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Living With the Dead: Twenty Years on the Bus With Garcia and the Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead's longtime manager provides an entertaining eyewitness account of the band's behind-the-scenes history, from the writing of their greatest songs and their legendary encounters with other celebrities to their emergence as cultural icons. 200,000 first printing. $150,000 ad/promo.
381 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 65 reviews
April 24, 2011
This is my favorite book about the Dead. I have read several other accounts that tend to gloss over the flaws and warts of the band making the band members out as, ugh, heroes. That mythologizing and tidying up is really not what the Dead was about and always left me with a bad taste in my mouth. This account definitely shows the warts. It was written by Rock Scully who managed the band from the Acid Tests all the through the early 80's. Some people criticize the book as being factually incorrect and Scully for having an agenda. I don't view the book that way. I read it and picture Scully as a really good bs'er. Did you ever have a buddy that was so good at laying down the bs that they started bending the facts a little? That is Scully. He bends the facts and exaggerates, but the kernel of truth is there. Plus there is the fact that he obviously loved Jerry as a friend which tends to skew it some. The saddest part of the book is Jerry's descent into dope. He goes from cheerful Psychedelic prankster to a withdrawn junkie over the course of the years. It is truly sad that a lifestyle that probably attracted Garcia for its promise freedom ended up caging him. What kind of life is it when your only concerns are when to score and how to get high? The book is a little harsh on Bob Weir, but I kind of view it in the way a big brother messes with his younger brother. There is a hint of admiration and respect in the razzing.
June 28, 2010
This is without question the best book I've ever read about the Grateful Dead! I learned so many things about my favorite band (my favorite being the origin of Sage & Spirit). I just can't believe Rock could go into that much detail without having kept a journal of some sort. Amazing book!
July 5, 2024
Sometimes when I’m backstage at a concert, I’ll catch a glimpse of the band’s tour manager screaming at someone on the phone or handling some crisis that has erupted and think to myself, “I wonder what that’s about?” and then go back to enjoying the show without giving it another thought.
It’s happened enough times to make me wonder if all the things that musicians say to journalists and that people like me write about in books is bullshit. I’m convinced that every band has a secret history that only those privy to the machinations of moving a rock band, its crew, and all their equipment from one place to another can know. Sometimes this secret history is kept hidden from even the band or at the very least no one member knows all the near-disasters that were averted by a combination of luck, pluck, and the vagaries of chance.
Living with the Dead is one such history. It was written by Rock Scully, the band’s longtime manager, and David Dalton, a founding editor of Rolling Stone. It is an astonishingly well written book that endeavors to show the reader the world the Grateful Dead stepped into in 1965, how it changed that world, and was in turn changed by it.
I knew I was going to like the book almost immediately because Scully never puts the band on a pedestal. In fact, he talks a great deal of shit about the band, especially Bob Weir, the only original member of the band I saw play with Dead and Company at The Sphere in May 2024.
Here’s Scully on the early Dead:
“These aren’t songs in any conventional sense, they are catchpenny epics of noodling, circling riffs. Holding patterns of songs. Garcia carries on these long, looping musical, telepathic conversations with his guitar, adjusting the flow from beat to beat, drifting from mood to mood.”
I’ve always been drawn to “life and times” histories, so that I learn something about the world the subject inhabited, and Scully delivers by immediately dropping the reader—and the Grateful Dead—into one of Ken Kesey’s Acid Tests. Suddenly there’s Ken and the Merry Pranksters and Neal Cassady, good old Dean Moriarity, and the mysterious Owsley Stanley, the audio engineer and LSD alchemist. In a matter of pages Scully links San Francisco’s North Beach, the Beat Movement, the coffeehouse scene, and the acid-loving freaks that will define the 1960s.
