Why the Grateful Dead Waited 21 Years for Unbroken Chain

In 1962, a 20-year-old folk singer named Robert Hunter carried a typewriter into a CIA-funded LSD experiment at the Menlo Park VA hospital — and became the first future member of the Grateful Dead to take acid. He later wrote “Ripple,” “Dark Star,” and “Box of Rain.” Drawing on Dennis McNally’s A Long Strange Trip,…

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…

When was the Grateful Dead’s first show? You get four answers, all of them real, and none of them clean. The most documented band in music has no tape of the night it truly began. The Shakedown Archives publishes new research on Grateful Dead history each week. If you enjoyed this essay, you can subscribe…

Berry Oakley’s tragedy began before his motorcycle crash. After Duane Allman died, the Allman Brothers bassist struggled through a final year on the road. The Shakedown Archives publishes new research on Grateful Dead history each week. If you enjoyed this essay, you can subscribe to the companion YouTube channel below. Subscribe on YouTube Further Reading…

Every 4th of July, Deadheads wave the flag to “U.S. Blues” — the Grateful Dead’s most patriotic-sounding song. Almost nobody notices Robert Hunter wrote it as a con: Uncle Sam confessing a swindle. It isn’t a flag-raiser, and it isn’t a secret protest anthem either. It’s an affectionate con. Robert Hunter wrote Uncle Sam —…

Jerry Garcia left Wolf to the man who built it. The Grateful Dead disputed the ownership, turning a personal bequest into a fight over a legendary guitar. Doug Irwin built Wolf for a player who kept asking more of his instruments. It became part of the Grateful Dead’s changing sound in the 1970s, from the…