Review by Booklist Review
There are already quite a few books about the Grateful Dead in fact, coauthor Jackson has written two of them, including a bio of Jerry Garcia but this one's a bit different. It's an oral history featuring author interviews with band members Garcia, Bob Weir, and Phil Lesh; filmmaker Allan Arkush (who worked with the band back in the day); comedian Tom Davis (he was the band's LSD connection); tour manager Sam Cutler; David Nelson (who founded, along with Garcia, the band New Riders of the Purple Sage); promoter Bill Graham; and many more. The book also incorporates previously published interviews that appeared in newspapers and magazines. Like Live from New York (2002), Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller's classic oral history of Saturday Night Live, the book shows us history as it was seen by its key players. Events reported on in other books are recounted here by their participants, providing differing perspectives on the same moments in time, and we get a feel for the relationships between the band's members, as suggested by their own words. The book is clearly designed for Deadheads, who, following the band's final concerts in July, will definitely need something to help relive the glory days. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The publication of this lively oral history will profit from revived interest in the Dead prompted by their recent last hurrah.--Pitt, David Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This epic oral history of the 50-year-old band is timed to coincide with five massively hyped "Fare Thee Well" concerts. The straightforward approach by Jackson and Gans (who collectively boast almost 80 years of Grateful Dead journalism) uses multiple perspectives to tell the story of a group that began as a San Francisco jug band of penniless hippies, morphed through multiple musical incarnations, and created a colorful psychedelic subculture. The more than 100 voices here include members of the Dead-including deceased guitarist/de facto leader Jerry Garcia, and keyboardists Ron "Pigpen" McKernan and Brent Mydland-and their collaborators as well as business partners and fans. Jackson and Gans relied on new and archival interviews, as well as other published and unpublished sources. To their credit, the authors focus as much on the creation, recording, and marketing of music as they do on the ingestion of hallucinogens. The result is a solid, engaging chronicle. Agent: Sandy Choron, March Tenth. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
This fine oral history joins the list of essential Dead books that includes such titles as Dennis McNally's A Long Strange Trip and Jackson's own Garcia: An American Life. It's not so much a matter of the revelations contained herein, although there are plenty, as what the different voices, working in concert, add to the band's story. Readers will quickly become absorbed into the Dead's world and will feel that everyone is speaking directly to them. Considering the disparate sources (every single one documented) -Jackson and Gans have drawn from, the narrative's natural flow is incredible. Helpful to telling the story are small narrative and scene-setting interjections provided throughout each chapter, giving just enough information to allow the reader to understand the particular context in which the material is being presented. Some interviews were conducted expressly for the book, but much is published here for the first time. VERDICT There may currently be no better introduction to the Grateful Dead than this superior tome.-Derek Sanderson, Mount Saint Mary Coll. Lib., Newburgh, NY © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Coming on its 50th anniversary and just after the band's farewell tour, an engaging, near-comprehensive oral history of the Grateful Dead. If "the Grateful Dead" and "disco" are not phrases that go together, it's not for want of their trying. As Jackson (Grateful Dead GearThe Band's Instruments, Sound Systems, and Recording Sessions, from 1965 to 1995, 2006, etc.) and musician Gans (Conversations with the Dead: The Grateful Dead Interview Book, 1991, etc.)collectors and archivists who know as much as nearly anyone alive about the storied bandchronicle, midway into the 1970s, with albums such as "From the Mars Hotel" and "Wake of the Flood" under their belts, the Dead were enough under the sway of Saturday Night Fever to attempt a disco-ish take on "Dancing in the Street." Chalk it up to Mickey Hart, one of the many thorns in this thorny narrative hide, whose return to the band wrought big changes. "We had to tell him [what to play]," said guitarist Bob Weir in 1977, "which means we had to be thinking about it, which means while we were thinking about it, we might as well rethink things in general." As fans already know but will further note, the superficially peace-and-love demeanor of the Dead disguised all sorts of tensions, from personality clashes to money worries and differences over musical direction. But it all worked, despite Jerry Garcia's drug use and increasingly erratic behavior. Says sound tech Bob Bralove, "The energy around [the last tour with Garcia] was kind of confusing, because there was this really positive energy coming from the band, but it was missing a key ingredient." For all that, there's plenty of peace and love here and lots of smoke and psychedelia, as well as the usual Altamont regrets, all voiced by people in and close to the band. Worthy of Studs Terkel and an essential addition to the books of the Dead. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
