
No Simple Highway
A Cultural History of the Grateful Dead
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Narrated by:
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David Gans
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By:
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Peter Richardson
About this listen
For almost three decades, the Grateful Dead was America's most popular touring band. No Simple Highway is the first book to ask the simple question of why - and attempt to answer it. Drawing on new research, interviews, and a fresh supply of material from the Grateful Dead archives, author Peter Richardson vividly recounts the Dead's colorful history, adding new insight into everything from the Acid Tests to the band's formation of their own record label to their massive late-career success, while probing the riddle of the Dead's vast and durable appeal.
Arguing that the band successfully tapped three powerful utopian ideals - for ecstasy, mobility, and community - it also shows how the Dead's lived experience with these ideals struck deep chords with two generations of American youth and continues today.
Routinely caricatured by the mainstream media, the Grateful Dead are often portrayed as grizzled hippy throwbacks with a cult following of burned-out stoners. No Simple Highway corrects that impression, revealing them to be one of the most popular, versatile, and resilient music ensembles in the second half of the 20th century. The band's history has been well-documented by insiders, but its unique and sustained appeal has yet to be explored fully. At last, this legendary American musical institution is given the serious and entertaining examination it richly deserves.
©2014 Peter Richardson (P)2021 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Mother American Night is the wild, funny, heartbreaking, and often unbelievable (yet completely true) story of an American icon. Born into a powerful Wyoming political family, John Perry Barlow wrote the lyrics for thirty Grateful Dead songs while also running his family’s cattle ranch. He hung out in Andy Warhol’s Factory, went on a date with the Dalai Lama’s sister, and accidentally shot Bob Weir in the face on the eve of his own wedding. Despite being a freely self-confessed acidhead, he served as Dick Cheney’s campaign manager during Cheney’s first run for Congress.
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Self Righteous Tool!
- By Aztex on 08-27-18
By: John Perry Barlow, and others
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Fare Thee Well
- The Final Chapter of the Grateful Dead's Long, Strange Trip
- By: Joel Selvin, Pamela Turley
- Narrated by: John Glouchevitch
- Length: 10 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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The Grateful Dead rose to greatness under the inspired leadership of guitarist Jerry Garcia, but the band very nearly died along with him. When Garcia passed away suddenly in 1995, the remaining band members experienced full crises of confidence and identity. So long defined by Garcia's vision for the group, the surviving "Core Four", as they came to be called, were reduced to strained relationships, and catastrophic business decisions. It would take 20 years before relationships were mended enough for the Grateful Dead as fans remembered them to once again take the stage.
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A worthy, if imperfect, addition to the story
- By Rick on 06-21-18
By: Joel Selvin, and others
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Searching for the Sound
- My Life with the Grateful Dead
- By: Phil Lesh
- Narrated by: Phil Lesh
- Length: 5 hrs and 33 mins
- Abridged
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Phil Lesh first met Jerry Garcia in 1959 in the clubs of Palo Alto, California. At Garcia's suggestion, Lesh learned to play the electric bass and joined him in a new group that blended R&B, country, and rock 'n' roll with an experimental fervor never before heard.
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Searching for the Sound
- By Brad Zerkel on 04-29-05
By: Phil Lesh
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A Long Strange Trip
- The Inside History of the Grateful Dead
- By: Dennis McNally
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 29 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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From 1965 to 1995, the Grateful Dead flourished as one of the most beloved, unusual, and accomplished musical entities to ever grace American culture. The creative synchronicity among Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart, and Ron "Pigpen" McKernan exploded out of the early 60s roots and folk scene, providing the soundtrack for the Dionysian revels of the counterculture. Dennis McNally, the band's historian and publicist for more than 20 years, takes listeners back through the Dead's history.
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Amazing story!
- By Michael Knoll on 11-04-18
By: Dennis McNally
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Bear
- The Life and Times of Augustus Owsley Stanley III
- By: Robert Greenfield
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 6 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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The creator of the dancing bear logo and designer of the Wall of Sound for the Grateful Dead, Augustus Owsley Stanley III, better known by his nickname, Bear, was one of the most iconic figures in the cultural revolution that changed both America and the world during the 1960s. Owsley's high octane rocket fuel enabled Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters to put on the Acid Tests. It also powered much of what happened on stage at Monterey Pop.
