Features

Grateful Dead at the Rock Hall: A Report

You’ve got to hand it to those working with the Grateful Dead Archives at the University California Santa Cruz. They stand behind their words.

“When they took the collection from the Dead, in their first press release they wanted to work with organizations like us,” said Howard Kramer, Director of Curatorial at the Rock Hall. “When this opportunity came up, we called them and said, ‘We want to do this. Will you do it?’ And they said, ‘We said we would, so we will.’

With artifacts donated from UCSC, Grateful Dead Productions and individuals plus the band members’ collections and gear the result is the exhibit, “Grateful Dead: The Long, Strange Trip,” which fills two floors of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland. It runs through December 2012.

Explaining how the Rock Hall and UCSC are able to open exhibits in the same year (UCSC will follow on June 29), Kramer said, “They have a massive amount of material. This doesn’t scratch the surface. I picked some great stuff but they still have more than enough to get going.”

“Long, Strange Trip” is broken into sections — an introduction of the members, the Dead as a songwriting, recording and touring entity, the relationship with fans and people who have been an integral part of the band’s career.

It includes finished and working manuscripts for songs (“Truckin’,” “Box of Rain” and “Sugaree”), handwritten notes from Dick Latvala, artifacts from Owsley “Bear” Stanley, promoter Bill Graham’s Father Time robe, the Grateful Dead Hotline answering machine, original artwork of album covers (“Live Dead,” “Workingman’s Dead” and “Without a Net”) and numerous instruments.

Although it contains Stanley Mouse’s “Cats Under the Stars” painting used for the Jerry Garcia Band album of the same name plus artwork for Robert Hunter’s “Tiger Rose” album and Garcia’s top hat from his Broadway run of shows, it doesn’t dwell on the members’ solo work.

“I felt that there was more than enough to cover in just the Dead’s career without going into the numerous solo projects and offshoots,” he said.

“Same with the post-Jerry thing. The exhibit is on the band, not all the other things the band members did. You can get lost down that rabbit hole very quickly and never do justice to any of it.”