Politics of Deadheads

[Lenina Rosenweg]

Deadheads-fans and followers of the Grateful Dead thoughout the late 60s/70s/80s and early 90s. were an icon in American culture. In the 80s and 90s there were something of a last gasp of the US 60s counterculture.A tight nit subculture formed around there many live performances. "Touring" with the Dead, following them from city to city, became something of a rite for passage at least two generations of youth.The band broke up after Jerry Garcia died of heart failure agravated by heroin use in 1995. Offshoots of the band-Ratdog, Phil Lesh and Friends, and other groups continue the tradition.This had, and still has a big influence on mainstream culture.

I was surprised finding out about the politics surrounding this. A group around Bob Weir has campaigned for Obama, "Deadheads for Obama" I'm not sure what I was expecting-I guess I sort of hoped they would channel their utopian vision in a more leftist direction.

The surprising this is the right wing element. I've recently bumped into a number of Deadhead veterans who are right wingers, right libertarians and Ron Paul supporters.

I realize that much of 60s "counterculture" had a petty bourgois element, but I was surprised and disappointed.

[campesino]

hippies are bourgeois, they are extreme liberals and have odd beliefs. They have no class consciousness and are also very idealist. that is all i have to say, hippies i guess developed from adoration for freedom and the act of living in a harmonious free society(if you're white) in the 1960's, seeking a struggle and seeing the oppression of minorities and drugs in society decided to adopt those into their identity. this is why hippies tend to be anti-anglo-american on the surface, that is why they follow foreign mystics and try to emulate and "establish roots" with the indigenous cultures of the world.

don't think too much of what i said, I made it up as i went along.

[DasFapital]

I can't stand the Grateful Dead or any so called "jam band". Anyway, none of this surprises me. Ron Paul's pro-pot anti-war stance seems like just the kind of thing hippies would go for, especially ones that spend their time following the Dead around. I doubt most of them look into his economic policy with any serious scrutiny.

[Yuppie Grinder]

I know several deadheads. They are uniformly insufferable people. Ask them about their politics and they'll babble on about peace and spirituality.

[Sea]

Deadheads-fans and followers of the Grateful Dead thoughout the late 60s/70s/80s and early 90s. were an icon in American culture. In the 80s and 90s there were something of a last gasp of the US 60s counterculture.A tight nit subculture formed around there many live performances. "Touring" with the Dead, following them from city to city, became something of a rite for passage at least two generations of youth.The band broke up after Jerry Garcia died of heart failure agravated by heroin use in 1995. Offshoots of the band-Ratdog, Phil Lesh and Friends, and other groups continue the tradition.This had, and still has a big influence on mainstream culture.

I was surprised finding out about the politics surrounding this. A group around Bob Weir has campaigned for Obama, "Deadheads for Obama" I'm not sure what I was expecting-I guess I sort of hoped they would channel their utopian vision in a more leftist direction.

The surprising this is the right wing element. I've recently bumped into a number of Deadhead veterans who are right wingers, right libertarians and Ron Paul supporters.

I realize that much of 60s "counterculture" had a petty bourgois element, but I was surprised and disappointed.

The Ron Paul supporters and quite possibly some of the right libs and randroids you mention are likely a direct result of reluctance to venture too far outside the sphere of mainstream electoral politics and what is considered acceptable to the politicians within that sphere, rather than concrete and deliberate differences in ideas. The overwhelming utopianism and vagueness of hippie politics are quite good indicators that the political ideas of the movement weren't quite solid in either direction. Many of my fellow deadheads took a rather generic anti-corporatist, anti-war, anti-prohibition stance. I'd wager that an unfamiliarity with the left played a large part in what you perceive as deadheads being right wing. Despite all the talk of freakiness and sticking it to the man, one thing that a decent chunk (though not all) of the counterculture shied away from was giving the man an ideological reason to be against them. Mr. Hoffman (no, not that Mr. Hoffman) and his crew summed up quite well leftism as it did existed within the hippies.

To put it simply, for the most part, the hippies were swimming against the current in the bourgeois river, but they were swimming in it nonetheless.


I know several deadheads. They are uniformly insufferable people. Ask them about their politics and they'll babble on about peace and spirituality.I wouldn't quite go that far. At least not for the bulk of the movement in this context. Most modern-day deadheads are quite far out there, I'll give you that. That's why they're still deadheads. :rolleyes:

[lan153rez]

The star people who always talk with big mouth making this world miserable man. Asian people have been suffering with this political crises from the beginning i guess. Now it started in Middle east and so far southern Europe started suffering these.

[Turinbaar]

I am training under a musician named Steve Wolf who had at one time been chosen by Garcia, and further supported by Bill Graham, as the heir to the role of frontman for the Grateful dead. Had Garcia and Graham survived longer the Band would have had their choice of new frontman, and it may have been possible to save the Grateful Dead from selling out the way they did (though the logic of capitalism has its way of weaseling itself into things whoever is in charge).

My father is a limo chauffeur who drove for many years for the band, and his colleague, Leon, was Jerry's personal driver. A few months ago I met with Annette Flowers who did office work for the band (she's struggling with her house against the banks). I know about the band's politics and history from what they told me.

When Jerry was alive the Dead had a naive sort of tribal commune ideology focusing on nature spiritualism, social solidarity and securing the means of higher education for the young, not just for those of the band members, but for those of everyone working or associated with the Dead Family. They couldn't be called socialist, but they were the face of the vaguely anti-estblisment crowd of the 60's.

There was a profit hungry sentiment in the band that was kept at bay largely by Jerry's own endeavors, but drugs and money during Nixon's and Reagan's prohibition campaigns complicated matters. Upon Jerry's death (smoking crack on the way to rehab was not the brightest idea), the Dead immediately corporatized itself, threw out the college fund for the kids, and now profits from Jerry's art in between fair-well tours in which they say goodbye (and they really mean it this time) forever.

I play Jerry's songs with a man who was taught them by Garcia himself, and now I see the sort of people that enthuse about this or that song and I am disgusted, not just because they cling to "Friend of the Devil" like it were the only tune the Dead ever turned out, but also to find that they are very often Libertarians, or in some other way totally ignorant politically.

The Grateful Dead in a way confirms what Marx said about history as at first a tragedy, and then a farce.

[Mr. Natural]

Lenina, I promise I'm not following you around to throw cold water on all your attempts to find intelligent political life in the US. "Deadheads" is a good term for the dropped-out, drugged-out followers of the Grateful Dead, though. No politics at all.

As for their music, I found the Grateful Dead could, at times, be really good, but most of the time they substituted screeching for singing. The Grateful Dead show on KPFA in Berkeley was often unlistenable. I would run in near panic to my radio to turn it off.