I don’t want to sound naïve, but I didn’t expect so much LSD. I mean I knew the Dead took lots and lots of acid—that’s kind of their whole deal—but I didn’t know just how much. I took a lot of acid in my early twenties (I don’t want to say how much because of the government), but holy shit the Dead took a lot of LSD—and so did Scully. There are pages and pages of fantastic writing about acid:
“The persistence of the acid in our systems begins to cause weird warps in our little group. We got through periods where everybody is intensely afraid—all the time. Pure, heart-clutching fear. When you’re that high, fear can take eerie shapes and provoke strange reactions. One person starts looking fearful and soon every everybody looks fearful. The fear becomes contagious.”
Scully makes fear sound almost glamourous in a gonzo kind of way. The book is full of surprises. Did you know the band decamped to LA and lived in Watts for a while? This passage about their time in LA jumped out at me:
“But L.A. is so spread out, our little gigs are difficult to promote. We scout around, rent the hall on Monday, make up a poster, print up fliers, put them up all over town. We go up to the Hollywood Bowl and hand out fliers. Staple them to phone poles, hand them out at high school. At night we walk along Sunset and give them away and tell people to come… We generally rent these fraternal order halls—Elks, Odd Fellows, Esteemed Order of Lithuanian Lensgrinders.”
Who does that sound like?
If you answered Black Flag we’re on the same wavelength, man.
Greg Ginn is a huge Deadhead. It came up again and again in my interviews for Corporate Rock Sucks. One way of reading the book is through the lens of young Greg Ginn and what he might have taken from the Grateful Dead when he started up Black Flag and SST Records. But to find out that the Dead were *this close* to the South Bay and employed many of the same tactics that Black Flag used was very interesting to say the least.
Scully keeps the narrative moving and the next thing you know we’re at 710 Ashbury in the summer before the Summer of Love. Acid, Bill Graham, acid, Warner Bros., more acid—and we have yet to reach what Scully describes as “the First Great Psychedelic Age.” Acid isn’t illegal yet and most people don’t know what marijuana smells like. A great seismic crypto-lysergic shift is coming and no one except for the Hell’s Angels and a handful of poets realizes it.
But does Scully have stories?
Oh, yes. According to Scully: Jerry Garcia arranged two of Airplane’s biggest hits, Lou Adler ripped everyone off at the Monterey pop festival, the band dosed Hugh Hefner and his bunnies, and Mick Jagger is responsible for the tragedy at Altamont. In an era where celebrities are brands it’s refreshing to read a book with so much dirt—even though Grateful Dead scholars have problems with the authenticity of Scully’s recollections because of course they do.
It’s not a perfect book. The ending feels rushed, probably because Scully was having less fun lingering over the sordid details of his own enabling of Jerry’s decline. The Dead’s collaboration with Francis Ford Coppola, who slept at the band’s office and rehearsal space in San Rafael, gets three paragraphs. There’s also a lot Scully could say about the band’s relationship with the Hell’s Angles that he refuses to investigate (probably for his own personal safety). Scully seems to run out of steam once the drugs and constant touring start to take their toll and make the enterprise a drag. There are still plenty of hijinks, but Garcia’s slide into an addiction from which he won’t recover is sad and boring. There is nothing more predictable than a junkie.
Rock Scully and David Dalton are dead. Scully died a decade ago. Dalton died less than two years ago. They leave behind a secret history of the band that provided the soundtrack for a remarkable era of American pop culture.
It’s happened enough times to make me wonder if all the things that musicians say to journalists and that people like me write about in books is bullshit. I’m convinced that every band has a secret history that only those privy to the machinations of moving a rock band, its crew, and all their equipment from one place to another can know. Sometimes this secret history is kept hidden from even the band or at the very least no one member knows all the near-disasters that were averted by a combination of luck, pluck, and the vagaries of chance.
Living with the Dead is one such history. It was written by Rock Scully, the band’s longtime manager, and David Dalton, a founding editor of Rolling Stone. It is an astonishingly well written book that endeavors to show the reader the world the Grateful Dead stepped into in 1965, how it changed that world, and was in turn changed by it.
I knew I was going to like the book almost immediately because Scully never puts the band on a pedestal. In fact, he talks a great deal of shit about the band, especially Bob Weir, the only original member of the band I saw play with Dead and Company at The Sphere in May 2024.
