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Jun 01, 2015 Web Exclusive By Frank Valish

In a few weeks, the Grateful Dead will cap a 50-year anniversary with five concerts, split between Santa Clara, CA and Chicago’s Soldier Field. In Deal, founding drummer Bill Kreutzmann details the long strange trip that began in 1965 and continued for 30 years nonstop until the untimely passing of frontman Jerry Garcia. Kreutzmann’s memoir benefits from the conversational tone one might expect from a member of a band that, among other things, is synonymous with the 1960s. The book is tangential in the best way, as free and easy as Kreutzmann’s lifestyle often seemed to be. Anecdotes abound. Kreutzmann details the band’s trans-Canada Festival Express with Janis Joplin and The Band and the Grateful Dead’s infamous concerts in front of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt in wonderfully engaging narrative. His acid trip descriptions at the book’s beginning are terrifically vivid. He doesn’t shy away from the more difficult events of his life, Garcia’s passing and his mother’s suicide, among others. While band hijinks are covered liberally, Kreutzmann declines to sling mud. Given the opportunity to describe specifics of the band’s dissolution after the ill-fated Dead reunion shows of 2009, Kreutzmann takes the high road. And by the book’s end, he finds himself blissfully happy with a new wife (his fifth) and an outlook on life that’s as positive and hopeful as can be. (http://billkreutzmann.com) (http://us.macmillan.com/smp)

Author rating: 7/10