A documentary tracing the movements, events and sounds of The Grateful Dead will be released on May 22. The film also follows the involvement of Frisco’s other lead players such as Big Brother & The Holding Company, Jefferson Airplane, The Charlatans and Quicksilver Messenger Service, the program explores what it was that, for a while, turned San Francisco into a 1960s Shangri-La.
The film features new interviews with Grateful Dread manager Rock Scully; the Dead’s experimental professor, Tom ‘T.C.’ Constanten; Big Brother’s Peter Albin; Mike Willlhelm from The Charlatans; publicist and official Dead biographer, Dennis McNally; Counter-Culture and Dead author and journalist (and host of ‘The Grateful Dead Hour’), David Gans; Merry Prankster and best friend of the late Ken Kesey, Ken Babbs, plus comment, criticism and review from Rolling Stone’s Anthony De Curtis, Village Voice’s Robert Christgau and Mojo’s Ritchie Unterberger. It also includes the rarest archive in existence – live and studio footage of Grateful Dead and the other Frisco bands, vintage interviews, location shoots, news reports, and the music that soundtracked the ‘psychedelia’ movement.