Here’s Scully on the early Dead:
“These aren’t songs in any conventional sense, they are catchpenny epics of noodling, circling riffs. Holding patterns of songs. Garcia carries on these long, looping musical, telepathic conversations with his guitar, adjusting the flow from beat to beat, drifting from mood to mood.”
I’ve always been drawn to “life and times” histories, so that I learn something about the world the subject inhabited, and Scully delivers by immediately dropping the reader—and the Grateful Dead—into one of Ken Kesey’s Acid Tests. Suddenly there’s Ken and the Merry Pranksters and Neal Cassady, good old Dean Moriarity, and the mysterious Owsley Stanley, the audio engineer and LSD alchemist. In a matter of pages Scully links San Francisco’s North Beach, the Beat Movement, the coffeehouse scene, and the acid-loving freaks that will define the 1960s.
I don’t want to sound naïve, but I didn’t expect so much LSD. I mean I knew the Dead took lots and lots of acid—that’s kind of their whole deal—but I didn’t know just how much. I took a lot of acid in my early twenties (I don’t want to say how much because of the government), but holy shit the Dead took a lot of LSD—and so did Scully. There are pages and pages of fantastic writing about acid:
“The persistence of the acid in our systems begins to cause weird warps in our little group. We got through periods where everybody is intensely afraid—all the time. Pure, heart-clutching fear. When you’re that high, fear can take eerie shapes and provoke strange reactions. One person starts looking fearful and soon every everybody looks fearful. The fear becomes contagious.”
Scully makes fear sound almost glamourous in a gonzo kind of way. The book is full of surprises. Did you know the band decamped to LA and lived in Watts for a while? This passage about their time in LA jumped out at me:
“But L.A. is so spread out, our little gigs are difficult to promote. We scout around, rent the hall on Monday, make up a poster, print up fliers, put them up all over town. We go up to the Hollywood Bowl and hand out fliers. Staple them to phone poles, hand them out at high school. At night we walk along Sunset and give them away and tell people to come… We generally rent these fraternal order halls—Elks, Odd Fellows, Esteemed Order of Lithuanian Lensgrinders.”
Who does that sound like?
If you answered Black Flag we’re on the same wavelength, man.
Greg Ginn is a huge Deadhead. It came up again and again in my interviews for Corporate Rock Sucks. One way of reading the book is through the lens of young Greg Ginn and what he might have taken from the Grateful Dead when he started up Black Flag and SST Records. But to find out that the Dead were *this close* to the South Bay and employed many of the same tactics that Black Flag used was very interesting to say the least.
Scully keeps the narrative moving and the next thing you know we’re at 710 Ashbury in the summer before the Summer of Love. Acid, Bill Graham, acid, Warner Bros., more acid—and we have yet to reach what Scully describes as “the First Great Psychedelic Age.” Acid isn’t illegal yet and most people don’t know what marijuana smells like. A great seismic crypto-lysergic shift is coming and no one except for the Hell’s Angels and a handful of poets realizes it.
But does Scully have stories?
Oh, yes. According to Scully: Jerry Garcia arranged two of Airplane’s biggest hits, Lou Adler ripped everyone off at the Monterey pop festival, the band dosed Hugh Hefner and his bunnies, and Mick Jagger is responsible for the tragedy at Altamont. In an era where celebrities are brands it’s refreshing to read a book with so much dirt—even though Grateful Dead scholars have problems with the authenticity of Scully’s recollections because of course they do.
It’s not a perfect book. The ending feels rushed, probably because Scully was having less fun lingering over the sordid details of his own enabling of Jerry’s decline. The Dead’s collaboration with Francis Ford Coppola, who slept at the band’s office and rehearsal space in San Rafael, gets three paragraphs. There’s also a lot Scully could say about the band’s relationship with the Hell’s Angles that he refuses to investigate (probably for his own personal safety). Scully seems to run out of steam once the drugs and constant touring start to take their toll and make the enterprise a drag. There are still plenty of hijinks, but Garcia’s slide into an addiction from which he won’t recover is sad and boring. There is nothing more predictable than a junkie.
