Customer Reviews
0 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
 The Insiders View, Apr 25, 2023
The Dead began in the mid-sixties in San Francisco at Haight-Ashbury when this was just a street corner. They were just in time for the sweeping social changes in this country that also began in San Francisco. The Grateful Dead may be the most lasting legacy of that time.
As we look back on that time, the war protestors went away as did the war itself. The 'Free Speech' liberal movements at the colleges are no longer the news, and the colleges are just about the same as they were before. The drug culture getting started at the time has turned dirty and nasty.
But for thirty years and more the band continued. This book is the untimate insiders view. Written by a founder this book tells of the bad management, drug addictions and every other imaginable problem faced by the members down through the years. The band even survived Ron 'Pigpen' McKernan's death. Still the band continued until, of course, Jerry Garcia's death in 1995, already ten years ago.
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
The Pride of Cucamonga..., Apr 25, 2023
As I write, I have as my backdrop the sounds of the Summer Solstice 1989 in the speakers of my stereo...'Goes to show, you don't ever know...watch each card you play, and play it slow' sings a gleeful, but very warm Jerry Garcia. It was a hot night, both for music and temperature in Mountain View California that night. A fact that Phil Lesh commented on between sets as darkness finally fell, commenting that it was 'just below boiling'. 1989 was about as good a time as there ever would be in the career of the Grateful Dead, still riding out the success of 1987s 'In the Dark', with legions of new fans and sold out shows. Lesh was in fine form this night, pumping out his crisp and explorative bass lines as if he were a lead guitarist. Answering the call when the `We Want Phil' roar went up, chanted by the masses. Lesh delivered with his staple 'Box of Rain' to the delight of the crowd and band.
The phenomenon of the Grateful Dead is difficult to explain to anyone who did not experience it. A band that was as much about its fans as it was ever about itself. Almost like baseball, with each game the masses sitting on the edge of their seats hoping to see a really great play at the plate- periods of musical anticipation waiting to be injected with a sudden moment of excitement either via a sharp improvised musical crescendo, a song transition, or an unexpected and rare song thrown into the mix. The sort of excitement that existed in equal parts on the stage as it did in the crowd. An experience that had to be felt to be understood, and the reason that someone sitting near you at the next desk may still admit when prodded- "Yes, I am a Deadhead". "Hi, my name is Jon and I'm a Deadhead". Just like the friends of Bill W. (except in this case it would be longtime Deadhead and basketball legend Bill Walton), there is no escaping it. Once you are a Deadhead, forever a Deadhead you shall be. There is no recovering. From the kids in the broken down microbus on the side of the road, all the way up to Al Gore- We are everywhere.
Searching for the Sound is the first testament to the history of the Dead written by a member of the band, the title coming from the somewhat lesser known, but acclaimed Lesh composition Unbroken Chain. Lesh is known to be one of the more cerebral members of the band. Throughout the book, Lesh's recollections are prominently colored by words that will have many dashing for the nearest dictionary, yet with a conversational and warm approach. It is his ability to still be able to tell the story of the bands' early years with such clarity that will reel-in readers. Setting up the story are memories of his earliest years discovering music, an obsession with the story of Charles Ives, and also Lesh's mastery of his first instrument, the trumpet. As the tale unfolds, we watch the prototypical school band nerd grow into a key element of the subculture of 1960s San Francisco, and launch into a journey that would last over forty years to the present.
Much attention is given to serious musical matters, such as the influence of postwar avant garde composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen and Luciano Berio. The latter of which Lesh and eventual band member Tom Constanten would unsuccessfully attempt to pursue personal study with after auditing a class taught by Berio who was visiting Mills College. It only involved raising enough money to get to Europe, but it never materialized. Lesh also reflects on aspects of improvisation that would forever change his views on music when first coming across a place in the music marked `ad lib' as he worked through a jazz trumpet piece early in his musical life.
As expected, drug experimentation is a large part of the story, but for Lesh it wasn't about a wild party of sex, drugs, and rock `n' roll (in fact that was never what the Grateful Dead was about). For Phil Lesh, his first night on pot was spent listening to a recording of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring all by himself. A number of events would eventually lead Lesh from working on writing his own symphony, to hanging around a group of people living mostly outdoors in sheds and cars- apartments known as `The Chateau'. Fellow musicians such as Jerry Garcia who were more involved with folk and blues music, and would later form the heart of the Grateful Dead. Lesh's earliest association with Garcia involved using personal connections with radio station KPFA to land Jerry a solo spot on the program Midnight Special to perform traditional folk songs. The history would solidify as these music-obsessed men eventually began to play together, all the while surrounded by the likes of Ken Kesey, Neal Cassady and the Merry Pranksters. This is the point where the experimentation with LSD takes over. The experiences of this period, and Lesh's pivotal role in organizing the Acid Tests as far as the band's role is concerned are given detailed coverage. The experiences of common consciousness and its role in the music are at the forefront of the book, and Lesh amazingly remembers everything. Poetic descriptions of various chemical excursions abound.
