<\/p>\n
I missed the Grateful Dead. Jerry Garcia died in 1995, the same year I was born, yet I am still possessed by the band\u2019s music. I was raised in the orbit of Deadheads; my dad was a casual fan, and his sisters, twins, were devoted: they followed the band on the road in the 1980s. When I got my first iPod, my parents had filled it with songs burned from my dad\u2019s CDs. Songs like \u201cSt. Stephen,\u201d with its ambiguous yet beautiful lyrics, changed my idea of what music could be: \u201cWishing well with a golden bell \/ Bucket hanging clear to hell.\u201d<\/p>\n
The long shadow of the band loomed over my childhood in San Francisco in other ways, too. In thrift shops I\u2019d visit in Haight-Ashbury, the skeletons and skulls that symbolized the band were everywhere, frightening me. But the band itself was a thing of the past, like the Beatles, like Cary Grant, like plenty of other cultural icons that my parents introduced me to over the course of my childhood. The fact that many members of the original band were still alive and touring in other Dead-adjacent formations (Furthur, RatDog, etc.) didn\u2019t make an impression. I thought that my experience of the Dead would be through playlists.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t particularly cool <\/em>to be a young person who liked the Dead back then. They certainly are an acquired taste, especially in recordings of their live shows. Not everyone wants to listen to a 15-minute version of \u201cEyes of the World\u201d and compare it with an 11-minute version of \u201cEyes of the World\u201d from 17 years earlier. In the 2010s, the Grateful Dead just wasn\u2019t in the air; it wasn\u2019t of our time.<\/p>\n In 2011 something unlikely happened that changed that. The pop star John Mayer heard the song \u201cAlthea\u201d by chance on Pandora. Mr. Mayer had never been a Deadhead, but he was hooked. Like many before him, he dived in headfirst. He learned a lot of the Dead\u2019s songs. Eventually he approached Bob Weir, a songwriter and guitarist in the band, to see if he\u2019d be interested in playing together. They started performing together, with others, including some original members of the band, as Dead & Company. This version of the Dead soon began to fill stadiums.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n