(The band had planned six concerts in late September at Madison Square Garden as part of a fall tour, but it is unclear if they will proceed.) For most of the 1980's and early 1990's, the band toured stadiums and did not play to a single empty seat some concerts sold out before they were advertised, purely through announcements in the Deadheads' newsletter and on a telephone hotline. The Dead's fans savored the group's unpredictability, seeing as many concerts as possible and sometimes following the band for a full-length tour. It set attendance records for every major arena in the New York area, as well as the Spectrum in Philadelphia and the Boston Garden. He noted that the band in recent years played 85 to 110 shows annually. John Scher, chairman of Metropolitan Entertainment, which coordinates the band's East Coast performances, said yesterday that the Grateful Dead "are unquestionably the highest-grossing band cumulatively in the history of the music business." The Dead were one of the top bands in late-1960's San Francisco, and unlike their hippie-era contemporaries, they continued to thrive, their essence unchanged and their popularity expanding. The music could shift in any direction as it sought what the band and its fans called the "X factor": spontaneous, revelatory stretches of music arrived at through practice and serendipity. The Dead built their reputation on long, free-form concerts, going onstage without a set list and playing anything from original songs to rock oldies to extended experiments with feedback. The band never played a song the same way twice. Formed in 1965, when a Bay Area jug band decided to switch to electric instruments, the Dead created an all-American fusion of bluegrass, blues, country, rhythm-and-blues, folk and rock, all laced with improvisation. The Grateful Dead were one of rock's most beloved institutions. The band's future is uncertain the Dead had planned to record their newest songs in a studio for an album to be released next year. Within the music business, the Dead exemplified integrity in a sphere of hype and artifice beyond, they symbolized a spirit of communal bliss, with free-wheeling, anything-can-happen music to bring together a community of tenacious fans, the Deadheads. As news of his death spread, fans wept in the streets of San Francisco and the Internet was flooded with eulogies and reminiscences. Garcia as their most recognizable member, had come to represent the survival of 1960's idealism. In recent years he had tried to stop smoking and to lose weight. He was hospitalized in 1986 in a diabetic coma, and in 1992 the group had to cancel tour dates when Mr. In the 1960's, he was known as Captain Trips, referring to his frequent use of LSD, and he struggled through the years with heroin addiction. The guitarist had suffered serious health problems for a decade.
He was 53.Ī spokesman for the band, Dennis McNally, said the cause was a heart attack.
Jerry Garcia, whose gentle voice and gleaming, chiming guitar lines embodied the psychedelic optimism of the Grateful Dead for three decades, died in his sleep yesterday at Serenity Knolls, a residential drug treatment center in Forest Knolls, Calif.