Rock Scully and David Dalton are dead. Scully died a decade ago. Dalton died less than two years ago. They leave behind a secret history of the band that provided the soundtrack for a remarkable era of American pop culture.
October 20, 2016
I didn't actually finish this, but not because I wasn't enjoying it. I was reading it, in part, while on a stationary cycle at the gym and I am pretty sure I left it there. It didn't get turned into the gym lost and found. So either a deadhead picked it up, or perhaps someone who decided to make maybe a buck at Half Price Books.
I've decided to review it anyway because I had just come to the end of the chapter that dealt with the making of Blues for Allah, and Scully had pronounced that the Persian heroin had just made a big reintroduction into the circle. That marks the beginning of the end, and knowing something about the decline of Garcia and Scully into addiction, I decided I didn't want to buy the book again just to read the depressing stuff.
The beginning of the book, and even up to where I lost it, was a lot of fun. I've read that much of what Scully says is unreliable. Of course it is. It's a gonzo memoir. I wouldn't read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for its factual content either. Gonzo uses exaggeration and distortion to (hopefully) reveal a larger truth. That said, Scully is no Hunter Thompson, and sometimes the attempts at overload tended instead to be overbearing or simply overdone.
Scully's attitude toward the band members is troubling. Bobby is always an incompetent, spaced-out kid. There's not a good word to be said about Phil. Bill comes across as a mostly deranged wild man. There is some sympathy for Pigpen, who is drawn more fully than the others. Garcia, on the other hand, can basically do no wrong. And Keith and Mickey are pretty much cyphers. (Keith always comes across as a cypher, and it makes me wonder if that's just how he was.)
The stories, however, are fun. And Scully is more forthcoming than any of the other books I've read. Of course, forthcoming and reliable are two separate issues. One of the things that surprised me, however, is how little of the book had to do with the business of the dead, considering that Scully managed the band for close to 20 years. With all of that, there is very little on the nuts and bolts on running the business. I would have liked it better if he had gone into some of the business dealings in the same sort of detail that he gave to many of the acid trips.
If I see the book (and maybe this copy) in Half Price Books, I will pick it up and finish it. But for now I am counting it as a sign that I lost it where I did, and that I don't have to get angry and bummed out, yet again, over Jerry's self destruction.
I've decided to review it anyway because I had just come to the end of the chapter that dealt with the making of Blues for Allah, and Scully had pronounced that the Persian heroin had just made a big reintroduction into the circle. That marks the beginning of the end, and knowing something about the decline of Garcia and Scully into addiction, I decided I didn't want to buy the book again just to read the depressing stuff.
The beginning of the book, and even up to where I lost it, was a lot of fun. I've read that much of what Scully says is unreliable. Of course it is. It's a gonzo memoir. I wouldn't read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for its factual content either. Gonzo uses exaggeration and distortion to (hopefully) reveal a larger truth. That said, Scully is no Hunter Thompson, and sometimes the attempts at overload tended instead to be overbearing or simply overdone.
Scully's attitude toward the band members is troubling. Bobby is always an incompetent, spaced-out kid. There's not a good word to be said about Phil. Bill comes across as a mostly deranged wild man. There is some sympathy for Pigpen, who is drawn more fully than the others. Garcia, on the other hand, can basically do no wrong. And Keith and Mickey are pretty much cyphers. (Keith always comes across as a cypher, and it makes me wonder if that's just how he was.)
The stories, however, are fun. And Scully is more forthcoming than any of the other books I've read. Of course, forthcoming and reliable are two separate issues. One of the things that surprised me, however, is how little of the book had to do with the business of the dead, considering that Scully managed the band for close to 20 years. With all of that, there is very little on the nuts and bolts on running the business. I would have liked it better if he had gone into some of the business dealings in the same sort of detail that he gave to many of the acid trips.
