thumb|upright=1.1|A Deadhead school bus conversion
A Deadhead or Dead head is a fan of the American rock band the Grateful Dead. The Deadhead subculture originated in the 1970s, when a number of fans began traveling to see the Grateful Dead in as many shows or festival venues as they could. As more people began attending live performances and festivals, a community developed. The Deadhead community has since gone on to create slang and idioms unique to them.
Due to extensive improvisation, eclectic song choice and other variables the Grateful Dead were known for having concerts perceived as each being a unique event. The wide variety of their live concerts, when coupled with the band's permissive attitude on taping performances, has created a plethora of historical material.
Much Deadhead-related historical material received or collected by the band over the years is housed in the Grateful Dead Archive of University of California, Santa Cruz. Archive founding curator Nicholas Meriwether, who has also written extensively about the culture and its impact on society, predicted, "The Grateful Dead archive is going to end up being a critical way for us to approach and understand the 1960s and the counterculture of the era... It's also going to tell us a lot about the growth and development of modern rock theater, and it's helping us understand fan culture." Over the course of their thirty-year career, the Grateful Dead performed over 2,200 live shows.
Overview
The eclectic musical styling of the Grateful Dead was heavily inspired by the Beatnik movement of the 1950s and later the psychedelic counterculture of the 1960s. One group at the forefront of the psychedelic sound was the Merry Pranksters. On the first historic bus trip, on the bus Furthur, a pattern was set for the Deadhead touring lifestyle to come. By the late 1970s, some Deadheads began to sell tie-dye T-shirts, veggie burritos, or other items at Grateful Dead concerts. In the 1980s, the area where Grateful Dead merchandise was sold became popularly referred to as "Shakedown Street", named after the 1978 song. Income from these shops allowed Deadheads a way to follow the band on its tours.
During the early 1980s, the number of Deadheads taping shows increased, and the band created a special section for fans who wished to record the show. These tapes are still shared and circulated today via websites such as the Live Music Archive and bt.etree.org. In the earlier days of the Grateful Dead, there were questions as to whether or not it was in the best interest of the band for fans to tape concerts. In 1982, Garcia himself was asked what he thought about it, and he replied, "When we are done with it [the concerts], they can have it."
The practice of taping has evolved and expanded in the digital age. The rise of the Internet and peer to peer file sharing networks has made it extremely easy for Deadheads to share concerts through unofficial and official channels. Bob Dylan, who toured with the Grateful Dead during their 1987 summer tour, observed "With most bands the audience participates like in a spectator sport. They just stand there and watch. They keep a distance. With the Dead, the audience is part of the band-they might as well be on stage."
Origins
The term "Deadhead" first appeared in print at the suggestion of Hank Harrison, author of The Dead Trilogy, on the sleeve of Grateful Dead (also known as Skull & Roses), the band's second live album, released in 1971. It read:
This phenomenon was first touched on in print by Robert Christgau, music critic for Village Voice, at a Felt Forum show in 1971. He noted "how many 'regulars' seemed to be in attendance, and how, from the way they compared notes, they'd obviously made a determined effort to see as many shows as possible."
Impact on shows
thumb |240px|Fans attending a [[Grateful Dead concert at Red Rocks, Colorado, 1987]]
The Grateful Dead's appeal to fans was supported by the way the band structured their concerts and the use of the jam band format.
- From the early 1970s on, the Grateful Dead performed few shows with a predetermined setlist.
- At the behest of the band, a section of the audience was walled off to be used exclusively by fans recording the concert.
- From the 1980s on, the second set usually contained a prolonged percussion interlude, called "Drums" (and eventually incorporating electronic elements), by Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann (also known as the "Rhythm Devils") followed by an extended improvisational jam, known as "Space", played by the rest of the band (as featured on the album Infrared Roses).
The band's extensive song catalog enabled them to create a varied "rotation" of setlists, which were never exactly the same for each performance ("show") throughout a tour. The use of these unique set rotations created two phenomena: The first had to do with Deadheads wanting to go to more shows in order to get a chance to hear their favorite song(s) – the same song was rarely played the same way twice during any given tour. As with any large community, Deadheads developed their own idioms and slang.
"The Vibe"
Some Deadheads use the term "X Factor" to describe the intangible element that elevates mere performance into something higher. Publicist and Jerry Garcia biographer Blair Jackson stated that "shows were the sacrament ... rich and full of blissful, transcendent musical moments that moved the body and enriched the soul." Phil Lesh himself comments on this phenomenon in his autobiography by saying, "The unique organicity of our music reflects the fact that each of us consciously personalized his playing: to fit with what others were playing and to fit with who each man was as an individual, allowing us to meld our consciousnesses together in the unity of a group mind."
Jackson takes this further, citing drummer Mickey Hart as saying, "The Grateful Dead weren't in the music business, they were in the transportation business." Jackson relates this to the Deadhead phenomenon directly by saying, "for many Deadheads, the band was a medium that facilitated experiencing other planes of consciousness and tapping into deep, spiritual wells that were usually the province of organized religion ... [they] got people high whether those people were on drugs or not."
Rock producer Bill Graham summarized much of the band's effect when he created a sign for the Grateful Dead when the group played the closing of the Winterland Ballroom on December 31, 1978. The sign read: