“It’s a legacy thing for me and us, I think,” said drummer Mickey Hart. respect.
The surviving members — Bobby Weir, Bill Kretzman and Hart — told “CBS Mornings” that the honor is not just for the band members, but for their fans.
“They held us back,” Weir said.
Grateful Dead forms.
The band formed in the mid-1960s in the San Francisco Bay Area. Weir was 16 when he first heard Jerry Garcia play the banjo outside a music shop in Palo Alto.
“It was New Year’s Eve, basically he invited us. We had so much fun that evening that we decided it was too much fun to walk away,” Weir said.
Kreutzmann saw Garcia and Weir playing at a club.
“I was completely blown away by Jerry’s ability to hold the audience in his hands. Jerry held the light for everyone,” he said. “This week he called me and said, ‘Hey, you want to join the band?’ I said, ‘Sure’.
Kreutzmann later brought Hart into the band in 1967.
“Bill invited me to play and sit in. When I heard the band, I went, ‘Wow.’ ” Hart said. “We got a little.”
Garcia also recruited. Full LeashClassically trained musician, to play bass. Lash, one of the band’s original members, died in October at the age of 84.
The Grateful Dead’s Legacy
In their 30 years as a band, the Grateful Dead scored just one Top 40 hit, with “Touch of Grey,” and not a single Grammy nomination.
“We’ve had people come up to us, say, ‘You guys will never make it. You play too long, you play too loud,'” Kreutzmann recalled.
But over his decades, he built a legion of followers known as “Deadheads,” who began recording and sharing his concerts.
“You’d look from the stage and it would look like a forest of microphone trees,” Kreutzmann said of fans recording his concerts.
Their record company advised against allowing fans to record, but the band refused, saying they were not concerned about piracy.
“It was the smartest thing we’ve ever done,” Kretzman said.
The Grateful Dead played more than 2,300 concerts, many of which were recorded by fans.
“Those tapes went all over the world,” Hart said. “He was also our archivist.”
The band broke up after 30 years together when Garcia died in 1995. They weren’t sure they could find a way to go on without their frontman.
“When Jerry left, that was the end of the Grateful Dead,” Kretzman said.
The surviving members left to start other projects and bands, but the spirit of the Grateful Dead will live on forever. Weir said Garcia visits him in dreams from time to time, including recently.
“In the dream, Jerry comes to me and he says, ‘Listen, I’m going to call a song to meet you. I want you to meet this song.’ … What that dream did, it solidified in me the notion that, yes when we play songs, they are living things,” Weir said. “They come and visit our world and they come through us.”