If I see the book (and maybe this copy) in Half Price Books, I will pick it up and finish it. But for now I am counting it as a sign that I lost it where I did, and that I don't have to get angry and bummed out, yet again, over Jerry's self destruction.
January 22, 2021
Although there is some clever literacy in this book and some excellent stories, in the end, I found this book very depressing. Mostly bullshit about "boys will be boys"and "look what we got away with." I don't think the Dead had an obligation to be leading lights, but as someone who loved their music, saw many concerts, and actually worked with them, is is disappointing to realize the depths of their careless, consuming misogyny and reluctance to use their talents to make actual art. And reading about Garcia's weakness and spinelessness is disheartening indeed.
July 27, 2014
Rock Scully was the Grateful Dead's tour manager between 1965 until 1985. This was no simple task. No easy laid back sort of job. Especially during the late seventies when Garcia had fallen prey to serious heroin use. It was up to Scully to figure out how to supply Garcia with a particular variety of Afghan dope by having it smuggled through airport security by jamming it inside hollowed Christmas candles and such in order for the band to perform. And that is only one small part of the job. All in all, this was extreme baby sitting. There were other members of this band that had eccentricities and special needs - Phil Lesh was a connoisseur of French wines... Why bother, you say? Because Scully really loved these guys and believed that they were the most important and talented musicians of their time. - And if you've been to a Dead show (and I have) you can't deny that there was really something there that had never existed before. Those who go, the "truly committed" as I refer to them, are a community. By the seventies and onward to the end of the millennium, following the Dead for a seventeen-year-old was either a twisted version of summer camp or, even, a summer job. (There is much entrepreneurship in the parking lot of a show.) For anyone older, a Dead show is a groovy nostalgic vaca.
If you have seen the mock-doc "Spinal Tap", you'll know what I mean. The film was as much about managing a band as it was about being a band.
I loved the informal way this book was written (by master pop culture biographer David Dalton, was not overly done, it felt very genuine. It was a great inside look at the band and how one manages to manage it.
If you have seen the mock-doc "Spinal Tap", you'll know what I mean. The film was as much about managing a band as it was about being a band.
I loved the informal way this book was written (by master pop culture biographer David Dalton, was not overly done, it felt very genuine. It was a great inside look at the band and how one manages to manage it.
March 14, 2018
Oh boy this is a wild and hair-raising trip of a book. Scully, who was one of the Dead's managers for almost 20 years, engages the reader with his witty, self-deprecating prose (co-authored with rock journalist Dalton) as he relates an almost unending stream of hilarious and/or terrifying anecdotes about a likeable group of hippies and misfits who are frequently so stoned they have no idea where or even who they are. Quite how a band even vaguely coherent emerged from the chaos, let alone one of the most creative and inspiring bands of the 20th century, is astonishing.
The final chapters, which deal with his and Garcia's appalling out-of-control drug use threaten to get depressing, especially as we all know what the end of the story is. But overall it's an affectionate warts-and-all insider portrait of what seems now like a long-vanished Golden Age when people really could have free love and consequence-free drug use, or so they thought.
Definitely not for Deadheads only. Anyone curious about what the Sixties and the hippie movement were like will find lots to enjoy here.
The final chapters, which deal with his and Garcia's appalling out-of-control drug use threaten to get depressing, especially as we all know what the end of the story is. But overall it's an affectionate warts-and-all insider portrait of what seems now like a long-vanished Golden Age when people really could have free love and consequence-free drug use, or so they thought.
Definitely not for Deadheads only. Anyone curious about what the Sixties and the hippie movement were like will find lots to enjoy here.
July 18, 2017
Even though Scully was their manager, this book is written as if he was an outsider. Fast-paced and exciting, non-stop thrills and chills.
It sense of chaos that Scully is trying to contain, really comes across to the reader I thought.
Of the many, many books written about the Grateful Dead, I feel this one hit the mark. Five musicians doing drugs and acting out in outrageous ways, with the manager trying his best to get them all on the same stage at the right time, over and over again. night after night.
