A New Grateful Dead Book

[bradm]

I was at Chapters on Rideau last night, and found what I think it a new book on the Grateful Dead: "A Long Strange Trip / The Inside Story Of The Gratful Dead" by Dennis McNally (the band's historian, apparently).

It's a pretty thick book, and has quite a few quotes from the Dead (and Robert Hunter) on the back.

Has anybody read this one?

Aloha,

Brad

[Booche]

I havent but I know I will. It appears to be one of the better ones on the market. I am reading Garcia right now, but there is WAY too much talk about the songs and when they came out, where they were first played, blah blah blah. As if a person reading that book wouldnt already know that!

Captain Trips is really good (hmm, is that what it is called?), the one where it is all interviews from Garcia and people that knew him. I kept it by my sheeter for a while.

[Chewie]

yeah, mcnally is their publicist.

anyone read rock skully's book living wih the dead?

it's mainly war stories of about how he and jerry got away from psychedelics to coke to horse.

i've also heard a lot of stuff in there is bullshit too

[NewRider]

Dennis McNally's book sold out completely down at Alpine Valley a few weeks ago, it's good to hear Canadian stores are carrying it.

I read Living With The Dead as well, lots of hilarious stories in it but Rock Sculley is a pretty bitter guy being booted out and all.

Aparently "What A Long Strange Trip It's Been" is THE history book of the Grateful Dead. Dennis McNally also wrote a great biography on Jack Kerouac called Desolate Angel.

[scottieking]

I went out and bought it on Jerry Day and have been reading it since. So far i'm a third of the way through it and it is extremely thorough. It also has these really interesting "interludes" in which you get a sense for what it was like to be part of the behind the scenes day to dayer's in the organization. So far I recommend it as it deals not only with the Dead but all the players around during that time. I read Scully's book too and while part of me loves that dirty rock n roll shit I hope this book handles the bad times a little more evenly. FULL POSTED REVIEW when I finish.

I think MarcO's reading this right now too, non?

[bradm]

Salon.com has an interview with McNally.

Aloha,

Brad

[Jaimoe]

Here's a review from Entertainment Weekly. A Long Strange Trip

Reviewed by Rob Brunner

RAISING THE DEAD Though he's a longtime Deadhead, McNally doesn't gloss over the tough stuff

Most people who love good music hate the Grateful Dead. They're wrong, of course, but it isn't hard to see their point. A flawed band even at its best, the Dead was capable of maddening laziness and ineptitude. Then there were the hardcore fans, a certain highly visible segment of whom formed an irksomely conformist cult composed mostly of obsessives and dysfunctionals.

But as many folks with open ears and an affection for eccentricity know, the Dead frequently reached astonishing musical peaks. Jerry Garcia was -- avert your eyes, music snobs -- rock's greatest guitar improviser, and the band wrote innumerable songs of great beauty and joy.

To Dennis McNally's credit, A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead manages to capture the entirety of the complex organism that was the Grateful Dead. A long-time Deadhead and the group's publicist since the '80s, McNally is a band-trusted insider who is, therefore, a somewhat untrustworthy reporter. Fortunately, he doesn't dodge the tough stuff. The band -- and its extended cast of family, friends, and crew members -- comes across as pretty erratic: smart, curious, generous, witty, paranoid, jealous, petty, and ill-tempered. ''It amazed everybody,'' McNally quotes ex-keyboardist Tom Constanten saying, ''that anything happened, because there was so much sniping going on.''

McNally also details the Dead's horrifyingly prodigious drug and alcohol intake, which early on involved a lot of LSD and later led some to cocaine and heroin. (Three members died from substance abuse or drug-intensified illnesses.) And unlike most sympathetic chroniclers of the Dead phenomenon, McNally resists romanticizing the caravan of partiers more attracted to the scene than the songs. ''Dead Heads were not paragons,'' he writes. ''An...annoying example of obliviousness came with every performance of 'Black Muddy River.' Night after night, Garcia would depict the agonizing 'dark night of the soul' as he sang, 'When it seems like the night will last forever,' and some Dead Heads would choose to cheer it as a reference to an unending party.''

