Biography of Jerry Garcia

Jerry Garcia was the lead guitarist, vocalist, and spokesman for the seminal '60s rock & roll band the Grateful Dead. Throughout his career, he led the Dead through numerous changes, becoming one of the most famous figures in the history of rock & roll. Simultaneously, Garcia pursued an eclectic array of side projects, ranging from the bluegrass group Old & in the Way to his folky solo recordings. Garcia stayed active as a member of the Grateful Dead and as a solo performer until his death in 1995. Garcia learned to play guitar when he was 15 years old, originally playing folk and rock & roll. In 1959, when he was 17 years old, he spent a brief time in the army. When he left the military after a matter of months, he moved to Palo Alto, CA, where he met and became friends with Robert Hunter, who would later become his lyricist. Garcia bought a banjo in 1962 and began playing in local bluegrass bands. Within a few years, he was a member of Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions, a popular local bluegrass and folk band whose membership also included Bob Weir and Pigpen. In 1965, this group evolved into the Warlocks, which would in turn become the Grateful Dead in 1966. Over the course of the next five years, the Grateful Dead began building a reputation as a mesmerizing live act. During this time, Garcia guested with a number of bands, both in concert and in the studio; among the artists he appeared with are the New Riders of the Purple Sage (a band which he helped form), Jefferson Starship, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. In 1970, the Grateful Dead began to shift their music back toward their folk, country, and bluegrass roots with the albums Workingman's Dead and American Beauty. The following year, Garcia began a solo career with Hooteroll?, which was released on Douglas Records. For the next few years, Garcia recorded solo albums frequently, often with keyboardist Merl Saunders. In 1973, he was one of the founding members of the bluegrass supergroup Old & in the Way, which also featured David Grisman, Vassar Clements, and John Kahn. Garcia's solo efforts slowed in the early '80s, as he battled heroin addiction and diabetes. After the Grateful Dead scored their first hit album in 1987 with In the Dark, Garcia pursued a number of solo projects, including several acoustic duet records with David Grisman and a handful of live tours and albums with the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band. For the first half of the '90s, Garcia concentrated on Grateful Dead tours and albums, as the band confirmed their status as one of the most popular concert acts in America. However, the guitarist slowly sank back into heroin addiction. Late in the summer of 1995, he entered Serenity Knolls, a drug rehabilitation facility in Forest Knolls, CA. While he was attempting to recover, Garcia died in his sleep of a heart attack on August 9, 1995. Several months after his death, the Grateful Dead announced their disbandment. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Biography of Robert Hunter

Robert Hunter is best known as a non-performing lyricist for the Grateful Dead. He is also a recording artist in his own right, a poet, and a translator. Hunter began contributing lyrics to the Dead at the invitation of his friend, Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia, as of the group's third album, Aoxomoxoa, in 1969. Since then, he wrote some of the Dead's most memorable words, including "Truckin'" ("What a long, strange trip it's been") and the 1987 comeback hit "Touch of Grey." Hunter began recording solo albums on the Dead's record label in 1974 and continued sporadically since. ~ William Ruhlmann

Biography of Grateful Dead

The Grateful Dead were the longest-lived of the San Francisco "acid rock" groups of the '60s. In the '90s, after more than 25 years in action, the Dead were still playing to enough satisfied customers on the road (most of them "Deadheads") to make them one of the top-grossing concert acts in the music business.The group was formed in 1965 by bluegrass enthusiast Jerry Garcia (b. Aug 1, 1942 - d. Aug 9, 1995) on guitar and vocals, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan (b. Sep 8, 1945 - d. Mar 8, 1973) on vocals and organ, Bob Weir (b. Oct 16, 1947) on guitar and vocals, classical music student Phil Lesh (b. Mar, 15, 1945) on bass and vocals, and Bill Kreutzmann (b. Apr 7, 1946) on drums. From the beginning, they brought together a variety of influences, from Garcia's country background to Pigpen's feeling for blues (his father was an R&B radio DJ) and Lesh's education in contemporary "serious" music. Add to that the experimentation encouraged at some of the group's first performances at novelist Ken Kesey's "acid test" parties -- multimedia events intended to replicate (or accompany) the experience of taking the then-legal drug LSD -- and you had a musical mixture of styles often played with extended improvisational sections that could go off in nearly any direction.The band signed to Warner Brothers in 1967, experiencing some difficulties early on with the restrictions of standard recording practices and the company's interest in producing a conventionally commercial product. As a result, the group's first few albums were somewhat tentative but showed promise for the future, especially with the key additions of Mickey Hart as a second drummer in 1967 and Garcia's old friend Robert Hunter as the band's lyricist.The Dead finally hit their stride with the release of Live/Dead, a double album, in 1969. (They were always more comfortable on stage than in the studio.) Two studio albums in 1970, Workingman's Dead and American Beauty, found them exploring folk-rock and more tightly constructed song forms and, along with extensive touring, won them a much larger audience.In second half of the '70s, the Dead recorded a series of commercially-oriented albums for Arista, then concentrated on road work for the better part of the '80s. In the Dark, released in 1987, was their first studio album in seven years. It sold a million copies and produced the band's first Top Ten hit in "Touch of Grey." The Dead continued to tour, notably doing shows with Bob Dylan, and at the start of the '90s, they began to release vintage material on their own Grateful Dead Merchandising label. Garcia died of heart failure on August 9, 1995. A few months after his death, the surviving members of the Grateful Dead disbanded. ~ William Ruhlmann