The Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead, with its notorious founding member Jerry Garcia, was a band that epitomized the psychedelic era of American rock 'n' roll music from the 1960s to the 1990s. Even after Garcia's death in 1995, members of the band continued to tour, in part to satisfy the yearnings of the most dedicated group of fans ever to bind themselves to a musical group, the so-called Dead Heads.
Garcia and friends Bob Weir, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, Bill Kreutzmann, and Phil Lesh formed the band in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1965 after various incarnations as a blues and bluegrass influenced jug band (Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions) and a blues/rock ensemble (The Warlocks). The various members, especially keyboard players, who were to come and go, included Tom Constanten, Donna and Keith Godchaux, Brent Mydland, Bruce Hornsby, and Vince Welnick. Mickey Hart joined the band shortly after its inception, complementing Kreutzmann as a second drummer, left for a while after his father ripped off the band, and later rejoined them. Pigpen died and the band kept on playing, but with the death of Jerry Garcia the remaining members finally disbanded. They kept playing in their various individual bands, however, and in a combined band called The Other Ones, which approximated the Grateful Dead and continued the Dead's summer tour tradition.
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