McNally's greatest achievement is untangling the Dead's knotty history. The band -- then known as the Warlocks -- played its first gig in 1965 and soon adopted the moniker the Grateful Dead (good thing they didn't go with Garcia's suggestion, the Mythical Ethical Icicle Tricycle). They quickly developed into a sort of house band for the hippie LSD parties known as acid tests.

At this point ''Trip'' briefly loses its way. McNally devotes far too much space to pre-Summer of Love San Francisco, cranking out page after page about the goofy antics of scenesters both bored and stoned. This is well-trodden territory (see Tom Wolfe's ''The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test''), and most of these anecdotes lack snap, filtered as they are through memories made hazy by time and LSD. No doubt the Dead and their acid-scrambled friends had some giggles, but nearly 40 years later it's hard to share in the hilarity. Jefferson Airplane's light-show operator projected a film of fire onto the Dead's house, to pick one example, and a cohort shouted, ''Fire!'' ''The occupants of 710 came flying onto Ashbury Street,'' McNally writes, ''got the joke, and enjoyed themselves.'' Not so the reader. This is a crucial period in the band's development, of course, but the Dead's musical output from this era is, for the most part, not the stuff beloved by fans, and the book is more than half gone before it reaches 1970.

Over the next decade, the Dead would mature as songwriters and improvisers. They became the first rock band signed by Warner Bros.; released 13 studio albums; and played at both Woodstock and the pyramids. In the '80s they even scored a top 10 hit with ''Touch of Grey.'' (Garcia's response? ''I am appalled.'') In 1995, Garcia died, and the Dead stopped touring. His descent into drugs and diabetes is profoundly sad, and unsparingly chronicled.

A lot of this will be old hat to serious fans, but ''Trip'' is the most comprehensive and reliable account out there, and it's nice to have it all in simple English without the dippiness that often mars Dead-related writing (one Garcia bio actually attached his astrological chart as an appendix). Like the Dead, ''Trip'' is imperfect, but McNally has documented this odd corner of the rock world with a lot of love and no less insight.

By the by, he rated this book a B+. Not bad at all.

[Booche]

Dysfunctionally Obsessed

That's me to a tee.........tye-dye actually!

[MarcO]

I'm slowly working my way through this from start to finish, although I've probably read about 2/3 of it just by opening it up at random and diving in. I would say it probably is the definitive story of the band out there, although I did kind of expect to see a lot more original interviews rather than anecdotes. Basically, if you're just starting to get into the Dead, this seems to be the best place to start. And if (like me) you've already read a load of books on GD, this is both a welcome addition and a useful summary of those other books. I agree with the reviewer above however that this book (like a lot of music related books) favours the early years to the detriment of the later years. Ironically, McNally seems to skim through the years in which he actually had access to the band. I would have liked to have learned more about their later period.

For a good GD library I would recommend this book, the Rolling Stone Garcia anthology, the Taper's Compendium's (optional, I suppose) and Robert Greenfield's Garcia book. I recommend any of these BEFORE you make it to Scully's "Living With The Dead" book. Scully is not exactly a good, balalnced writer but between his hyperbolic sleaze you may pick up a few things.

My $0.02!

[Booche]

Is Robert Greenfield the author of Darkstar (the book you putzes!)?

i LOVE that one.........interestingly laid out via interviews with Garcia, band-mates, friends lovers and family. That Rolling Stone one is fantastic as well.

I am reading Garcia by Blair Jackson right now. Its good too, and actually dives more into Garcia's addictions than I expected, but he does seem to save Skully's face a bit, albeit, for only a portion of the tale. My only problem is that he discusses songs and albums too much, as if we wouldnt know those aspects, and for those that wouldnt, I cant see how it would interest them.