On May 6-7, 1970, the Grateful Dead stepped onto the stage at MIT’s Kresge Auditorium in Cambridge, Massachusetts, during one of the most turbulent weeks in American college history. Just days earlier, National Guardsmen had opened fire on student protesters at Kent State, killing four. Students across the nation had launched coordinated strikes against the…
The year 1970 stands as one of rock and roll’s most paradoxical moments: a year when the Grateful Dead faced financial ruin, legal peril, and devastating personal loss—yet somehow created two of the most enduring and beloved albums in American music history. *Workingman’s Dead*, released in June, and *American Beauty*, arriving in November, didn’t just…
The woman behind “Sugar Magnolia” was a go-go dancer, George Harrison’s secretary, and the person who built the Dead’s touring infrastructure.
“I Know You Rider” started as an anonymous prison blues from the 1930s. The Grateful Dead turned it into the second half of their most beloved song pairing.
Before Donna Jean Godchaux sang with the Grateful Dead, she was a Muscle Shoals session vocalist who sang on records by Elvis and Aretha Franklin.
The Dancing Bears weren’t dancing — they were marching. And the man who drew them wasn’t a hippie artist. He was Owsley Stanley’s hand-picked designer.
In March 1971, the Grateful Dead played a benefit at Winterland with robed Sufi chanters circling a bonfire inside a wooden building. The tape was lost for fifty years.
The Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers shared stages, shared influences, and quietly resented each other. The Fillmore East shows tell the real story.
“Truckin'” was born from a real drug bust in New Orleans, became the Dead’s only charting single, and was declared a national treasure by the Library of Congress.
Six hundred thousand people showed up to Watkins Glen in 1973 for the Dead, the Allman Brothers, and the Band — and almost nobody remembers it.