The famous rock band The Grateful Dead was named after Kennedy Center Honors Earlier this year, celebrating decades of innovation and success.
“It’s a legacy for me and for us, I think,” drummer Mickey Hart said of the band. honor.
The surviving members – Bobby Weir, Bill Kreutzmann and Hart – told “CBS Mornings” that the tribute is not just to the band members, but to their fans.
“They kept us going,” Weir said.
Forms of the grateful dead
The band formed in the San Francisco Bay Area in the mid-1960s. Weir was 16 years old when he first heard Jerry Garcia playing the banjo outside a music store in Palo Alto.
“It was New Year’s Eve, he invited us in. We had enough fun that evening that we decided it was too much fun to get away from him,” Weir said.
Kreutzmann remembers seeing Garcia and Ware playing at a club.
“I was absolutely blown away by Jerry’s ability to hold an audience in his hands. ‘Jerry held the light for everyone,’ he said. “He called me that week and said, ‘Hey, do you want to be in a band?’ I said: Sure.
Kreutzmann later brought Hart into the band in 1967.
“Bill invited me to play and sit in. When I heard the band, I said, ‘Wow.’ “We all turned to the Grateful Dead in different ways, but we really turned to them,” Hart said. “We’ve got a few.”
Garcia was also recruited Why?a musician classically trained to play the bass. Lesh, one of the original band members, died in October at the age of 84.
Legacy of the Grateful Dead
In their 30 years as a band, the Grateful Dead scored just one Top 40 hit with “Touch of Grey,” and not a single Grammy nomination.
“We’ve had people come up to us and say, ‘You guys will never make it.’ You’re playing too long. You’re playing too loud,” Kreutzmann recalls.
But over their decades together, they built a large following known as “Deadheads,” who began recording and sharing their concerts.
“You’d look out from the stage and it would look like a forest of microphone trees,” Kreutzmann said of their fans recording their concerts.
Their record label advised against allowing fans to record, but the band refused, saying they were not concerned about piracy.
“It was the smartest thing we ever did,” Kreutzmann said.
The Grateful Dead have performed over 2,300 concerts, most of which were recorded by fans.
“These tapes have gone all over the world,” Hart said. “They were our archivists, too.”
When Garcia died in 1995, the band broke up after 30 years together. They weren’t sure they could find a way forward without their leader.
“When Jerry left that was the end of the Grateful Dead. Period. There’s no way you can replace Jerry Garcia,” Kreutzmann said.
The surviving members went on to start other projects and bands, but the spirit of the Grateful Dead will always live on. Ware said Garcia visits him in dreams from time to time, including recently.
“In the dream, Jerry comes to me and says: “Listen, I will invite Song to meet you. I want you to meet this song. “What that dream did was it reinforced in me the idea that when we play songs, they are living things,” Ware said. “They come and visit our world and they come through us.”