I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to know more about these musicians.
It sense of chaos that Scully is trying to contain, really comes across to the reader I thought.
Of the many, many books written about the Grateful Dead, I feel this one hit the mark. Five musicians doing drugs and acting out in outrageous ways, with the manager trying his best to get them all on the same stage at the right time, over and over again. night after night.
I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to know more about these musicians.
October 11, 2015
Don't get me wrong, there are some great stories in this book. Rock was there early on and was there for most of the best stuff. Unfortunately, this book is a self serving piece of work that glorifies Jerry, glosses over his (and Rock's) drug use at best and glorifies it at worst, all the while disparaging every other member of the Dead along the way.
I'd recommend it for the deep head looking to get all the angles, but definitely avoid it if you are seeking a good balanced history of the Dead.
I'd recommend it for the deep head looking to get all the angles, but definitely avoid it if you are seeking a good balanced history of the Dead.
April 17, 2008
This book was way better than the other one I read. Didin't gloss over the storms, the heroin, the fights, the women and most importantly, the music.
Still a smidge heavy handed from the first-person perspective, but hey - what else do I want? Perfection?
This book taught me a lot about the dead and garcia etc... and how today isn't all that much different then 'back in the day'
I liked this book a lot better. I liked Rocks' storytelling a lot better.
Still a smidge heavy handed from the first-person perspective, but hey - what else do I want? Perfection?
This book taught me a lot about the dead and garcia etc... and how today isn't all that much different then 'back in the day'
I liked this book a lot better. I liked Rocks' storytelling a lot better.
June 27, 2022
Living With the Dead: Twenty Years on the Bus With Garcia and the Grateful Dead by Rock Scully with David Dalton (Little, Brown & Co. 1996) (780.92). This is interesting input from one who was with the band for much of the fun. Great story! My rating: 7/10, finished February 2010.******UPDATED 6/27/22 - I purchased a PB copy in good condition from McKay's Books for $1.50 on 6/24/22. PPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP
October 9, 2008
This was a gift, from Fred I think. Has some amusing parts, and is at the same time very sad because, like many great artists, Garcia had a big self-destructive streak. Pathetic at the end. All in all, I'd probably rather listen to his music than read about Garcia.
September 9, 2013
Sex, drugs, drugs, drugs and drugs again ... and rock and roll.
One of the funniest book ever written. I didn't go to bed smarter for reading it but I enjoyed it a whole lot even if I didn't know much about the Dead.
One of the funniest book ever written. I didn't go to bed smarter for reading it but I enjoyed it a whole lot even if I didn't know much about the Dead.
April 6, 2016
Fantastic, eye-opening insights about the bands connections to music, musicians and a pivotal time in history. An intimate look at the band over 20 years. The last 1/3 of the book was fairly depressing. It was all drugs, addiction, no adventuring and no inspiration. Heartbreaking stuff.
July 12, 2020
One-and-a-half stars. I've read other drug-filled music biographies/memoirs, but they held my interest a lot more than this author did.
June 6, 2022
Not bad, but sort of suffers from the same thing a lot of the books written either by band members or by people in the Dead’s orbit do: Scully tries to make himself the star of the narrative while in actuality he’s just another passenger on the bus. The main difference between this book and, for example, Lesh’s or Kreutzmann’s is that they were actually *in* the band. Scully spends the majority of the book trying to convince the reader that he was also in the band, not just an employee of the Grateful Dead, and it comes of as desperate. Not to say that the book isn’t entertaining, but he glosses over some pretty major events (Egypt gets half a page, the exodus of the Godchauxs, less than that, Keith’s death gets one sentence, Brent is almost entirely absent) and focuses on whatever allows him to peak over Jerry’s shoulder to get a snippet of attention. Mostly that’s relegated to fetching Jerry a fix and trying to sound tough. For more unbiased, informative, and in depth reading I’d steer more towards the books by Jackson, McNally, and Gans. People either outside of the circle or less self-obsessed that they actually put in the effort to tell an objective story without trying to fluff up their perceived role in the arc of the band over their tenure within the machine.
