The Grateful Dead’s first and last hit single, 1987’s ‘Touch of Grey’, brought them into the rock mainstream with a ferocious suddenness that, as this book details, almost destroyed them and the scene their fans had built. By contrast, the band’s entry into the academic mainstream over the past thirty or so years has been more gradual, and seems to have had fewer negative consequences.

In fact, the breadth and depth of the Grateful Dead phenomenon have provided material for a wide range of discussions. Some of the pioneering work in terms of bringing them into the academy was done from musicological (e.g. Boone Reference Boone, Covach and Boone1997) and sociological (e.g. Adams and Sardiello Reference Adams and Sardiello2000) perspectives, but they have also provoked investigations focusing on cultural studies (Olsson Reference Olsson2017; Richardson Reference Richardson2014), literary criticism (Coffman Reference Coffman2026; Wood Reference Wood2020), and religious studies (Kaler Reference Kaler2023), as well as e.g. detailed technical investigations into their equipment (Jackson Reference Jackson2006) and the work of the tapers who recorded their shows (Rodriguez Reference Rodriguez2022).

Many fans and followers of the band (‘Deadheads’) understood the band’s music to have spiritual or transcendent significance: for Deadheads, their songs and performances were profoundly and spiritually meaningful, providing ecstatic glimpses of how life really is or should be. This has led to widely diverse approaches with regard to scholarly work on the band (most of which is done by folks who have been or are Deadheads), in terms of how to discuss the band and its music, what aspects of the phenomenon to discuss, and what tone to take: papers presented at, for example, the annual meeting of the Grateful Dead Studies Association range widely in terms of topic, approach, and rigour. Work of all kinds on the Grateful Dead has benefited enormously from access to materials at the Grateful Dead Archive at the University of California, Santa Cruz over the past decade; this material has made possible nuanced examinations of the administrative, logistical, and financial aspects of what was an extremely successful business organization, whatever else it may have been as well. This sort of access has had a significant effect on Grateful Dead scholarship; a book such as Touch of Grey could not have been written without it.

This is John Brackett’s second book on the Grateful Dead, and third book overall (his first dealt with John Zorn). In his previous work (Brackett Reference Brackett2023), he discussed how understandings of the Grateful Dead as most authentically a ‘live’ band (rather than one whose reputation is based on studio recordings) have helped shape reception of their music. In this one, he tightens his focus to examine one song – primarily in its studio version, although there are references to its live developments – and its ramifications in detail. The book begins by discussing the song’s history prior to being recorded for the In the Dark album, including its earliest solo performances by lyricist Robert Hunter; the first chapter ends by detailing the health crises that lead singer and guitarist Jerry Garcia underwent that cast the band’s performing future into doubt, and thus impelled them to turn to recording as a way of keeping the band going. The second chapter deals with the actual recording process for the song, while the third examines the innovative video that was made for it, and which proved to be a huge factor in its success. The fourth chapter discusses the immediate effects of having a hit single on the band and their label, Arista; the fifth looks at the continuing impact of the hit over the next three years, particularly with regard to the degradation of the concert scene in the wake of the band’s popularity, and ends with the death of keyboardist Brent Mydland in 1990. The final chapter quickly leads the reader from the band’s last few years to the present, with cursory discussion of releases and developments over that period. The book ends, as it began, with Brackett recounting attending a Dead and Company show in 2021, seeing and hearing the continuity of the Grateful Dead’s musical and cultural scene. Such longevity, he argues, was made possible by the success of ‘Touch of Grey’, which was destructive in the short run but constructive in the long run.

I mentioned above that there are many angles that can be taken when working with the Grateful Dead. In this book, Brackett focuses on the band as an organization in the entertainment business, albeit with some idiosyncratic mandates and principles. The book is really a study of how an institution adapts to changes in its context, whether the changes are voluntary or involuntary. By the end of the 1970s, the Grateful Dead had lost enthusiasm for making studio albums – and given the popularity of their live shows, there was not a great deal of financial pressure on them to make records. But as Brackett notes, this changed when Jerry Garcia’s health issues put performance in question: with a large payroll to meet, recording suddenly became more appealing. Thus the move out of the underground, community-based (and still very popular) context into a more mainstream and commercial one can actually be seen as a retreat, or as something imposed on the band by economic necessity. Brackett details how this move played out, and how its reverberations – beneficial and harmful – have followed the Grateful Dead’s community of musicians and fans in the thirty years since the band itself ceased to exist.

The book as it stands is focused, well written, and well documented, certainly of interest to those interested in the band, popular music in the 1980s and 1990s, or the interactions of big business and rock idealism. That said, it could easily have taken a more expansive approach to the band, the times, and the song. For example, while Brackett does give some reasons for the song’s popularity – including the power of its chorus and its use of contemporary synthesizer sounds – I would have appreciated more discussion of the factors that made it a hit at that particular moment in history, whether having to do with the Grateful Dead’s dogged audience-building through innumerable tours, its relationship to and divergences from other Grateful Dead music, or the broader cultural moment. With regard to the last point: this was a time, after all, in which the legacy of ‘the Sixties’ was being re-examined by Boomers as they headed into middle age in movies such as The Big Chill (1983), and in which younger generations were taking it up as in the rise of neo-psychedelia (e.g. in Los Angeles’ Paisley Underground) or in the willingness of such underground bands as Hüsker Dü, Black Flag, the Meat Puppets, and Sonic Youth to embrace some aspects of psychedelic rock.

But to say that I would have liked this book to have been longer is not to say that it is unsatisfying. It takes a focused, precise look at the genesis and ramifications of an important and unlikely event in the Grateful Dead’s long, strange history.