Grateful Dead Memorabilia
Hippies, Guns, and LSD: The San Francisco Rock Band That Was Too Wild For the Sixties
By Ben Marks — George Hunter of the Charlatans never shot Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, not even once. But in the spring of 1966, on the grounds of Rancho Olompali just north of San Francisco, Garcia had reason to believe Hunter was gunning for him, causing the great guitarist to royally freak out. The misunderstanding unfolded when Hunter decided to drop some LSD and bring a loaded .30-30 Winchester rifle to a party at the Dead’s new Marin County hangout. Hunter never intended to strike fear into the...
Did the CIA's Experiments With Psychedelic Drugs Unwittingly Create the Grateful Dead?
By Ben Marks — Trying to write a definitive history of the Acid Tests, a series of multimedia happenings in 1965 and 1966, in which everyone in attendance was stoned on LSD, is like trying to organize an aquarium’s worth of electric eels into a nice neat row, sorted by length. You will never get the creatures to stop writhing, let alone straighten out, and if you touch them, well, they are electric eels. In 2015, key details from two of the earliest Acid Tests, which were funded and organized by author...
The Dead Files: Rock Art, Artifacts, and Psychedelic Office Supplies Up for Grabs
By Ben Marks — When people ask me where I went to high school, I often tell them Winterland, the former Ice Follies arena in San Francisco where, from 1966 to 1978, legendary rock impresario Bill Graham produced concerts headlined by everyone from Jimi Hendrix to the Sex Pistols. My friends and I spent many an evening (and early morning) in that gloriously decrepit firetrap, but, in fact, I am a proud graduate of San Rafael High School, class of 1973, home of the fighting Bulldogs and 420. In 1970, our...
The High Price of a Degree in LSD
By Ben Marks — When the bidding closed on September 16, 2012, 7:21pm, a torn and tattered piece of paper from 1966, measuring 8½ by 11 inches, sold for $24,255 at the Heart of Rock and Roll Poster Auction. Obviously, this was no ordinary piece of paper. In fact, it’s one of the most important documents of the psychedelic ’60s—Mountain Girl’s Acid Test graduation diploma. In case that last sentence leaves you scratching your head, the Acid Tests were a series of parties held in the San Francisco Bay Area,...
The Grateful Dead's Great Big Carbon Footprint
By Ben Marks — In the late 1960s and early 1970s, I loved the music of the Grateful Dead. I grew up in Marin County where most of the band members lived, attended the high school where the phrase 420 was coined (or so I'm told...), and spent some of the best nights of my life in front of the early incarnations of the band's legendary Wall of Sound at Winterland. I guess you could say I was a fan, and to this day I still give the guys a listen. But this year's release of "Europe '72: The Complete...
Rare Acid Test Posters Flying High
By Ben Marks — Of all the rock posters from the 1960s, few command as much attention as those created for the legendary acid tests in 1965 and 1966. Organized by author Ken Kesey and featuring music by the Grateful Dead, these events took place in the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California, and were popularized by Tom Wolfe in his 1968 book "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test." Seen here are two rare posters that are being auctioned this weekend. The image on the left was designed by Wes...
Stephen M. H. Braitman on the British Invasion, from the Beatles to the Sex Pistols
By Dean Schaffer — I was a Hollywood kid. My father was a TV and radio editor in the San Fernando Valley, and he allowed me to do my first writing to review concerts and shows for the newspaper. But as a younger kid, I really hated rock ’n’ roll music and pop music, and I disliked the Beatles and all that. I have a younger sister who was a total Beatlemaniac. She started getting into the ’60s scene, but I was more influenced at that time by my father’s interest in classical music. I was, however,...