Still Truckin'

SWEET CHAOS

The Grateful Dead's American Adventure
By Carol Brightman

Clarkson Potter. 356 pp. $27.50

The publishing world dumped a slew of new books about the Grateful Dead
into book stores a few years ago -- even before the legendary singer of the
band, Jerry Garcia, died in 1995. With the exception of Dark Star by Robert
Greenfield, most of them were better left off the shelves. By today's
lightning-fast standards, Carol Brightman seems to have completely missed
her prime marketing moment with Sweet Chaos. Unhurried by the pressure of
immediate demand, however, Brightman has, in the end, produced the most
exhaustive and beautifully written book so far about the venerable band.
With insight and clarity, she captures the essence of not only the Grateful
Dead but the entire '60s era in which the band began.

I reluctantly admit I was once one of the many thousands of Deadheads
following the band around the country, living within a subculture alien to
most Americans. There was a period in my life when nothing brought me more
joy than watching the Dead walk onstage. Their appearance guaranteed a few
glorious hours, and the ecstatic impact of some shows lasted for days. It
was impossible to describe my profound connection to the music and its
intoxicating effect.

Eventually I outgrew the Dead scene and, in the process, developed a strong
distaste for anyone or anything associated with the Dead. As a reformed
Deadhead, I was skeptical that any book could accurately convey the unique
quality of the band, let alone provide fresh material about the band's
past. I assumed that anyone who loved the Dead was as well-informed as any
biographer and that anyone who did not care for the band would not be
interested in reading a book about them.

Brightman (who won a National Book Critics Circle Award for Writing
Dangerously: Mary McCarthy and Her World) proved me wrong. Sweet Chaos
draws on extensive interviews with remaining band members Mickey Hart, Phil
Lesh and Bob Weir, and other members of the Dead coterie. Brightman is
clearly not a Deadhead, but as a member of the generation that came of age
during the '60s she finds common ground with the band's followers. Because
she was there but wasn't sucked in by the Dead phenomenon, Brightman has a
good vantage point from which to observe the band. She was an active
participant in the antiwar movement and relies on her experience in the
late '60s and early '70s to place the Grateful Dead in a larger, more
complicated context than the burgeoning music scene with which they were
associated.

Brightman understands that they were always much more than a rock band,
but, like so many -- even those in the band -- she does not quite know why
the Dead created such a strong and lasting legacy. She writes, "To
understand the Dead's place in American history, don't we need to take a
closer look at how history shaped them? And what was the band's role in
creating a subculture that, three years after Jerry Garcia's death, remains
surprisingly intact?" She examines how the political climate, the music and
the drugs interacted to produce an exceptional period in modern America, a
time when an emerging subculture reveled in its own giddy dreamlike
existence and the rest of the country coped with painful social issues that
threatened to crack the facade of American life. Brightman acknowledges,
"Perhaps I risk seeing myself when I return in these pages to the 1960s and
early '70s to examine not just the Dead's world but the community they
shunned across the Bay in Berkeley, as well. . . . One cannot re-create the
era out of which the Grateful Dead emerged without recalling civil rights
and the Free Speech Movement, Vietnam, the Cuban Revolution, and the
Weathermen."

Brightman begins her journey into the Dead's past by examining what may be
the most defining characteristic of the band and its music: drugs. As with
every topic she covers, Brightman doesn't settle for casual explanations.
She discusses the role of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, the all-night
drug parties known as Acid Tests and the alleged involvement of the CIA in
introducing LSD and other harsher drugs to the free spirits on Haight Street.

This book is not so much about the Dead, the reader soon learns, as about
the many factors that created and sustained the band. Brightman devotes
considerable attention to the antiwar movements springing up on college
campuses around the country. Considering the period, the Dead were
remarkably silent on the subject of Vietnam; Brightman suggests that they
were almost disdainful of the yahoos leading the protest sit-ins at
Berkeley but still inextricably linked to the madding scene. Brightman
astutely observes that the members of the Grateful Dead, like many in the
counterculture, "turned, often quite consciously, to rock 'n' roll and
drugs as antidotes to the nameless horrors Vietnam evoked."

The war eventually ended, kids cut their hair and bell bottoms went out of
style (temporarily). The Dead remained as one of the few reminders of the
bygone era of love and flowers. Did the Grateful Dead make a small but
indelible mark on society or did society mold the Dead? Thirty years later,
this question remains unanswered. However, Brightman comes the closest yet
to providing an intriguing glimpse into the mysteries of the Grateful Dead.