orbiting around a shared frequency.

Shot on film across twenty years—from parking lots in the late ’70s to the bittersweet final tours toward the mid-’90s—Deadheads is akin to a family album. The grain and haze of analog film feel right here; memory itself seems to seep from the negatives. Blakesberg isn’t chasing perfection. He’s chasing spirit—the stoney smile under a tie-dyed bandana, the spontaneous ritual of strangers dancing in time.

Co-curated with his daughter Ricki, the journal feels both archival and alive. It’s part zine, part ethnography and part devotional object—assembled with the same patchwork energy that powered the parking-lot bazaars outside every show. There are no rock gods here, only the faithful.

Blakesberg’s volume will particularly resonate with those members of the traveling carnival who chased sound and song from venue to venue. As one who eclipsed the 100-show mark during this stretch, I found myself seeking familiar faces amongst the shots at sacred 1980s spaces like the Frost, Henry J Kaiser Auditorium, Greek Theater or Alpine Valley Amphitheater.

“With no technology yet invented, we found our way, made human connections, figured out our fashion vibe and lived to tell the story.”

Some photographs are framed with images of ticket stubs, backstage passes or offset borders that feel more distracting than expressive and compete with Blakesberg’s own vision. Fortunately, the effect is limited to a small selection. I also wish Deadheads featured a more cogent key to dates and venues of the photographs. For a band whose story is so rooted in specific nights and places, the delivery feels like an afterthought which leaves the viewer wishing for a better map to accompany the memories.

In the end, Deadheads isn’t about the band so much as the gravitational pull they created. Blakesberg’s camera finds poetry in the faces that followed the sound, reminding us that the real story of the Grateful Dead was never just onstage—it was everywhere Billy’s and Mickey’s drumbeat carried them.

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PLAYIN' IN THE BAND 7/29/88 Laguna Seca Raceway, Salinas, CA

Thirty-five years later, thanks to Glenn Davis for cueing this one up.

-- Winding south along a fog-soaked Pacific coast, I was involved in a head-on crash en route to Laguna Seca when a car drifted into our lane. Two friends suffered terrible injuries. We were lucky to survive. The months that followed were a haze of pain, PT and recurring nightmares. I usually tracked every show and devoured every tape, but after the accident I couldn’t bring myself to think about the Laguna Seca run – much less listen to it.

Fast forward to 2022. Glenn Davis put on the show while we crossed the Bay Bridge after an underwhelming Roger Waters concert. About 2 minutes into the jam, Jerry flips the switch – his tone mutates and everything starts to unravel. The music spirals into chaos, then detonates into a wall of noise that’s both terrifying and cathartic. Forget “good for 1988.” I’ll put it up against Veneta on 8/27/72 or the Boston Garden 12/2/73 blowout. Epic.