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.

A backstage pass from a Grateful Dead concert.

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...