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Sweet Chaos : The Grateful Dead's American Adventure
If paradox is your pleasure, the Grateful Dead will never let you down. Born of the millennial yearnings of Haight Ashbury in the 1960s and founded on the principles of innovation and fierce independence, the Dead became the longest-running show in American history and the centerpiece of a vast underground community whose loyalty appears undiminished.
How the Dead, alone among the avatars of the rebellious '60s, survived to speak to successive generations is the subject of this intensely provocative and personal narrative. Social critic and biographer Carol Brightman, who was active in the political struggles of the era, presents a Whitmanesque tableau of America's colliding countercultures.
Here the Dead--with their original fancy for the Beats and fondness for folk, bluegrass, and blues; their immersion in psychedelics; and their longing for a separate reality--appear alongside those they the radicals across the Bay in Berkeley. The Free Speech Movement, antiwar rallies, and trips to Vietnam and Cuba are re-created alongside Ken Kesey's Acid Tests, San Francisco be-ins, LSD trips, large and small, and rock festivals across the country. And gradually we see that while the zenith of the Grateful Dead experience was the moment of abandon to music, drugs, and dance, it was as a safe haven from the turmoil beyond the gates that the music and the culture won their place in the hearts of fans.
No stranger paradox emerges in these pages than the role the CIA played as Johnny Appleseed to an infant drug culture. With its LSD-testing programs in college towns, such as the one where Ken Kesey and Robert Hunter, later Garcia's lyricist, first tasted the forbidden fruit, the CIA sowed the seeds of the chemical manipulations of consciousness that remain a leitmotiv of the Dead's culture of enchantment.
Meanwhile, a new portrait of the nonleader leader emerges, as those closest to Jerry Garcia, particularly his second wife, Mountain Girl, speak of his passions and his demons. We see Garcia as a musical existentialist enamored of tradition, a man possessed of a strange, all-encompassing influence who held to a vision of the Grateful Dead's destiny even as he recoiled from the juggernaut it became.
An absorbing and exhilarating exploration of a major chapter in America's cultural history, Sweet Chaos gives us, at last, an understanding of why the Dead means so much to so many.
How the Dead, alone among the avatars of the rebellious '60s, survived to speak to successive generations is the subject of this intensely provocative and personal narrative. Social critic and biographer Carol Brightman, who was active in the political struggles of the era, presents a Whitmanesque tableau of America's colliding countercultures.
Here the Dead--with their original fancy for the Beats and fondness for folk, bluegrass, and blues; their immersion in psychedelics; and their longing for a separate reality--appear alongside those they the radicals across the Bay in Berkeley. The Free Speech Movement, antiwar rallies, and trips to Vietnam and Cuba are re-created alongside Ken Kesey's Acid Tests, San Francisco be-ins, LSD trips, large and small, and rock festivals across the country. And gradually we see that while the zenith of the Grateful Dead experience was the moment of abandon to music, drugs, and dance, it was as a safe haven from the turmoil beyond the gates that the music and the culture won their place in the hearts of fans.
No stranger paradox emerges in these pages than the role the CIA played as Johnny Appleseed to an infant drug culture. With its LSD-testing programs in college towns, such as the one where Ken Kesey and Robert Hunter, later Garcia's lyricist, first tasted the forbidden fruit, the CIA sowed the seeds of the chemical manipulations of consciousness that remain a leitmotiv of the Dead's culture of enchantment.
Meanwhile, a new portrait of the nonleader leader emerges, as those closest to Jerry Garcia, particularly his second wife, Mountain Girl, speak of his passions and his demons. We see Garcia as a musical existentialist enamored of tradition, a man possessed of a strange, all-encompassing influence who held to a vision of the Grateful Dead's destiny even as he recoiled from the juggernaut it became.
An absorbing and exhilarating exploration of a major chapter in America's cultural history, Sweet Chaos gives us, at last, an understanding of why the Dead means so much to so many.
356 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1998
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
October 21, 2019
A tale that needed to be told. Oh my... A very affectionate look at a long lived phenomenon that has a life all of its own.
January 5, 2020
I’ve long wondered about what happened to people at the tail end of the 1960s, who had either been political radicals or counterculture hippies, how they transitioned into the less political, more conformist 1970s and forward. (I came of age in the mid 70s, so I always felt an echo of those earlier more turbulent times from older peers). Carol Brightman’s book about the Grateful Dead artfully weaves her own personal story as an anti Vietnam War activist alongside the rise of the Dead. She shows how the band consciously built a lasting following from its start in the mid 60s and grew it touring in the 70s and 80s, succeeding where most of the other 60s movements failed to create lasting institutions. And she also shows how the Dead’s avoidance of serious political conflict was both a cop out and an artful survival tactic, enabling it to build something mostly independent of the corporate music business but also something not truly threatening the powers that be. A great piece of sociological imagination, this book.
