Berry Oakley’s Tragedy Began Before the Crash

Bob Weir got fired from the Grateful Dead at twenty. But he was already running the show. Ace, Kingfish, Bobby and the Midnites, RatDog: a 27-year campaign. In 1968, Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh told Bob Weir he didn’t count. Rock Scully put it plain: the weight was on four cats, not six. Weir was…

Everyone knows the Beats became the hippies. Almost nobody can tell you how. The answer isn’t a movement or a moment — it’s one man, behind the wheel of a bus, who drove from one America straight into the next. His name was Neal Cassady. In 1957 Jack Kerouac made him immortal as Dean Moriarty…

Jerry Garcia called Gregg Allman a narc. The Scooter Herring trial reveals the testimony, immunity, and fallout behind a bitter chapter in Grateful Dead history. Before the accusation, the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers Band shared stages and an appetite for taking the music further. Duane Allman sat in with Jerry Garcia at the…

Four men who held the Grateful Dead’s keyboard chair are gone — Pigpen, Keith Godchaux, Brent Mydland, Vince Welnick. Tom Constanten is the one the “curse” never touched. Here’s why he walked away clean. Tom Constanten (“TC”) played keyboards for the Grateful Dead for just 14 months, 1968–1970 — the only man to sit in…

Jerry Garcia’s death in 1995 wasn’t about addiction. It was about a machine that employed hundreds — and had no one in charge. The Grateful Dead grossed over $50 million annually by the early ’90s. Every dollar flowed through one man who openly refused to be the leader.

In 1977 the Grateful Dead were playing the best music of their lives � and Jerry Garcia was already smoking Persian heroin daily. Here’s how it broke every rule they had. Spring 1977: Cornell, Barton Hall, the Terrapin debut, Scarlet Begonias into Fire on the Mountain � the run Deadheads built an identity around. And…