Jerry Garcia - The Grateful Dead and Fascism?

No band lived up to their hippie ideals quite like the Grateful Dead. Across their 30-year career as a group, the Dead formed a true collective known as “the Family”, with band members, managers, roadies, girlfriends, and causal friends all making up the Grateful Dead family. When it came time to make decisions on the band’s behalf, everybody in the family got an equal say, often to the detriment of group cohesion and productivity. There were plenty of actual managers that floated through the band’s orbit over the years, including Bay Area native Rock Skully, British tour manager Sam Cutler, and, most notoriously, Mickey Hart’s father Lenny, who absconded from the position with most of the band’s money in 1970. But there was also an unwritten hierarchy that surrounded the Dead, one that quite clearly put guitarist and singer Jerry Garcia at the top. But Garcia had no interest in being the leader of the Grateful Dead. Unfortunately, the band’s progress would often be stunted because Garcia refused to tak