February 7, 2013
This book was very disappointing--despite having access to the Dead's inner circle (due to the fact that the author's sister was the band's long time lighting director, the author didn't take great advantage of that. Robert Hunter, lyricist of most of the band's original song seemed to be the main source for the author within this inner circle, yet the focus--using that term loosely as the book suffered from a lack of focus--was a low-grade argument that the band wasn't political.
The author spent her youth engaged in political activities--anti-war (Vietnam) predominantly--and seems to have trouble with the fact that the Grateful Dead was essentially apolitical. The book is part memoir by the author--she relates some of her activities which were contemporaneous with certain events in the history of the band. Yet she never makes much of a point about the significance of these two paths. She doesn't spend enough time on developing her own history (thankfully) but she doesn't really do much to elucidate anything of significance regarding the history of the band.
The question of how the band lasted so long and managed to engender a subculture of some significance despite (or likelier, because of) being apolitical remains unanswered.
The author spent her youth engaged in political activities--anti-war (Vietnam) predominantly--and seems to have trouble with the fact that the Grateful Dead was essentially apolitical. The book is part memoir by the author--she relates some of her activities which were contemporaneous with certain events in the history of the band. Yet she never makes much of a point about the significance of these two paths. She doesn't spend enough time on developing her own history (thankfully) but she doesn't really do much to elucidate anything of significance regarding the history of the band.
The question of how the band lasted so long and managed to engender a subculture of some significance despite (or likelier, because of) being apolitical remains unanswered.
September 5, 2014
Carol Brightman’s book mixes some of the very best writing on the aspects of the Grateful Dead in their relation to the psychedelic experience with some of the worst and most inexcusable, insufferable political writing as I have ever seen.
I take a real exception to the “progressive social agenda” as she saw it with the Grateful Dead because they themselves were less enamored of it- our focus was music, not politics, and politics was, for us, just another Flatland ugliness best ignored until, or unless, it bit you in the ass.
She ignores the outlawed relationship with psychedelic drugs, to a certain extent, and even takes a hand to belittle the good Dr. Albert Hofmann’s opinions on the subject.
President Obama suckered folks like the GD into thinking he represented a more fuller idea of American freedom. Instead, he’s given us all a more secretive and powerful surveillance-spy state in the name of our protection- something which folks like C. Brightman OUGHT to be very much reacting to. But the GD were very much more into protecting ourselves: whether it be from war, terrorists, or the intrusions of a police-state government. Progressives had a hand in assisting this all to come about through their own befuddled acquiescence to ever more repressive Executive Branch ideas - maybe because, they are still conned into thinking he somehow “represents them”. It not only misconstrues what the GD were about as takes them for something they never were. I could care less about her trying to connect a visit to Fidel Castro’s own police state on a visit with the “Venceremos Brigade” with a society where people have the option to “live a life separate from work”. She doesn’t see, actually, that the Cubans in their desire for a taste of Western music, for example, were more likely reacting to the fact that Western influences were not & still are not welcome in Cuba. The Grateful Dead themselves, (in their later incarnations sans Jerry Garcia) are themselves in part to blame for endorsing the current “secret police candidate”America suffers under to begin with. The Grateful Dead’s ideal of freedom is still actually too far out for America to really dig, is my point.
The pre-“Obama love fest” GD were about music and freedom & “Fuck them if they can’t take a joke.” People like Ms. Brightman never could figure when the joke was on them though.
Now for the good points.
She makes an excellent observation of the band being held hostage by their roadies and office minions, and this of itself being something which had more than a small amount to do with the general decline and regression into opiates of Mr. Garcia and others. It’s been my own experience that when you have any business which begins to call itself “a family” then there are excuses being made somewhere, somehow, for someone’s incompetency.
She also has a keen ear for the subject of how the GD began thinking of themselves communally and collaboratively, ever since the early 1960’s, as something of a community with individual escape hatches built in- which was exactly not the manner in which most intentional communities of the late 60s and 70’s functioned- usually by focusing around a central charismatic figure with “guru” pretensions, who functioned as a power-guide and relationship-overseer. There was no such person in the Grateful Dead. Even while Garcia might have been, or seemed to have been the charismatic figure (essential to the music, but not necessarily to the general financial impetus of the organization) -other musicians in the band were on an equal level in terms of their part played in the ensemble, and some even more highly involved in business decisions taken by the group en toto.
Another good point is that this book actually does talk to Heads (and band members) as regards to tripping, and how, and what it was, about both tripping, and the GD in conjunction with tripping, made the whole darn thing so special for so many. This is probably something you are only going to get if you go out and talk to the community themselves one on one, but to her credit Ms. Brightman does just that, and as Bob Weir once said of Dead Heads: “you’ll find there are no two alike.” Except in one most broad and unmistakable sense: we all heard something in the call of the weird, and fearlessly answered it.
