So Many Roads

April 1, 2015
Righteous testimonial to the anarchic goodness that was the Grateful Dead. You don't have to be stoned to listen to the Dead, but it can help. While it's unclear what Rolling Stone contributing editor Browne's (Fire and Rain: The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor, CSNY, and the Lost Story of 1970, 2011, etc.) diet was when writing this book, he is quite clear on the band's unfortunate trajectory from a little grass here to heroin and speedballs there, with fatal consequences. But while the author doesn't shy away from the band's pharmaceutical inventory, neither does he let that get in the way of his assessment of the music, from the early brilliance of their country-tinged psychedelia to evolving jam classics such as "Dark Star," the likes of which, one fan remarks, surprised the band as well as the audience. Fittingly, half of the book is devoted to the first 10 years of the band. Just as fittingly, the second half takes the Dead from ragged band of hippies to post-'60s corporation-a friendly and groovy corporation but with all the headaches and internal politics of any multinational corporation. Browne misses a few points-the song "Dire Wolf," for instance, takes its name not from a wolf named Dire but from a Pleistocene critter that once roamed around Marin-and can be a little clunky ("By then some of the Warlocks had already tried the legal, odorless, and colorless hallucinogen discovered by Dr. Albert Hoffmann in Switzerland about three decades before"), but he's right about most everything. He also appropriately places emphasis on things other biographers have overlooked: the importance to the band's sound of Robert Hunter as a lyricist and arranger, the incessant intellectual curiosity of Jerry Garcia, and the unerring sense of bad judgment that brought the band to ruin-but also the good luck that allowed it to keep chugging along for so long. One of the better books on the band and welcome reading in this 50th anniversary year.

May 1, 2015

This very well-told history of the San Francisco-based band the Grateful Dead, which formed 50 years ago, contains new interviews, including with the living members of the group and some of their earliest fans and associates. This adds a freshness to the narrative. Rolling Stone and Men's Journal contributing editor Browne (Fire and Rain) is to be commended for telling the Dead's story completely and not just focusing on the band's glory years of 1969- 74 (or 1977, depending on whom you ask), as so many books on the Dead seem to do. Because of this, readers will realize just how dysfunctional the interpersonal relationships among the members grew to be. Surprisingly, except for very late in the group's career, this seemed rarely to affect the music. Browne also demonstrates that the Dead were much more in tune with their times--even the 1980s and 1990s--than is normally assumed. VERDICT It's hard to imagine a better book for a Dead neophyte to start with. This one is right up there with Blair Jackson's Garcia: An American Life and Dennis McNally's A Long Strange Trip.--Derek Sanderson, Mount Saint Mary Coll. Lib., Newburgh, NY

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