Why the Grateful Dead are one of California’s greatest natural phenomena

Lest you forget that the Grateful Dead are one of California’s great natural phenomena — musical, cultural and even spiritual — witness this month’s celebration of all things Dead at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

The band’s successor Dead & Company thrilled a total of 180,000 over three concert days, celebrating 60 years of Dead music and counterculture in the city where Jerry Garcia and his mates started it all. San Francisco named a street after Garcia in his childhood neighborhood and declared a Jerry Garcia Day, while pedicabs blasted Dead classics at ecstatic volumes.

Beginning in the 1960s and continuing well into a new century, the Dead and their followers came to represent a relaxed brand of bohemianism, that reached beyond the bounds of consumerism, imitation or even description, especially for non-adherents. “We’re like licorice,” Garcia famously said. “Not everybody likes licorice, but the people who like licorice really like licorice.”

There couldn’t have been a better occasion to usher in a new book about the ur orchestra of a particular brand of California freedom — Jim Newton’s “Here Beside the Rising Tide: Jerry Garcia, the Grateful Dead and An American Awakening.”

Newton made his name as a top-flight Los Angeles Times reporter, then opinion editor, before morphing into a trenchant biographer, mostly of California-rooted political figures, including governor and U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren and Gov. Jerry Brown.

With “only” 40 or 50 Dead shows on his dance card, Newton counts himself as “an appreciative observer, rather than a full-bore Deadhead.” With painstaking reportage and sparkling writing, the author has produced an important addition to the Dead canon, according to reviewers. Kirkus declares: “He draws out the paradoxes, ironies, and complexities that piled up around the aging rock star, his band, and the Deadhead community.”

“Essential” spoke to Newton about the book, the Dead and how the band might live on.

Q: Could the Grateful Dead have achieved such a singular perch anywhere but California?

A: If Jerry Garcia and Dead had come together in New Hampshire, we’re not here 60 years later talking about them. Not just the music of the Dead but the phenomenon around them couldn’t have found the roots and the power it did if it hadn’t happened in the Bay Area in the ‘60s. So that time and place becomes a character in the story.

Q: You attended the 60th celebration. Was there a transcendent moment?

A: I would say those shows weren’t quite at the same spiritual or transcendent level as the best Dead shows were, but they were big fun and musically terrific. I was particularly gobsmacked by Trey Anastasio of Phish, who played with Dead and Company on Sunday. He captured the old spirit in a way that felt both familiar and new.

Q: You write about “the band’s ineffable bond with those who came to listen to them, to join in the enjoyment of the event — everyone a member of the audience, but everyone a performer too.” When did you first experience this symbiosis?

A: In 1982 at the US Festival in San Bernardino County when “Breakfast with the Dead” opened the Sunday lineup. Deadheads took over the field that morning and turned it from a jostling pit of concert-goers, elbowing for position, into a place of caring and ease. In some ways, that’s where this all began for me.

Q: And you make a case that it “succeeded in much of its cultural mission,” adding: “Eastern religious practices, organic food, respect for the environment, the long work toward a more equitable and open-minded society – not all Americans subscribe to or accept these ideas today, but they are largely agreed upon, at least in principle.” Bob Weir said on Instagram following this month’s S.F. shows: “60 years … I’d say that’s a damn good start.” Can the Dead survive in some form, to celebrate a 70th birthday, or even a 100th?

A. I don’t know whether the Dead per se survives, but the music and the culture certainly will. There is no reason to think that young people today are any less interested in transcendence, joyfully and communally experienced, than they were in the 1960s. I hope it lives on. It makes the world a little bit better.

Today’s top stories

Jake and Rebecca Haro were arrested Aug. 15 in connection with the disappearance of their child, Emmanuel Haro.

(San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department)

California prosecutors charge Emmanuel Haro’s parents with murder in the infant’s disappearance

• Twelve days after they said their son had vanished from a parking lot outside a sporting goods store, the parents of baby Emmanuel Haro have been charged in his death.
• Authorities say the couple faked the 7-month-old’s disappearance and the infant is presumed dead.
• San Bernardino County sheriff’s investigators are now focused on finding Emmanuel’s remains.

