The Dead, now synonymous with Haight-Ashbury, were then just a small time band with a humble hometown following. They played for free in small venues around the city and house parties hosted by Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Members of the Grateful Dead weren’t interested in fame. They were only interested in scraping together enough money to pay for the rent of their shared 710 Ashbury Street apartment so they could continue to jam.According to Weir, “The Dead built up a following of obsessive devotees, partially due to its original approach to music and partially due to the caché of cool the band had by being associated with author and LSD guru Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters. By 1966, The Dead had become the house band for Kesey’s psychedelic parties, known as the Acid Tests; it was there they established the long, improvisational jams that would become central to their music.” By 1967, news of the mecca that had been created in the Haight-Ashbury spread across the nation. Bearded men in rose-colored glasses and women with long patterned skirts that twirled when they danced came to take part in the cultural revolution that was coined The Summer of Love. If music had become the new gospel, then Haight-Ashbury had become the church and Jerry Garcia, the patriarch of The Grateful Dead, the guru.“It was like stepping into a dream,” Weir says of the event. “It was a fairly spectacular dream, but it was sort of slow motion. Everything was there just like everybody expected it — all the big stars, all the excitement.”

The Evolution of Haight-Ashbury and the Grateful Dead

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