The Most Radical Thing Robert Hunter Ever Refused

Phil Lesh played bass wrong on purpose — and after Jerry Garcia died, he became the one member who treated the Grateful Dead’s vault, name, and music as too fragile to sell. This is the real story of the fracture that split the band’s survivors for thirty years. When Jerry Garcia died in 1995, the…

In July 1973 the Allman Brothers had two dead founders and a lineup that hadn’t existed eighteen months earlier. Then they walked onto the biggest stage in American rock history.

Keith Godchaux had two jobs at once — and the same hands fading in the Grateful Dead were doing the best work of his life in the Jerry Garcia Band. The drugs were real. They can’t explain that. Keith’s story almost always gets told as a drug story. But the drugs can’t explain the Garcia…

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…

Vince Welnick was the safe pick — and that is exactly why he never had a chance. When Brent Mydland died in 1990, the Grateful Dead didn’t reinvent themselves; they chose the candidate who wouldn’t change a thing, built him a role with no room to matter, and then forgot him. By 1990 the Grateful…