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4Chaos’ best depicts Grateful Dead’s long, strange tripBy Carolyn Run-'For The Washington PostSWEET CHAOS: The Grateful Dead’s American Adventure, by Carol Brightman (Clarkson Potter, $27.50)The publishing world dumped a slew of new books about the Grateful Dead into book stores a few years ago — even before the legendary singer of the band, Jerry Garcia, died in 1995. With the exception of “Dark Star” by Robert Greenfield, most of them were better left off the shelves.By today’s lightning-fast standards, Carol Brightman seems to have completely missed her prime marketing moment with “Sweet Chaos.” Unhurried by the pressure of immediate demand, however, Brightman has, in the end, produced the most exhaustive and beautifully written book so far about the venerable band.With insight and clarity, she cap tures the essence of not only the Grateful Dead but the entire '60s era in which the band began.I reluctantly admit I was once one of the many thousands of Deadheads following the band around the country, living within a subculture alien to most Americans. There was a period in my life when nothing brought me more joy than watching the Dead walk onstage. Their appearance guaranteed a few glorious hours, and the ecstatic impact of some shows lasted for days. It was impossible to describe my profoundNot long before his death,Jerry Garcia entertained Chicago Grateful Dead fans.Daily Herald Photo/Bill Zarsconnection to the music and its intoxicating effect.Eventually I outgrew the Dead scene and, in the process, developed a strong distaste for anyone or anything associated with the Dead. As a reformed Deadhead, I was skeptical that any book could accurately convey the unique quality of the band, let alone provide fresh material about the band’s past. I assumed that anyone who loved the Dead was as well-informed as any biographer and that anyone who did not care for the band would not be interested in reading a book about them.Brightman (who won a National Book Critics Circle Award for “Writing Dangerously: Mary McCarthyand Her World”) proved me wrong. “Sw'eet Chaos” draws on extensive interviews with remaining band members Mickey Hart, Phil Lesh and Bob Weir, and other members of the Dead coterie. Brightman is clearly not a Deadhead, but as a member of the generation that came of age during the ’60s she finds com mon ground with the band’s followers. Because she was there but wasn’t sucked in by the Dead phenomenon, Brightman has a good vantage point from which to observe the band. She was an active participant in the antiwar movement and relies on her experience in the late ’60s and early ’70s to place the Grateful Dead in a larger, more complicated context than the burgeoning music scene with which they were associated.Brightman understands that they were always much more than a rock band, but, like so many — even those in the band — she does not quite know why the Dead created such a strong and lasting legacy. She writes, “To understand the Dead’s place in American history, don’t we need to take a closer look at how history shaped them” And what was the band’s role in creating a subculture that, three years after Jerry Garcia’s death, remains surprisingly intact?”She examines how the political climate, the music and the drugs interacted to produce an exceptional period in modem America, a time when an emerging subculture reveled in its own eiddv dreamlike existence andthe rest of the country coped with painful social issues that threatened to crack the facade of American life Brightman acknowledges, “Perhaps I risk seeing myself when I return in these pages to the 1960s and early ’70s to examine not just the Dead’s world but the community they shunned across the Bay in Berkeley, as well. ... One cannot re-create the era out of which the Grateful Dead emerged without recalling civil rights and the Free Speech Movement, Vietnam, the Cuban Revolution, and the Weathermen.”This book is not so much about the Dead, the reader soon learns, as about the many factors that created and sustained the band Brightman devotes considerable attention to the antiwar movements springing up on college campuses around the country. Considering the period, the Dead were remarkably silent on the subject of Vietnam: Brightman sugEsts that they were almost disdain of the yahoos leading the protest sit ins at Berkeley but still inextrica bly linked to the madding scene The war eventually ended, kids cut their hair and bell bottoms went out of style (temporarily). The Dead remained as one of the few' reminders of the bygone era of love and flowers. Did the Grateful Dead make a small but indelible mark on society or did society mold the Dead” Thirty years later, this ques tion remains unanswered However, Brightman comes the closest yet to providing an intriguing glimpse into the mystery of the Grateful Dead.
Newspaper Details
Arlington Heights Daily Herald Suburban Chicago
Arlington Heights, Illinois, US
Sun, Jan 31, 1999
Page 330
Full Page
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USA 30 Apr 2020
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