Look - a lot of this has happened before. The hydraulic pressure of a generational cycle molding new kinds of creatures out of the common pool of parts. First there's a kind of lull when it seems nothing's happening - it's more or less dark everywhere. You go down to the cellar thinking a fuse needs changing. After a bit of kicking around in the dark you realize it's not a blown fuse at all - it's the cellar that needs replacing - at which point it is no longer dark but about a quarter century into another round of misconstrued daylight. Don't say too much about it. - it never made sense and it never will. Whatever you decide can only be an example of your peculiar cultural perspective.

I've read a lot about the Grateful Dead in the last quarter century and never felt much of it was near the mark. Yet testimony helps create a perception of what it was seen to be which influences what it is since, transactional by nature, it cannot be separated from reflections of itself, however skewed. My own objectivity is hopelessly determined by my involvement as a co-creator. The actual factors involved are too multifarious to expect a satisfying reduction.

What does seem to be true is that there is a powerful resonance in the juxtaposition of the words: Grateful Dead. Once heard, the name is not forgotten. Had it been Cruel Potato, we might have a different situation to extrapolate - or none at all.

Perhaps the key to the Dead's latter-day "success" involved keeping the act together through various scenarios until it grew into that ominous name, originally many sizes too big for those who chose it, or who were chose by or because of it. A bond of mutually reinforced identity evolved which was separate neither from the logo nor its particular embodiment.

I won't speak here of the Dead's specific contributions to Americana, or of the personalities involved, only of their received role as cultural icon, which I feel beclouds consideration of their actual achievements in widening the scope of popular music. They probably encompass as many categories within their repertoire as the rest of currently popular music does within its total genre.

Not a distinction calculated to push a lot of product to a public with fixed expectations of what is acceptable over a car speaker.

The flamboyance of the name brought challenge. GRATEFUL DEAD BUSTED brought headlines which LOVELORN COWBOYS ARRESTED might have failed to do. The name has built-in nuisance value betokening unspeakable attitudes. It became a sine qua non for the supposed chasm between generations and seemed to promise anarchy, non-dialectical immaterialism and a general war on niceness. It was . . . A Teddy Bear from Hell! If the musical evidence generally contradicts this, the image made good copy and the onus stuck. So far as I know, whether innocently mythologized or overtly deconstructed the Grateful Dead have always been subjected to critical treatment with reference to self-manufacturing extrinsic iconology. What lies beneath the bones?

Does anyone think the Dead made it because of good looks, impeccable musicianship or blockbuster material? Look at the photos, listen to the records, observe the first "hit" didn't occur until the late '80s, almost as an afterthought.

Could it be that the name itself was responsible? A name is a handle; a handle a lever - give it a fulcrum (to the '60s) and make it long enough, extended to the dawn of the '90s - and it might indeed move exceptional weights should it observe a few non-obvious rules. Above all, don't direct it. Let it kinda . . . run itself. Stay in solution until something precipitates. Don't tag it with assigned or imagined values but let it descend into the form which best expresses it. Don't confuse it with individuals or a certain style. It accrues these, but that isn't its essential nature, although it can only be apprehended by means of its expressions.

This point of view subtracts nothing from the credit due the talents instrumental in the arousal and implementation of the phenomenon. It just tones down the insupportable shine resulting from identification of human agency with the transformational capacity of a potent symbol, with results often incapacitating to the agent, and puts the onus on the logos.

Which is where the pictures come in. Photos represent iconography on a different scale than words and music: a scale of light and angle rather than sound and speech. When Herb Greene adjusts the lighting just so, powders out some glare and revamps the contrast in the darkroom, he participating in the mythmaking: imbuing the criteria with meaningfulness - though it is improbable that he thinks of his task in these terms. He is only producing the best photograph his skills allow. Gainsay what the precise meaning of the work might be, it is the immanence of such meaning which separates a photograph from a snapshot; the intention of the eye behind the shutter to satisfy the demands of signifying composition and the ability to recognize when the elements coalesce. Herb has always been among the best at inventing these moments.

Getting back to the initial dare, all I can truthfully say is that, like Kilroy, the Grateful Dead were here. It doesn't make sense in any conventional way, but it does signify. It was a joy and a caution to be near the center of such a phenomenon in the full rapture of its blooming. Here are some of its petals preserved in a solution of silver nitrate by a gentleman with a respectable eye for the inherent strangeness of it.

Robert Hunter, 1989
Reprinted from Herb Greene's Book of the Dead