Grateful Dead

Dead Freaks Unite supplementary notes

by Jesse Jarnow

“Dead Freaks Unite” read the first official subscriber call for what became the Dead Heads mailing list, but Dead Heads more or less invented themselves. From the first fan-made “Good Ol’ Grateful Dead” pins sold by the band’s neighbors in the Haight-Ashbury to the parking lot bazaar known as Shakedown Street, Dead Heads have a history of their own.

Steve Silberman and David Shenk’s Skeleton Key: A Dictionary For Deadheads, published in 1994, is still one of the most essential documents of Dead culture, back in print and available as an ebook. Sociologist Rebecca Adams began studying the Dead in the late ‘80s and co-edited Deadhead Social Science: You Ain’t Gonna Learn What You Don’t Wanna Know, composed of chapters written by the students she brought on tour, also now back in print and available as an ebook. My own book, Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America, builds on both Steve and Rebecca’s work, tracing the Heads’ history.

Michael Linnah published a wonderful one-sheet tour newsletter called MIKEL in the early 1980s. A few years ago, after touring Head and collector Eric Schwartz scanned his collection of back issues, I read through the archive and wrote about it. It’s a fascinating glimpse into life on early ‘80s Dead tour.