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wow
- By Brian Harnois on 10-12-20
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So Many Roads
- The Life and Times of the Grateful Dead
- By: David Browne
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 15 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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No longer dismissed as relics of the hippie era, a new generation has lionized the Dead for creating a culture that paved the way for social networking, free music swapping, and the uncompromising anticorporate attitude of indie rock. Now, fifty years after the band first began changing rock 'n' roll both sonically and psychically, So Many Roads paints the most vivid portrait yet of the Grateful Dead, one of the most enduring institutions in American music and culture.
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Great first book on the Dead
- By robert on 10-30-15
By: David Browne
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Levon
- From Down in the Delta to the Birth of The Band and Beyond
- By: Sandra B. Tooze
- Narrated by: Rosemary Benson
- Length: 13 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Levon is the dazzling, epic biography of Levon Helm - the beloved, legendary drummer and singer of The Band.
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Shoot the producer!
- By Vince Pienaar on 08-08-21
By: Sandra B. Tooze
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Delta Blues
- The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionized American Music
- By: Ted Gioia
- Narrated by: Chris Abernathy
- Length: 17 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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The blues grew out of the plantations and prisons, the swampy marshes and fertile cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta. With original research and keen insights, Ted Gioia - the author of a landmark study of West Coast jazz and the critically acclaimed The History of Jazz - brings to life the stirring music of the Delta, evoking the legendary figures who shaped its sound and ethos: Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Howlin' Wolf, B. B. King, and others.
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A well-researched history of the blues
- By Joselo on 08-19-21
By: Ted Gioia
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Deal
- My Three Decades of Drumming, Dreams, and Drugs with the Grateful Dead
- By: Bill Kreutzmann, Benjy Eisen
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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On their 50th anniversary comes a groundbreaking rock-and-roll memoir by one of the founding members of the Grateful Dead. The Grateful Dead are perhaps the most legendary American rock band of all time. For 30 years, beginning in the hippie scene of San Francisco in 1965, they were a musical institution, the original jam band that broke new ground in so many ways.
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Decent but not great
- By Monty S on 03-02-16
By: Bill Kreutzmann, and others
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The History of Rock & Roll
- Volume 1: 1920-1963
- By: Ed Ward
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 15 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Ed Ward covers the first half of the history of rock & roll in this sweeping and definitive narrative - from the 1920s, when the music of rambling medicine shows mingled with the songs of vaudeville and minstrel acts to create the very early sounds of country and rhythm and blues, to the rise of the first independent record labels post-World War II, and concluding in December 1963, just as an immense change in the airwaves took hold and the Beatles prepared for their first American tour.
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Author's blindspots mar this book
- By Mark Clark on 03-28-17
By: Ed Ward
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Small Town Talk
- Bob Dylan, The Band, Van Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Friends in the Wild Years of Woodstock
- By: Barney Hoskyns
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 13 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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When musicians in the New York folk scene of the 1960s grew tired of city life, they decided to "get it together in the country". They headed for Woodstock - not to the site of the infamous music festival of 1969 but to the Catskills, to Bearsville, to Woodstock proper. Counterculture revolutionaries like Janis Joplin, Richie Havens, and Paul Butterfield got "back to the land", turning the once sleepy hollow into a funky Shangri-La.
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Captured the era - too many mistakes
- By Frank Canino on 04-17-16
By: Barney Hoskyns
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All Things Must Pass Away
- Harrison, Clapton, and Other Assorted Love Songs
- By: Kenneth Womack, Jason Kruppa
- Narrated by: Paul Woodson
- Length: 11 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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George Harrison and Eric Clapton shared a legendary and tumultuous friendship that shaped not only their respective lives and careers, but the shifting face of rock itself in the early 1970s. All Things Must Pass Away traces that friendship from its earliest roots in 1964, when Beatles-averse blues-rocker Eric met George backstage at the Hammersmith Odeon, through the messy trials of Clapton's affair with Harrison's wife, Pattie Boyd, to the turn of the century, as the two elder statesmen of rock traded honors during Harrison's final days.
