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‘LSD? Been there, done that’: the Grateful Dead’s 60 years of drugs, epic noodling and obsessive fans

Forget Swifties. The Grateful Dead have the world’s most devoted following. As he heads for Britain, founder Bobby Weir talks Vegas spectaculars, bootleggers and life after Jerry Garcia

As the Dead’s popularity grew, a significant number of their fans – known as the Deadheads – began dedicating their entire existence to the band, planning their lives around tours, where they would set up food stalls or sell clothes to support a full-time nomadic lifestyle. John Kilbride, author of The Golden Road: The Recorded History of the Grateful Dead, recalls “going down the Barras market in Glasgow in the early 80s and getting a load of live cassettes, and just being completely spun around by the sound. The back cover of 1971’s Skull and Roses live album bore the promise: “Tell us who you are … we’ll keep you informed.” By the 1980s, the Dead boasted a mailing list of over half a million fans, and were also frequently handling their own ticket distribution – no mean feat when it came to stadium shows.

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