Grateful Dead Quotes

“Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places, if you look at it right.”
― Grateful Dead

“Whistle through your teeth and spit cuz, it's Alright”
― Jerry Garcia

“More fun than a frog in a glass of milk.”
― Bob Weir

“We're sort of like the town whore that's finally become an institution. We're finally becoming respectable.”
― Jerry Garcia

“I'm still walking, so I'm sure that I can dance.”
― John Barlow

“And a ride in a hearse tells us we’re all close to that final cruise . . . when the body dies and we move on. It’s just the body, man. It’s just the body. The soul’s already gone. So don’t be afraid of a dead body absent a soul. It’s empty, man. No resident. What you need to worry about is a living body that’s lost its soul. Now that is scary, man.” - Funk N. Wagnalls, owner of the Grim Reapers auto lot, a character in Professor Brown Shoes Teaches the Blues.”
― David Mutti Clark, Professor Brown Shoes Teaches the Blues

“Eventually they [Sarunas Marciulionis and Don Nelson] got a call from a representative of the Grateful Dead, whose members had been inspired by Lithuania's struggle for independence. Nelson and Marciulionis showed up at the address they were given in San Francisco, which was a small, nondescript garage. 'I thought we were the victim of a practical joke until we opened the door and there was a state-of-the-art recording studio' says Nelson.

'I still remember the Dead were trying out Beatles covers, doing stuff like "Here Comes the Sun" and "Hey Jude"... but they were just kind of working through things and sounding kind of nasally and, well, maybe there was a little pot going on. So Sarunas pulls me aside and says 'Donnie, no way these guys are famous. They're terrible.' '.”
― Jack McCallum, Dream Team: How Michael, Magic, Larry, Charles, and the Greatest Team of All Time Conquered the World and Changed the Game of Basketball Forever

“Life was full: no hacker is worth missing a Dead concert for.”
― Clifford Stoll, The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage

“Grateful Dead performances were by design not consciously planned, often reaching their artistic peak when the collective stumbled upon something stunning, when "the music played the band," as it were. Instead of using set lists, the Grateful Dead chose songs by experimenting together until a pulse, rhythm, phrase, or riff emerged from the group, suggesting a song. Their collective, improvisatory musical works communicate felling like any other artwork.”
― Steven Gimbel, The Grateful Dead and Philosophy: Getting High Minded about Love and Haight

“If we had any nerve at all, if we had any real balls as a society, or whatever you need, whatever quality you need, real character, we would make an effort to really address the wrongs in this society, righteously.”
― Jerry Garcia

“For me, making a record is like building a ship in a bottle. Playing live music is like being in a rowboat in the ocean.”
― Jerry Garcia, quoted by William Plummer in "The Holy Goof: A Biography of Neal Cassady", p. 144h

“I figured 'good enough for rock 'n' roll' should be better than good enough to go into space.”
― Owsley "Bear" Stanley

“One final note one the [Rolling] Stones, though: When they came through the Bay Area earlier on that tour for regular concerts at the Oakland Coliseum Arena [before the Altamont free concert, 1969], 'They blew up all their equipment at the first show,' Betty Cantor-Jackson relates. 'They had all this Ampeg equipment, and it just went Ffffffttt! They were in a panic, so [Larry] Ram Rod [Shurtliff] and [Unknown maybe Rex?] Jackson raced to our [Grateful Dead] warehouse and brought down a bunch of our [rewired, kicked up, tinkered and experimented with] Fender amps for them, and the next show we sat up onstage while they played, and it sounded amazing. That was one of the times Bill Graham was nice to us,' She laughs. 'Anyway, I remember the first note Keith {Richards} played through Jerry's [Garcia] amp, and his mouth just dropped open. 'Woah!'. He couldn't believe the power and the clarity.'.”
― Blair Jackson, Grateful Dead Gear: The Band's Instruments, Sound Systems, and Recording Sessions from 1965 to 1995

“Not knowing how he had come to sit behind the steering wheel, he considered driving into town for help but was too fucked up to walk much less commandeer Emma’s truck. The hike into the canyon where her body would be—500 feet beneath the Claw and at least a 90-minute jog from the truck—was too much to consider, the stream requiring being forded at least a dozen times. Paralyzed by indecision and the horror of seeing her jump, he pounded the steering wheel with palms, tears soaking his face, collecting like dew drops in the wiry strands of his beard. “What the fuck? What the fucking fuck? Goddammit Emma…”
Desiring nothing other than to have her back, he felt the urge to lie down on the seat and cry himself into oblivion, having no more control over himself than he had over the way Powerball had spun the universe, spitting out random equations from a spinning cage. So maybe, his mind conspired, she didn’t jump and was still wandering around the Claw, lost, searching him out. But the image of her stretching her arms wide and leaping was crystalline in its authenticity, tangible and substantial.
She’s not here. The voice returned, stripping earthly context from reality. Go look somewhere else.
“...the other half found me stumbling around and drunk on burgundy wine,” the tape player shattered his thoughts as though someone had thrown a large rock through the windshield, the engine suddenly idling. Like it just happened on its own, there was no way he’d touched the key. Fumbling for the cassette deck’s knobs, he watched his hand disappear into the dash, lacking mass or substance, sensation, an immaterial thing dangling uselessly from the end of his arm. Outside the truck, the mountain and trees pivoted, the world turning on a spindle, the turnout giving way to the meadow and the rutted path back to the gate. Gooch watched the speedometer needle bounce back and forth, wind tumbling the dashboard trash and debris so that everything danced against the windshield in time to the music.
“I’ll get up and fly away….”
― James R McQuiggin, A Rare and Different Tune: Book Two in the Powerball Trilogy