April 5, 2023
some good stuff here, but for the last 50 or so pages the narrative sort of falls off and turns into a series of short stories. i was hoping for more regarding the period that jerry lived with scully, or what was going on in scully’s life after getting fired. still, there’s enough material to make this one of the better books on the dead, if only because it has more of the dark drug stories. i love the band dearly, but it still blows my mind that this group of people who once lived communally, did tons of mind-expanding psychedelics, and played tens of thousands of hours of music together could have so little communication with one another, to the point where there were bad feelings all around and yet still no one was willing to take a break. (i think kreutzmann equates this to a generational thing in his book.)
August 21, 2018
I liked this book. Like Bill Kreutzmann’s book, this one does not spend a lot of time trying to figure out The Dead’s sociological place in the counterculture or draw lessons about the cosmos as interpreted through the chord changes in Dark Star. It’s just stories that when told together become the story of the Grateful Dead told by someone who was there from the start. The story is well written, enlightening, sometimes poignant, sometimes sad, and quite often funny. The episodes about the German fire department and Keith Moon at the Navarro Hotel stand out in particular. If you've never read a book about the Grateful Dead this is a good place to start. If you've ready many books about the band and it's members, this is a nice light refreshment.
December 12, 2020
A different take on the Dead, with their long time road manager Rock Scully telling the stories. Tales of mayhem, madness, and music from the Haight in the mid-60s through tours to Europe and Egypt in the 70s and into the heavy hard drug use of the 80s. He's clearly in Jerry's camp and throws some shade at pretty much all the other band members and crew except maybe Pigpen and Brent, but doesn't shy away from presenting Jerry as the addict he was in the late 70s and early 80s either. Rock got kicked off the bus as a bad influence in 1985 when Jerry was arrested in Golden Gate Park and tried to clean up. Not as comprehensive as some other books, but worth it for the inside perspective.
June 27, 2017
Very fun read. Who better than the members themselves to tell these stories than Rock Skully. Skully perfectly describes in great detail and often times hilarity some amazing stories of what life was like on the road with the Dead. Easy read and also easy to put down and come back to if you are also reading something else. The story of visiting the playboy mansion is one of the funniest stories you will ever hear.
March 29, 2023
Rock Scully's Living With the Dead is nothing but sensationalized sex, drugs and rock & roll. The embellished recollections all need to be viewed as suspect. Rock Scully had a chip on his shoulder and wanted to cash-in on his former association with the band. He had been kicked out of the GD family for allegedly stealing cash and was excluded from Jerry Garcia's funeral.
June 15, 2023
The band manager thinks he’s part of the band. He writes a memoir (about himself as the only brain in the bunch). He collects royalties on the book.
I bought a discarded library copy from Goodwill. It had a nice cover.
Read some of the other two star reviews. I’m running out of positive things to say.
I bought a discarded library copy from Goodwill. It had a nice cover.
Read some of the other two star reviews. I’m running out of positive things to say.
June 17, 2025
This was worth reading and I enjoyed it, but I felt this was a little too focused on the author and not enough on the band. I also must say for some reason it irked me that when talking about the band he kept saying “we”. It would have been nice for there to be more “historical” parts about what was happening with the band interspersed with the author’s anecdotes.
February 14, 2019
read it before – just needed something I knew I’d like. Lots of good stories but in the end really a tragic tale. I still miss Jerry. 4****
May 4, 2020
I miss Jerry :(
March 21, 2021
I want to hang out with Rock Scully. Funny, insightful, well-written.
February 12, 2022
Not your average dead book
July 17, 2024
Crazy story
December 14, 2024
Depiction of one of the best bands of all time 😉 from someone that knew them through their best years. Sad but humorous with a whole of crazy stories
February 13, 2025
Beat book on the Dead if you want the inside scoop on the drugs, partying and debauchery.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 65 reviews