Grateful Dead reunite for farewell concerts
Twenty years after the death of Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia, the four surviving members of the rock band are set to reunite. The Grateful Dead, who emerged from the counter-culture movement in California in the late Sixties, will celebrate the band’s 50th anniversary with a selection of shows in Chicago in July.
The reunion will feature the band’s surviving members – Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh and Bob Weir – with three unconfirmed guests to replace Garcia.
Chicago’s Solider Field stadium – the oldest US football stadium still in use and home to the Chicago Bears – was the site of the Grateful Dead’s last show with Garcia in July 1995.
Garcia – who sang, played guitar and wrote many of the songs – died one month after the concert, signalling an end to a tradition which saw free-spirited “Deadheads” follow the band from show to show and swapped bootleg recordings. Among the band’s best known tracks are Truckin,Touch of Grey, and Casey Jones. Among their many albums, the most acclaimed are American Beauty and Workingman’s Dead.
“It is with respect and gratitude that we reconvene the Dead one last time to celebrate – not merely the band’s legacy, but also the community that we’ve been playing to, and with, for 50 years,” said bassist Phil Lesh in a statement.
“Being able to get everyone together – the fans and the band members – for a special weekend is a really big deal,” said Garcia’s daughter, Trixie.
Surviving members of the Grateful Dead have played together before, including for a benefit show in 2008 for the-then presidential candidate Barack Obama, which led to a series of full concerts.
But the Chicago concerts could serve as a finale for the Grateful Dead as band members have spoken increasingly about retirement. Weir is 67 and Lesh turns 75 in March.
Among the musicians who will play on stage in Chicago will be Trey Anastasio, the singer and guitarist for Phish – a band often considered the spiritual successor to the Grateful Dead in terms of their improvisational musical style and base of passionate but convivial fans.
Also joining the band will be Bruce Hornsby, a genre-merging pianist and singer who frequently collaborated with the Grateful Dead in the past, and keyboardist Jeff Chimenti, who has also played with the band since Garcia’s death.
Source: The Telegraph
