How often was Jerry Garcia really on LSD during the 1960s?
Having a conversation about the history of LSD without bringing up the ‘Summer of Love’ is already a tall ask, and to reminisce about the decade and not chant Jerry Garcia at least a few times feels blasphemous.
Three decades on from his passing, the Grateful Dead leader remains the unofficial lysergic poster child for the notorious wonder acid, which was a key element of the movement he spearheaded during the mid to late 1960s. Whereas the hippie counterculture sprang up in multiple corners of the world during those years, the band’s home turf in northern California became the primary breeding ground of the West’s spiritual rebirth.
While the Grateful Dead were still trying to establish themselves in 1965, they were invited to perform at a party hosted by the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey. These gatherings were organised along with his followers, better known as the ‘Merry Pranksters’, and went on to be known as the ‘Acid Tests’ for obvious reasons.
Garcia, who first started taking the hallucinogen in 1964, remembered how these events involved pretty much everyone in attendance getting high. Once everyone was in motion, he and his team would plug in their equipment and do their best to perform. While Kesey and his crowd were more comfortable with the whole process, it took the Dead a while to adjust to the fact that there were really no rules.
“There was no real performance of any kind involved,” he said, “Everybody there was as much performer as audience”.
Once the group settled in, their main goal was to have as much fun as they could, with Garcia even noting that the ‘Acid Tests’ were where they most enjoyed being musicians until that point. Though the band only frequented those parties for about half a year, he also believed they had a profound impact on the group’s artistry moving forward.
“That was probably the most important six months in terms of directionality,” he stated, noting how they always had the option to simply not play and enjoy tripping instead. This relaxed and informal approach became central to the band’s image as well as the following they cultivated, with a close-knit community becoming the focal point of it all.
Joe Smith, who signed the Grateful Dead in 1967 during his stint with Warner Bros, worked with them on their first six albums. Regarding that phase, he remembered how after eight to nine years of being on regular psychotropic trips, it became “hard to separate reality from make-believe with them”.
Over time, Garcia became increasingly aware of how drug use was negatively impacting the group’s functionality, as the endless consumption unsurprisingly diminished the quality of their live performances, on the backs of which was built their cult personality.
During a 1988 interview, he explained how a turning point was when too many fans started complaining to him about how their shows were sloppy and embarrassing for Deadheads to introduce outsiders to, leading them to a path of overhauling their image from being perpetually coloured by lysergic excesses.