I take a real exception to the “progressive social agenda” as she saw it with the Grateful Dead because they themselves were less enamored of it- our focus was music, not politics, and politics was, for us, just another Flatland ugliness best ignored until, or unless, it bit you in the ass.
She ignores the outlawed relationship with psychedelic drugs, to a certain extent, and even takes a hand to belittle the good Dr. Albert Hofmann’s opinions on the subject.
President Obama suckered folks like the GD into thinking he represented a more fuller idea of American freedom. Instead, he’s given us all a more secretive and powerful surveillance-spy state in the name of our protection- something which folks like C. Brightman OUGHT to be very much reacting to. But the GD were very much more into protecting ourselves: whether it be from war, terrorists, or the intrusions of a police-state government. Progressives had a hand in assisting this all to come about through their own befuddled acquiescence to ever more repressive Executive Branch ideas - maybe because, they are still conned into thinking he somehow “represents them”. It not only misconstrues what the GD were about as takes them for something they never were. I could care less about her trying to connect a visit to Fidel Castro’s own police state on a visit with the “Venceremos Brigade” with a society where people have the option to “live a life separate from work”. She doesn’t see, actually, that the Cubans in their desire for a taste of Western music, for example, were more likely reacting to the fact that Western influences were not & still are not welcome in Cuba. The Grateful Dead themselves, (in their later incarnations sans Jerry Garcia) are themselves in part to blame for endorsing the current “secret police candidate”America suffers under to begin with. The Grateful Dead’s ideal of freedom is still actually too far out for America to really dig, is my point.
The pre-“Obama love fest” GD were about music and freedom & “Fuck them if they can’t take a joke.” People like Ms. Brightman never could figure when the joke was on them though.
Now for the good points.
She makes an excellent observation of the band being held hostage by their roadies and office minions, and this of itself being something which had more than a small amount to do with the general decline and regression into opiates of Mr. Garcia and others. It’s been my own experience that when you have any business which begins to call itself “a family” then there are excuses being made somewhere, somehow, for someone’s incompetency.
She also has a keen ear for the subject of how the GD began thinking of themselves communally and collaboratively, ever since the early 1960’s, as something of a community with individual escape hatches built in- which was exactly not the manner in which most intentional communities of the late 60s and 70’s functioned- usually by focusing around a central charismatic figure with “guru” pretensions, who functioned as a power-guide and relationship-overseer. There was no such person in the Grateful Dead. Even while Garcia might have been, or seemed to have been the charismatic figure (essential to the music, but not necessarily to the general financial impetus of the organization) -other musicians in the band were on an equal level in terms of their part played in the ensemble, and some even more highly involved in business decisions taken by the group en toto.
Another good point is that this book actually does talk to Heads (and band members) as regards to tripping, and how, and what it was, about both tripping, and the GD in conjunction with tripping, made the whole darn thing so special for so many. This is probably something you are only going to get if you go out and talk to the community themselves one on one, but to her credit Ms. Brightman does just that, and as Bob Weir once said of Dead Heads: “you’ll find there are no two alike.” Except in one most broad and unmistakable sense: we all heard something in the call of the weird, and fearlessly answered it.
January 26, 2009
I loved loved loved this book! It's the first book about the Dead that wasn't all caught up in the band's mythology. Brightman gave them credit, even awe, where it was due, but she also was critical and probing where it was appropriate. Very well written, nicely shifting from theme to theme while remaining focused on the main question: Why have the Dead endured while other countercultures have died? I especially liked the fan profiles at the end.
July 24, 2010
It's been a while since I read this book, but what I remember was skimming through several parts. It is interesting, but I felt the author spent too much time recounting things that had little, if anything, to do with the band (mainly her own life, various friends' drug addictions, and events that did not involve the Dead).
January 22, 2016
Sweet Chaos: The Grateful Dead’s American Adventure by Carol Brightman (Clarkson Potter Publishers 1998) (780.92). This is by far and away the best book I've ever read concerning the Grateful Dead experience (or at least it's the book that most closely mirrored my Dead experience). My rating: 8/10, finished 10/1/2010.
August 27, 2016
This tries to be two books at once, a memoir cum history of late sixties / early seventies radicalism from the author's perspective, and then a book about the Grateful Dead. The two don't sit together well, not least because the Dead were never really a political act. It's a shame, as there are the seeds of two decent books here, but neither come to fruition.
December 14, 2008
Oh wow man. I like that someone besides me acknowledges that the Dead often sing out of tune and produce trainwreck-jams. But they ARE the Dead and can be transcendent. They have more of a Beatnik connection than I expected. PS: I am a Beat. Not a Hippie.
January 22, 2009
quite possibly the best Grateful Dead book (and one of the best books on the 60s) I have read.
October 12, 2016
Just was not what I thought it was. I stopped reading it. My comments are t really a review, since I did not read very far. I was looking for something else.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews