People

The Grateful Dead was never about one person. From Jerry Garcia’s songbook partnership with Robert Hunter to Bob Weir’s rhythm engine, from Pigpen’s blues-rooted frontman years through the five keyboard players who followed him, the band was a collective that kept reshaping itself through the people who passed through it. This archive covers the core members — Garcia, Weir, Phil Lesh, Pigpen, Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, Keith and Donna Godchaux, Brent Mydland, Vince Welnick, and Bruce Hornsby — as well as the lyricists, soundmen, promoters, road crew, and guest musicians who made the Dead possible. If you want to understand the band, you start with the people.