The Grateful Dead
 The
Grateful Dead formed in San Francisco in 1966 when love and acid
hit that city in a big way. From their 1967 album onwards, the
Dead were hailed as lords of acid rock and the leaders of a tribal
lifestyle mythology.
Renowned for long improvised numbers and performances lasting
up to five or six hours, the band became more country influenced
after their 1967 album Workingman's Dead and later on American
Beauty.
In 1972, the band took a sabbatical over the summer while Jerry
Garcia released his first solo album, Garcia. Bob Weir and Mickey
Hart also released albums (Ace and Rolling Thunder respectively).
Keyboard player Ron 'Pigpen' McKernan was less productive though,
as he was forced to rest and give up drinking after a serious
liver complaint was diagnosed.
Unsteady from the start, the band lost what little grounding
they had when Pigpen drank himself to death and the Godchaux's
hopped on board. The pair turned out to be so bad that even the
other members of the band realised they had to go.
In September 1977, the Dead played three dates in front of the
Great Pyramid of Cheops in Cairo in an event scheduled to coincide
with a total eclipse of the Moon.
When Jerry Garcia died in 1997, his widow complained that he
had left her broke. "We only have a few hundred thousand
dollars in the bank," she explained. Who doesn't feel the
pinch when you get down to your last few hundred thou?
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