More than half of the book deals with the earlier years in the bands' development. Lesh covers the period of the mid-1970s with much less reminiscence, often speaking of financial troubles and the sheer size and difficulty of the entourage of crew and equipment. Changes in the dynamic of band interaction and his own personal life would put Lesh onto a course of alcoholism and cocaine use. Lesh is quick to point out early in the book the differing effects of `good' and `bad' chemicals on the psyche, and the ability of the `bad' to take over. It is the music he claims that enabled him to eventually swim back to the surface. The early 1980s and 1990s are covered in much the same way, focusing on Lesh's forced recovery, due to the discovery of a lingering hepatitis problem, and the positive influence of the most serious romantic relationship of his life. Lesh would marry and begin a family life that would be his sustaining force while watching his band mate Garcia sink into a life of heroin use and trouble from diabetes on multiple occasions. Lesh would temper these busiest years of his partnership with the band by traveling alone with his wife and family on tour, and once again immerse himself in classical music and opera during his rare moments away from the road. Lesh would even once guest-conduct the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra. The mid-1990s Grateful Dead tours were beginning to take a toll of the band's soul as the crowd dynamic swung toward violence and a series of bad scenes. The sudden 1995 death of Garcia should have been almost expected, but the shock had a profound impact on the surviving members and the greater organizational entity. 1995 saw the end of the Grateful Dead as we know it. The loss of one of the five critical pieces meant that the formula would never again be the same no matter how hard the remaining members wished for it. His story concludes with the sudden reemergence of his own health issues, culminating in a liver transplant, a new outlook on life, and a new commitment to continuing the musical journey.
In retrospect, the book is as much about Jerry Garcia as it is about Phil Lesh. It is about Garcia's inexplicable pull that would drive the band through the good and bad times, life and death, darkness and light. After attempts at reconstituting the sound and the scene in Garcia's absence with the Furthur Festival, Phil and Friends, The Other Ones, and eventually the renamed 'Dead', Lesh, Weir, Hart, and Kreutzmann still hold close the dream. There will however never again be a 'Grateful' Dead without Jerry Garcia.
2 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
 Lightweight, adds little to our understanding, Apr 21, 2023
A little bit of self indulgent fluff, easily read in an afternoon. Phil's motives for writing this book, other than my coughing up the bucks, can be discerned nowhere in this desultory run through of the band's history.
McNally's book covers all this ground in more detail and with some insight and perspective.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
 A Rare, Intimate Celebrity Autobiography, Apr 20, 2023
I liked this book more than I expected to! Oftentimes, the memoirs of famous people read like relatively distanced chronicles of events and report only superficial observations. Phil Lesh chose to write something more personal.
Having studied music theory for a few years, I loved the guidance through musical intricacies I can hear but can't quite articulate. (I guess Publisher's Weekly didn't take music geek Deadheads into account when they reviewed the book!)
And, having gone to Stanford as a way of chasing the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test experience, it was exciting to hear Phil talk about those locales and to learn that, despite being twenty years late, what I got really did contain some kernel of what I had hoped to get.
The tone is more conversational than literary: Its "flaw" is its charm. Some passages are probably more compelling if you enjoy the in-jokes about Shostakovich and Berio and have a fondness for Lesh's particular kind of personality quirks.
Overall, a fun read.
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
The Best book so far on the Dead, Apr 17, 2023
Phil Lesh writes with an open and candid style that makes reading his account of the Dead's history an absolute pleasure for both Deadheads and other lovers of music. Phil's story starts off with the typical childhood stuff but rapidly moves to the music scene in Palo Alto and later San Francisco that ultimately coincided with the Summer Of Love and gave birth to the Grateful Dead. The Dead were certainly unique in all of rock in the way their music blended so many influences and Lesh's story clearly demonstrates how those strains of jazz, blues, country,and even classical influences came into play in the extended instrumental explorations the Dead were famous for. I was particularly intrigued by how he describes the influence of John Coltrane on his own muiscal development.
Garcia emerges from this as the Jerry we all know and love. A true musical explorer of the first order.
Anyone who loved the Dead will surely enjoy reading this. Anyone who didn't "get" the Dead should read it anyway because it will give you some insight into what the music was all about.
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Jam-band legend Phil Lesh, who played bass for the Grateful Dead since their formation in 1965 until Jerry Garcia's death in 1995, moves from the stage to between the covers with his memoir, Searching for the Sound: My Life with the Grateful Dead. Just in time for the Dead's 40th anniversary, Lesh's book should serve as the ultimate behind-the-scenes backstage pass for any music fan. Listen in as Lesh talks about some of his favorite Dead tracks. 
Based on 6 reviews.