{"id":672513,"date":"2026-01-04T03:47:30","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T03:47:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/672513\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T03:47:30","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T03:47:30","slug":"the-grateful-dead-song-that-appalled-jerry-garcia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/672513\/","title":{"rendered":"The Grateful Dead song that \u201cappalled” Jerry Garcia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Jerry<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n

Sat 3 January 2026 18:20, UK <\/p>\n

Some groups rise ot the top on their looks, others on catchy choruses. Grateful Dead <\/a>built a cult following by subverting every social and musical convention they could think of. It was an explosion of performance and presentable alternatives to rock mainstream that would make them icons.<\/p>\n

Having expanded their collective consciousness and established themselves as the leaders of the Bay Area hippie movement, they decided to place particular emphasis on touring. It was with this ethos that they defined their legacy. The band would release albums, but they would etch their names into history with their live shows. They cultivated a crowd that would not only make their shows magentic but would follow them across the country to do so at every single date on the road. <\/p>\n

Studio albums, they had come to realise, were just a way for industry executives to make a pretty penny. It came as something of a shock, then, when Andy Garcia and the band realised they\u2019d landed a hit record. This was never in the plan. Success was in the subversion, not in the sales. <\/p>\n

The track would become a contentious moment for the band\u2019s fans, and it turns out, the band\u2019s leader, too. It was, of course, \u2018Touch of Grey\u2019. <\/p>\n

The Grateful Dead were not known for releasing hits. By the time \u2018Touch of Grey\u2019 came along, their highest-ranking single was 1971\u2019s \u2018Truckin\u2019, and even that only rose to number 64 on the Billboard Hot 100. Obviously, avoiding chart success and the commercial obligations that came with it was sort of the whole point. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The anti-mainstream maestro, Jerry Garcia (Credit: Alamy)<\/p>\n

The 1987 single is undoubtedly one of the band\u2019s best numbers and is widely known for the iconic refrain \u201cI will get by \/ I will survive\u201d which is just an insight into the dark lyrics which belie the sounds and sonic landscape that the band create. The joy of those lyrics is the juxtaposition they enjoy being balanced by the upbeat pop sound. With music composed by Jerry Garcia, the single remains one of the band\u2019s few moments swimming in the mainstream. Not their favourite place to be.<\/p>\n

The song gained major airplay on MTV and saw the band\u2019s notoriety grow once more within a new generation. Speaking to Esquire,<\/a> Dennis McNally, the Grateful Dead\u2019s publicist, recalled breaking the news to the musicians backstage one night at Madison Square Garden. \u201cI said, \u2018I have some imposing news to tell you\u2019. \u201cAnd they sort of looked up at me, and I said, \u2018You\u2019ve made the Top 10\u2019.\u201d Guitarist Jerry Garcia took a moment. \u201cI am appalled,\u201d he said. According to McNally, \u201che was only somewhat joking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Depending on what kind of Grateful Dead fan you talk to, \u2018Touch of Grey\u2019 is either one of the band\u2019s greatest achievements or evidence of where it all went wrong. McNally falls into the latter camp. For him, \u2018Touch of Grey\u2019 was the \u201csong that almost killed the Grateful Dead.\u201d Why? Well, because it did what hit singles always do: it made the band enormously popular. <\/p>\n

On release in 1987, it soared to the top of the charts, where it sat alongside the likes of Whitesnake, Whitney Houston and Bananarama. Suddenly, the Dead were on the cover of Rolling Stone with a headline declaring a \u201cNew Dawn of the Grateful Dead.\u201d MTV ran a whole day\u2019s programming on the band, and the queues outside the band\u2019s stadium shows only got longer. <\/p>\n

Suddenly, the Grateful Dead were at the centre of a media feeding frenzy, with journalists finding more than enough to report in the mile-long queues for the band\u2019s shows, what with their fans being such a colourful breed. <\/p>\n

This quickly became a problem as Deadheads<\/a> tended to be nomadic, driving to shows in VW campervans. The band\u2019s new popularity made it impossible for everyone to use the parking lot, so they ended up parking down the road, overwhelming the area outside the stadium. It would become a serial problem as they beleaguered the favourite bit about the Dead: the touring.<\/p>\n

The sheer number of fans made The Dead very unpopular with local services, and venues started electing not to book them. Such logistical complexities would haunt the Dead until Jerry Garcia\u2019s death in 1995. McNally echoes the sentiment of many when he says: \u201cThank God Built to Last, which was the next and last studio album, was not a big success.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy) Sat 3 January 2026 18:20, UK Some groups rise ot the top on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":672514,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[9],"tags":[155697,77,133179,16,15],"class_list":["post-672513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-bob-weir","tag-entertainment","tag-jerry-garcia","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115834784739438553","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}