Grateful Dead

It seems inconceivable that a band with only one Billboard Top 40 single to their name could possibly become of the biggest acts in the US, but then Grateful Dead’s remarkable story rarely intersects with standard music-industry practices.

Formed in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1965, the Dead were at the very heart of the 60s’ countercultural scene, and they will forever be associated with psychedelia, 1967’s “Summer Of Love” and their none-more-devout fanbase, known to one and all as “Deadheads”. Due to their free-form live performances, Rolling Stone later dubbed the group “the pioneering godfathers of the jam band world”, but some of the Dead’s studio albums present a far more accessible point of entry to their oeuvre – not least their radio-friendly late-period classic, In The Dark (home of their Top 40 hit, Touch Of Grey), and their cusp-of-the-70s game-changers Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty, both of which played key roles in establishing the Americana genre.

In theory, the band ceased to exist following the passing of their lead guitarist and figurehead, Jerry Garcia, in 1995, but, for the Dead, the end was only the beginning. With former members keeping the music alive in spin-off acts ranging from Phil Lesh & Friends to Dead & Company, and regularly updated merch lines and a seemingly endless supply of official live recordings continually surfacing, Grateful Dead remain the band changing trends simply cannot kill.