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I know some but not all…
- By Rick R. on 08-25-21
By: Kenneth Womack, and others
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Jerry on Jerry
- The Unpublished Jerry Garcia Interviews
- By: Dennis McNally - editor, Trixie Garcia - foreword
- Narrated by: Jerry Garcia
- Length: 5 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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These never-before-published interviews with Jerry Garcia reveal his thoughts on religion, politics, his personal life, and his creative process. Jerry on Jerry provides new insight into the beloved frontman of the Grateful Dead in time for the 50th Anniversary of the band. Released by the Jerry Garcia family and made available to the public for the first time, these are some of the most candid, intimate interviews with Jerry Garcia ever published.
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JG dominates the rap, jack, with much new to give
- By gallegos on 01-27-16
By: Dennis McNally - editor, and others
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Rock Concert
- An Oral History as Told by the Artists, Backstage Insiders, and Fans Who Were There
- By: Marc Myers
- Narrated by: Christina Delaine, Michael Butler Murray
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Decades after the rise of rock music in the 1950s, the rock concert retains its allure and its power as a unifying experience - and as an influential multibillion-dollar industry. In Rock Concert, acclaimed interviewer Marc Myers sets out to uncover the history of this compelling phenomenon, weaving together groundbreaking accounts from the people who were there. Rock Concert provides a fascinating, immediate look at the evolution of rock 'n' roll through the lens of live performances.
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Very fun
- By Kathy Neal on 10-13-24
By: Marc Myers
What listeners say about No Simple Highway
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Consumer 14
- 11-13-21
Another top book on The Grateful Dead
No Simple Highway is in league with the few other books on TGD that are definitive and encyclopedic. This one explores the Dead in in the broader context of what was going on in society across the USA at the same time. That’s one of things I love about this book. The information provided here on the Dead and their associates is new, no repeat of what I’ve read in other books. Together, each of these top few books on Dead help to create a full picture. New detail, nuance, events and particulars of who, where, and why. For those who are fascinated with this unique and amazing band, their family and associates and the history changing events they made happen as they continued to move forward, this book is a must have. That the Dead were able to pull off what they did in such a successful way without ever trying to engage the normal business models is amazing, and I don’t think it could ever happen again. It’s almost like the world we live in now is a direct result of societal and legal restrictions that were created one by one in order to or put an end to the unpredictable freedoms which the Dead successfully evoked. “Oh what? They did that? OK well that’s going to happen again and we’ll create laws, rules, restrictions, political theater and punitive, divisive measures in order to prevent a repeat all that which the Dead made happen.” I guess that’s the cause and effect which accompanies an authoritarian agenda. Most of what happened was a result of Garcia’s values, beliefs and intentions. What a mind. We’re all lucky that Jerry was here, even now. This history can’t be rewritten. They can put an end to freedoms but the seed and concepts of the mindset can’t be taken away. If you’re Dead fan this book is essential.
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- Mel Tanzman
- 02-20-23
On the road for over 50 years
Probably the best of the Dead histories bringing the perspective of a non-Dead Head analyzing their sociological and historic impact of the band. The dialectical contradictions between Western individualism and the search for community and oneness. More than anything it brings us into the brilliant mind of Jerry Garcia/- musicologist,melodic player, philosopher, and reluctant leader. He was a privileged man who worked hard to make his way in the world not of his making. Ultimately, a tragedy of a man who bore a burden he didn’t choose or desire. This history closely follows the path of my life. Keeping the dream alive at 72- unabashedly!
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- Dan Fenyvesi
- 03-09-22
Best of the dead bios
I’ve read 4-5 dead histories over the years and this is the most interesting one. It is full of intriguing insights and colorful anecdotes. The focus is on the cultural history and how the dead’s story fits in the broader picture of western history and arts.
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3 people found this helpful