Product Description

The complete history of one of the most long-lived and legendary bands in rock history, written by its official historian and publicist–a must-have chronicle for all Dead Heads, and for students of rock and the 1960s’ counterculture.

From 1965 to 1995, the Grateful Dead flourished as one of the most beloved, unusual, and accomplished musical entities to ever grace American culture. The creative synchronicity among Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart, and Ron “Pigpen” McKernan exploded out of the artistic ferment of the early sixties’ roots and folk scene, providing the soundtrack for the Dionysian revels of the counterculture. To those in the know, the Dead was an ongoing tour de force: a band whose constant commitment to exploring new realms lay at the center of a thirty-year journey through an ever-shifting array of musical, cultural, and mental landscapes.

Dennis McNally, the band’s historian and publicist for more than twenty years, takes readers back through the Dead’s history in A Long Strange Trip. In a kaleidoscopic narrative, McNally not only chronicles their experiences in a fascinatingly detailed fashion, but veers off into side trips on the band’s intricate stage setup, the magic of the Grateful Dead concert experience, or metaphysical musings excerpted from a conversation among band members. He brings to vivid life the Dead’s early days in late-sixties San Francisco–an era of astounding creativity and change that reverberates to this day. Here we see the group at its most raw and powerful, playing as the house band at Ken Kesey’s acid tests, mingling with such legendary psychonauts as Neal Cassady and Owsley “Bear” Stanley, and performing the alchemical experiments, both live and in the studio, that produced some of their most searing and evocative music. But McNally carries the Dead’s saga through the seventies and into the more recent years of constant touring and incessant musical exploration, which have cemented a unique bond between performers and audience, and created the business enterprise that is much more a family than a corporation.

Written with the same zeal and spirit that the Grateful Dead brought to its music for more than thirty years, the book takes readers on a personal tour through the band’s inner circle, highlighting its frenetic and very human faces. A Long Strange Trip is not only a wide-ranging cultural history, it is a definitive musical biography.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #415340 in Books
• Published on: 2002-08-06
• Released on: 2002-08-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 704 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The Grateful Dead forever changed popular music by ushering in the psychedelic sound of the 1960s as they valiantly toured almost nonstop for three decades and consumed loads of illegal substances. Yet the most fascinating, and revealing, thing about the Dead is their fans the Deadheads: tie-dyed, drugged up and devoted in a way that makes Beatlemania look rational. What did the Dead have that fellow San Francisco bands Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Moby Grape lacked? As author McNally (Desolate Angel: Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation, and America) explains in this entertaining and well-written book, the Dead built up their loyal following by treating fans as equals, as "companions in an odyssey." After improvisation, writes McNally, "the single largest element in the Dead's weltanschauung was their pursuit of group mind under the influence of LSD...." As the Dead's publicist for more than 20 years, McNally packs this 600-pager full of intimate details otherwise unavailable, such as the time the group's janitor vetoed a suggestion from multimillion-dollar promoter Bill Graham as too "commercial." On the other hand, McNally clearly dodges the more unflattering and controversial aspects of the musicians' lives offstage; indeed, every living member of the original lineup provides glowing endorsements on the book's back cover. But perhaps McNally thinks the Dead's underside has been done to death; in any case, with a little prettifying he still manages to pen the most exhaustively researched book on the band to date.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
McNally has been the Grateful Dead's official historian since 1980.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
McNally, Grateful Dead historian and publicist for more than 20 years, is well suited to write the group's biography as comprehensively as anyone could, and, naturally, he writes from a very positive, supportive perspective. He says the Dead's music is "an incredible document of American electronic folk music in the late twentieth century." And you thought it was just music to get stoned and dance to. "But the primary legacy of the Grateful Dead," he asserts, consists of its "stylistic and social influence on other bands, the philosophical underpinnings that Dead Heads will carry with them to their graves, and the recorded music that the band left behind. No other American band . . . united the improvisational nature of jazz with rock modalities in quite the same way." So, there you have it. Those looking for a detailed history of the Dead and/or such sweeping pronouncements will greatly enjoy this account of how the band has been truckin' all these years. Mike Tribby
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

A Long, Strange Trip and a Great Read!
Believe me, McNally's book is going to be the definitive Dead book from now on. Only Blair Jackson's GARCIA is in the same league. Not only is the whole story of the band told, but it's told well and is a terrific read. McNally is to be commended for concentrating on the band, their world, and their music without getting bogged down in their personal lives. That's not the point here. His decision to break the narrative flow with occasional interludes works, giving details on different aspects of the Dead's world that flesh out the story. My only quibbles (and they're small ones) are these: I wish he had included more about Tom Constanten and Vince Welnick--they were both members of the band (if briefly) and deserve a little more attention. And there is an occasional needless swipe at other artists like Frank Zappa and the Velvet Underground (who did not hate their audience, as McNally claims). But aside from that, a great tale well-told.

Official but hardly definitive
This is a troubled book. For one thing, you've read most of it already if you've read the other 4 or 5 important books on the band that have come out since Garcia's death. He quotes liberally from all of them, including the hilarious but scarcely dependable "Living With the Dead" by Rock Scully. In fact, that's probably where you need to start - with Scully's book. For fun, to remind yourself that it was all about fun after all. Then treat yourself to one of the best biographies you'll ever read with "Garcia", then get a look at the dark underbelly with "Dark Star", and you'll begin to get a sense of the big stories from at least 3 perspectives. Then if you still need more read "A Long Strange Trip" to patch in the cracks. McNally's unbalanced but highly detailed work provides loads of names, dates, places, addresses, etc.; enough to keep trivia buffs and collectors busy for years. But the big questions (you know the ones) will still go maddeningly unanswered. I cynically opine in my idle hours that this is because access to The Band is still probably limited to those who don't kick up too much dust, like it always was. The Grateful Dead is still one of the most potent social and musical phenomena of the post war period, and their influence continues to echo (ripple?) throughout countless millions of lives, and will for the next several thousand years. (Stop and think about it. There will be Deadheads 1000 years from now.) This is a good but not great look into the origins of that organism.

Important piece of the puzzle
Like many of the reviewers here, I've read most of the books about the dead. Each seems to add a little to a complex story that no single perspective can completely render. If you find this band, the 60s, psychedelia and the San Francisco scene to be of interest, by all means read this entertaining book. McNally is particularly good in exploring psychedelia's emphasis on the "now," and Garcia's embrace of spontaneous performance as a high art form (pun intended).
Again, as other reviewers pointed out, this is not the only story. Read the other dead books, Peter Coyote's book (as someone here suggested), the Bill Graham biography, Charles Perry's "Haight-Ashbury," the books about Janis Joplin, "Storming Heaven" the great book about LSD and its social impact, "Electric Kool Aid Acid Test," and on and on. (One problem in reading these general works, though, is that you'll have to endure some of the same stories over and over, and you'll have authors explaining to you what LSD was, and who Bob Dylan is.)
I find this period endlessly fascinating and overall it's being well served by some really terrific books - this one included.