The Grateful Dead

The Grateful Dead, also known as the Dead, American rock band, best known for its live performances that featured extended instrumental improvisations. The Grateful Dead's frequent concert tours earned legions of devoted followers known as Deadheads, many of whom lived a free-spirited, alternative lifestyle and who followed the band from concert to concert. By performing numerous live shows to large and faithful audiences over a 30-year period, the Grateful Dead became the highest-grossing live band in the history of rock music.

Named after a dictionary entry (describing a type of folktale), The Grateful Dead was founded in 1965 in San Francisco, California. Members included vocalist and lead guitarist Jerry Garcia; bassist Phil Lesh; vocalist and guitarist Bob Weir; keyboard player and vocalist Ron McKernan; drummer Bill Kreutzmann; and drummer and percussionist Mickey Hart, who joined the band in 1968. McKernan, nicknamed Pigpen, died in 1973 and was replaced by a series of keyboard players over the years.

Originally a jug band (an acoustic folk-blues group), the Grateful Dead combined influences from country-and-western music, the blues, jazz, and rhythm-and-blues music. The band attracted a cult following for their live performances, which featured a wide variety of songs in an improvised format that was shaped in part by audience rapport. The result was a style of rock music known as psychedelic rock, in part because band members and fans experimented with hallucinogenic drugs such as Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD). The most popular member of the band and its spiritual leader, Garcia came to personify the utopian ideals of the group's fans. Beginning in the 1970s Garcia and Weir also toured independently with their own bands. The Grateful Dead's albums include Anthem of the Sun (1968); Live Dead (1970), the band's first live album; Workingman's Dead (1970), in which the group shifted from electric to acoustic music; Grateful Dead From the Mars Hotel (1974); In the Dark (1987), which includes the song “Touch of Grey,” a top-10 hit on the Billboard magazine music charts; and Built to Last (1989). In 1994 the Grateful Dead was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The group disbanded in 1995 after Garcia's death that year. In 1998 Grateful Dead musicians Bob Weir and Mickey Hart reunited the remaining members of the group for a concert tour under the name The Other Ones.