Great historical account of the band. A great group of people who got to spend their lives doing what they love. Proud to be a dead head.

First of all, if you're a Dead fan, as most of my friends are, this is an absolute "must" of a read. McNally provides you with so many tales and back stories which I for one did not know. He provides us with an absolutely fascinating look into my favorite band during its formative years. While there are interspersed chapters throughout which deal with later day Dead of the 80's and 90's (which i honestly found a bit distracting), the book basically is chronological from Jerry's youth through the end of 1972. And this is where I have my biggest complaint about Long Strange Trip. It calls itself the "complete" history of The Grateful Dead but esentially leaves out 20 years of their lifetime. I'm hoping this was by design and McNally (maybe) plans on a Pt 2. which will include the mid and late 70's (MY time with the band) as well as the 80's and 90's. I don't however get the felling that this will be the case.

But even with this shortcoming I'll say it again...if the Dead mean anything to you, this is a book which you ought to dive feet first into.

Audio version.

Part history, part hagiography. A solid overview of the history of the band, but it doesn't get to the heart of the issues between the band members until the last few chapters (although those chapters are fairly short and significantly compress the timelines compared to most of the book).

This large and comprehensive book makes a fantastic gift.

Some people see the bus and get on. Others see the bus, but don't get on, and then there are those that don't even see the bus.

It was nice to get more of the background on the Dead, the members, their operations, and more. The book included plenty of the bad that was part of their story.

The book mentioned a couple of the shows I had been to, and several "old stomping grounds" when I used to live in the Bay Area. A fun flashback to memory lane.

I also have several musicians that I had never listened to before that I have been able to listen to and really dig.

One of my favorite parts of the book was when Micky Hart explains the rhythms in "The Other One".

I’m a Dead Head, but I never got to see the Grateful Dead in concert. My older brother had an extra ticket for a show in June 1995 and offered to take me, but I had already scheduled my college orientation and went to that instead. I thought to myself at the time that I’d have a chance to see them some other time, because they’d always be out on tour, right? Turned out I was wrong. Jerry Garcia died 2 months after that on August 9, 1995, so I never got my chance. My brother has given me a hard time about that and has never let me live that down and it is one of the biggest regrets of my life. I did get to go to The Furthur Festival the next summer in 1996 (same brother had extra ticket and took me - pretty good brother) which featured Bob Weir and Ratdog, Mickey Hart’s Mystery Box, and Bruce Hornsby, so that helped make up for my missing out. Maybe I’ll get to see a Dead & Company show some day...

I enjoyed this history of the band and I learned a lot. One of the funniest stories McNally told is when the band members were in Washington D.C. in 1993 and were taken on a tour of the White House by Dead Head Al Gore (who was dressed in a three-piece suit), Jerry Garcia wore sweatpants that day. I just thought that was hilarious. The book does have a lot of details though, so be ready for that.

The Grateful Dead were very unique in their sound. They combined a mix of Rock & Roll, Jazz, Blue Grass, and Country, and were unmatched in their ability to improvise and jam. They weren’t for everybody though, and I totally get that. The perpetual drug scene around the band, their disorganization, and just flat out weirdness turned a lot of people off, and I can completely understand why someone wouldn’t like their music.

As for me, I consider myself to be the biggest Dead Head who never got to see them in concert. I can’t put a finger on why I like them as much as I do, but their music will always be special to me.

Çok detaylıydı ama eğlenceli.

I heard the author interviewed on a local radio station. He was drawn into the Grateful Dead circle during his time researching and writing the Kerouac book that I also have on my to-read shelf.

From the authors comments, it sounds as though the book will go into the long proud history that links Thoreau with the Beat Generation poets and finally the counter-culture and the Grateful Dead. I'm really looking forward to this read.

I am a casual Dead fan but recently have been drawn in while learning to play and sing some of their songs: Ripple, China Doll, Bertha, Box of Rain, Uncle John's Band. My curiosity was further piqued by the Dead-centric "Psychedelic Posters" exhibit at the Denver Art Museum.

To learn more about the band and its legacy I picked up this book on Goodreads' recommendation.

I was dismayed to learn that the author served as the Dead's publicist during the mid-late Jerry era. That did not bode well for a balanced or thorough bio.

But Dennis McNally is also a biographer of Jack Kerouac. He is up to the task of describing and evoking the 1960s Bay Area beat/folk/jug band/psychedia/hippie scene with such figures as Ken Kesey, Neal Cassady, Timothy Leary interlaced with Jerry and the Dead. His writing is concrete and vivid (albeit a bit pompous) with dazzling re-creations of dozens of long-lost encounters and, yes, "happenings."

The first 100 pages are a savvy you-are-there recounting of this scene. They read more like intellectual history than a typical rock-fan book. The discussion of arcane philosphical constructs must leave a few Deadhead scratching their dredlocks.

Then LSD comes into the picture and this becomes a book about taking drugs. The Dead and their cohorts must have ingested more drugs than food. A good trip becomes a bummmer fast. I tuned out and dropped out save scanning for key points. What creative circumstances and energy went into the back-to-back masterpieces "Workingman's Dead" and "American Beauty"? How did Jerry, the passive leader, handle trying to kick Bob Weir and Pigpen out of the band? What is 'China Doll' about? The answers are there, satisfyingly rendered, And now I am done with "A Long Strange Trip."

My own reassessment of the Dead: the jam-band tag is unfortunate. Although Phil Lesh, Jerry Garcia, and Bill Kreutzman are very good musicians, they are not good enough to sustain 45-minute C-chord jams. Trained in contemporary classical composition and jazz, Lesh led the band into Space Music, but he was not successful in competing with his hero Stockhausen or his contemporary Steve Reich. They were inspired by John Coltrane but do not ascend to anything near that level.

And none of them can sing a lick.

What makes them rise above the jam-band scene they spawned is some excellent songwriting, which at its best rivals Bob Dylan and the Band in telling the memorable stories of losers toiling in coal mines and freight yards. McNally does a great job recalling the Berkeley folk scene that led Garcia and Robert Hunter to pen such timeless songs as "Cumberland Blues." The Dead's reputation may rest on Americana, no psychedelia.

The random snatches I've read of this Grateful Dead bio are pretty awesome. The pictures alone are quite entertaining, especially Jerry in pigtails.

An enjoyable trip. I definitely learned a lot about The Grateful Dead. McNally was The Dead's publicist so he was right in the thick of things for decades. Unfortunately it often seemed as though he was trying to cram in the names of everyone The Grateful Dead ever came into contact with-- in one sentence he mentioned seven people! Still, a fun read about a band I knew little about.