A respectful history of the band but way too many pages were devoted to the early years. The best part of the book are the "Interlude" chapters. Those chapters make the book worth getting.

Let me just point out that the goodreads average rating on this book is 4.20. For a book that talks so much about synchronicity (and, of course, marijuana), this is perfect and hilarious. I will legit take down my 5 star rating if it disturbs this kismet.

I'm proud to classed as a Deadhead! This is ace book. I'll get down to writing a proper review when I get back from my long, strange trip!

Widely considered to be the ultimate compendium for Grateful Dead history, Dennis McNally’s A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead is an extremely dense book. It has taken me a long time to finish it, but it was extremely well-written and contained a lot of information that I did not know prior to picking it up.

The book follows the Grateful Dead from their 1965 gig at Magoo’s Pizza in Menlo Park, CA to Jerry Garcia’s death in 1995. McNally was the official band historian beginning in 1980. There’s a lot to be found in this book, from musical trivia and lyrics, feuds between the band members and crew, a sense of what being a Dead Head is all about, etc. It is essentially an encyclopedia for the Dead.

The book is presented mostly in chapter format, with an occasional “Interlude” thrown in. These Interludes do a good job of breaking up the flow of time for the reader, making it easy to read such a long book. I wish it hadn’t taken me so long to read, but at times it felt like information overload - I mean, I love the Dead but I don’t need to know absolutely everything! But the good side of this is that if you want to know anything about the Dead, you can probably find it inside.

Published in 2003, the book doesn’t have any information on The Dead’s reunification in 2009 (which I was fortunate to witness firsthand) or the musical developments of Phil Lesh and Friends, RatDog and The Other Ones in the mid-200s. But that’s to be expected, and considering this book is about the Grateful Dead, and not the side projects that happened after Garcia passed, there really isn’t anything missing.

4/5 Stars. 684 pages. Published 2003.

Loved this book!!!! Awesome history of the band and those crazy times. I think I was born in the wrong decade!

Loved it.

liked it. really good history of the time-1960's.

great review of the music scene and the Dead

This could not have been an easy book to write.. The Dead was such an unwieldy group, with no centre, and their story was likely clouded by the fog of all the drugs they did. So this book often lacks direction, and the description of one tour seems very much like others. But he's done the best job possible of producing a factual, detailed account of a great band.

Meticulous, encyclopedic history of the band, the people who surrounded them, and the evolution of the whole scene. Outstanding book.

Great, extensive history of the Dead phenomenon. The only thing that keeps me from giving it 5 stars is that over half of the book takes place before 1975. Of course, the band origins and Acid Test stuff is really interesting and important for context, but I'd have liked a bit more detail on the post-hiatus period. There are a few surprising omissions -- the famous Barton Hall concert is not even mentioned, for example. But no book can capture everything. I guess that's why there are multiple books on the Dead.

I picked this 600-odd page up off my friend's bookshelf, and not being a Deadhead, still told myself I'd read up into the point where the Dead became famous, and then I'd stop. (I like reading cultural/subcultural histories, and I was more interested in learning the band's backstory than reading about their days as a cultural phenomenon.) I got farther than that, to around page 250, and then I just had to put it down. Basically all 600 pages might have well have read, "the Grateful Dead shit gold". Really; the author was that sycophantic. There must be a more interesting, objective, varied history on the Dead out there. But I don't think I'm interested enough to seek one out.