The Grateful Dead and The Beatles

 John Lennon and Jerry Garcia



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The Grateful Dead investigate The Beatles
by geekboyking
Jan 13 2019



The Grateful Dead once paid for Peter Coyote, Ken Kesey and 2 Hells Angels to go to London and find out "what the Beatles were really all about".





www.quora.com
What did The Beatles think of Grateful Dead?

3 Answers

Jon Pennington, Aspiring Beatleologist
Answered Dec 9 2018

There’s one interview with John that makes reference to the Grateful Dead without getting the name of the group right. According to a 1980 interview with David Sheff, John Lennon revealed that the Beatles’ decision to adopt the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band alter ego was inspired by the crazy psychedelic band names adopted by groups associated with the San Francisco Sound, such as the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane:

Sgt Pepper is Paul, after a trip to America and the whole West Coast, long-named group thing was coming in. You know, when people were no longer The Beatles or The Crickets – they were suddenly Fred and His Incredible Shrinking Grateful Airplanes, right? So I think he got influenced by that and came up with this idea for The Beatles.

There’s also a 2013 account of John Lennon meeting Jerry Garcia from Justin Kreutzmann, the son of Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann. The meeting took place in 1972, because Lennon was impressed that Jerry Garcia had recorded a cover version of John Lennon’s “Imagine” with the keyboardist Merl Saunders for the album Heavy Turbulence. Since that cover “Imagine” was one of the first cover versions of a solo John Lennon song, John wanted to stop by and show his appreciation. The memories of the people involved start diverging at this point, but they all seem to agree that Jerry Garcia and John Lennon discussed performing on stage together. However, it is unclear whether it failed to happen because Lennon turned out to be a no-show or because Garcia turned Lennon down.

Paul also mentioned the Grateful Dead in a 2002 interview with the Rocking Vicar website. The interviewer Mark Ellen asked Paul about his flirtations with avant-garde music and art in the mid-1960s, and Paul revealed that he had made a short film in the 1960s of the Grateful Dead based on Linda McCartney’s photography:

I actually have a project I would like ... I'm involved ... One of the many things I did, I did a thing called The Grateful Dead Photo Film, using Linda’s snapshots and making them move, dissolving between them and making them into a film, a short art film, which I showed at festivals and things.

Relix, a magazine that caters to Deadheads, even went so far as to call Paul McCartney an Undercover Deadhead. If you don’t believe me, here’s a clip of Paul McCartney joining with Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead and Rob Gronkowski of the New England Patriots to sing Helter Skelter.




As for George, I can’t find much of any direct connection between George Harrison and the Grateful Dead. George played a rosewood Telecaster guitar during the Let It Be sessions and later gave the guitar to the duo of Delaney & Bonnie, whom he had tried to sign to Apple Records, in addition to touring briefly with them in 1969. In 1970, Delaney & Bonnie played with the Grateful Dead on a concert tour captured in the documentary, Festival Express. There are some photos from that period purportedly showing Jerry Garcia playing a rosewood Telecaster guitar, but there’s no solid proof it was George Harrison’s guitar, and even if it was George’s guitar, Jerry probably borrowed it from Delaney & Bonnie. There’s no proof that Jerry Garcia and George Harrison actually swapped guitars in person.

When it comes to Ringo, I found this Rolling Stone article from 1989, which showed him on tour with his All-Starr Band. Clarence Clemons, best known as the saxophonist in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, was simultaneously on tour with Ringo’s All-Star Band at the same time he was on tour with the Grateful Dead. According to the article, Clemons took a picture of Ringo wearing a Grateful Dead T-shirt and gave it to the Dead. I can’t find a copy of this photo online, but who knows what you might find by digging in the official Grateful Dead Archive at UC Santa Cruz?


Horace Crane, Attended 175+ Grateful Dead shows (lost a few ticket stubs!)
Answered Aug 21, 2018

There’s a famous story of George visiting Haight-Ashbury in late 1967. George was going to check out, on the group’s behalf, this “LSD Wonderland.” Hoping to find an evolved, amazing place, he instead encountered the post-Summer of Love Haight, overflowing with homeless, scabby hippies, that flocked there with no jobs or money. Everyone was strung out and begging. The Grateful Dead had already evacuated to Novato (I believe), as the scene had crashed under it’s own weight. George cut his visit short, thinking it was gross and that hippiedom was a mythic failure. On the other hand Paul McCartney invited Bob Weir on stage, at Fenway Park, in 2016!


Andrew Cohen
Answered Oct 1, 2018

The better way to answer this question is what did the Grateful Dead think of the Beatles. They covered many songs of theirs. They covered over a dozen Beatle songs. 5 of the songs were played more than ten times. The admiration was not reciprocal. Been on the bus since the mid 80’s. Cannot recall one time the Beatles referring to the Grateful Dead.

Paul McCartney performs “Helter Skelter” with Bob Weir