Smiles
“You know our love will not fade away…”
Last week Dead & Company played their final shows on their “Final Tour.” The three incendiary nights at San Francisco’s Oracle Park raised questions: Is this really the final tour? Will we see the band play again in this form with John Mayer and Bobby Weir fronting it? And, what will happen to the Grateful Dead’s music—will it survive and thrive? My friend Parker wrote to me asking these questions based on an excellent article in the Times that tried to answer them.
During the pandemic I started conducting interviews for a book about the subject of how and why new generations of Deadheads are coming to life decade after decade. I haven’t had the will or time to pick the project back up but I just may someday. One of the interviews I did was with Peter Shapiro who is quoted in the Times piece. Among other things, Shapiro told me that “if you pull into just about any sizable town or city in America, chances are that a Dead cover band will be playing that weekend.”
In this space, we’ve also discussed at length the electronic transmission of the Dead’s music and many other aspects of the music’s ability to endure and birth new fans. The Grateful Dead and the band’s popular mutations that followed Jerry Garcia’s death indicate that something is different about this band and this music. Unlike The Rolling Stones who continue to tour and release music for example, new Deadheads are being born every day and music lovers want to understand why this is.
I think one of the essential reasons is that the music was shared widely, predating the internet of course, and that created a subculture. Then, when it was all digitized and everything became available to everybody (not just collectors and devoted Heads), it opened a brave new world of discovery. Ultimately though, my thesis is that the Grateful Dead embody the American spirit of adventure and discovery that Jack Kerouac and the Beats instilled into the American culture. Kerouac and Neil Cassady were important and inspirational to Garcia. He passed that spirit to so many people through his music and his attitude. This is what makes it so much bigger and lasting in a way than the Stones. This spirit, and the American roots music that the Dead expertly fused, has tapped into an American ethos that translates from generation to generation and is ripe for discovery by
the uninitiated. I have no doubt that there will be another major tour of some kind involving John Mayer that perpetuates the music of the Grateful Dead. In the meantime, bands like Joe Russo’s Almost Dead who are transcendent in their own interpretations of the music, plus the constant touring of original members with their own side bands, will transport the Dead forward. Ultimately, the music and the spirit of adventure that come with it are too good to fade away. Roll the clip to 8:23 and watch how Dead & Company opened the final weekend of their “Final Tour.”
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