Methane leaks at California oil facilities are also spewing toxic chemicals

• A new interactive map launched this week by an Oakland-based nonprofit research institute examines the health risk associated with more than 1,300 large methane releases nationwide, including 32 in California, that occurred from 2016 to 2025.
• Researchers say more than 126,000 people lived within two miles of these large methane leaks, sometimes referred to as “super-emitter” events, across the country, including roughly 24,100 Californians.
• And, in almost every case, the levels of benzene, the most toxic hazardous pollutant associated with methane leaks, exceeded California’s health risk benchmarks.

Will your congressional district shift left or right in Newsom’s proposed map?

• A Times analysis of recent election results found the redistricting effort, which will go to voters on Nov. 4 as Proposition 50, could turn 41 Democratic-leaning congressional districts into 47.
• Democrats currently hold 215 seats in the House, while Republicans control 220.
• If California voters approve the new map, the shift could be enough to threaten the GOP’s narrow majority.

What else is going on

• Why COVID keeps roaring back every summer, even as the pandemic fades.
• A massive Home Depot crime ring pulled off more than 600 SoCal thefts, D.A. says.
• Beverly Hills public schools consider displaying the Israeli flag on all campuses.
• One of Hollywood’s favorite small-town backdrops is being battered by drunk and reckless drivers.
• Baby, just say yes! Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are engaged two years into their love story.
• Lil Nas X speaks out amid felony charges and hospitalization: “Terrifying last four days.”

Commentary and opinions

• Trump’s assault on the Fed’s independence is very scary, argues columnist Michael Hiltzik.
• The pick for Nevada prosecutor shows justice under Trump isn’t blind — it’s been perverted, argues columnist Mark Z. Barabak.
• The art of the troll: Newsom is showing Democrats how to fight Trump, writes news and culture critic Lorraine Ali.
• My father told America, ‘I have a dream.’ Today, the dream needs us, argues guest columnist Martin Luther King III.

This morning’s must-reads

Music

For Subscribers

How a rubber part from Home Depot’s toilet aisle changed the sound of indie rock

A guitar modification designed by Reuben Cox at Old Style Guitar Shop was a secret weapon in the music world — until Orangewood started manufacturing its own.

Aug. 26, 2025

Other must-reads

• Employees are back, bosses say. In California? Not so much.
• Ashlee Simpson blazed a trail. Now she’s seeing where it leads.

For your downtime

A view of Ojai Valley.

(Lou Mora / For The Times)

Going out

• Travel: Seven new things to do in idyllic Ojai, like roam in an oasis of giant tortoises.
• Sports: Ten things to note about the Dodgers’ 2026 schedule. When do they play the Padres?

Staying in

• Music: Five great música Mexicana records you may have missed.
• Books: How Del Amitri rocker Justin Currie turned his Parkinson’s struggle into a candid journal of resilience.
• Recipes: Here’s a recipe for easy apple cake.
• ✏️ Get our free daily crossword puzzle, sudoku, word search and jigsaw games.

A question for you: What’s the most memorable thing you did this summer?

Email us at essentialcalifornia@latimes.com, and your response might appear in the newsletter this week.

And finally ... your photo of the day

Pico Rivera native Adriana Estrada, left, and her husband, Christian Svanes Kolding, lived for years in a tiny New York apartment where their only “yard” was the building’s front stoop. That makes their native habitat landscape in Long Beach’s Craftsman Village Historic District all the sweeter.

(Bora Chan / For The Times)

Today’s great photo is from Times contributor Bora Chan at the home of a Long Beach couple whose frontyard is a study of greens with flashes of color, fragrance and multiple butterflies and bees, even in late summer when many native plants are dormant and brown.

Have a great day, from the Essential California team

Jim Rainey, staff reporter
Hugo Martín, assistant editor, fast break desk
Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor
Andrew Campa, weekend writer
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters

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