Grateful Dead, 2024 Kennedy Center recipients, reflect on band’s legacy and fan support

The iconic rock band the Grateful Dead was named one Kennedy Center Honoree earlier this year, celebrating decades of innovation and success.

“It’s a legacy for me and us, I think,” drummer Mickey Hart said honor.

The surviving members — Bobby Weir, Bill Kreutzmann and Hart — told “CBS Mornings” that the honor is not just for the band members, but for their fans.

“They kept us going,” Weir said.

Grateful Dead forms

The band was formed in the San Francisco Bay area in the mid-1960s. Weir was 16 when he first heard Jerry Garcia play the banjo outside a music store in Palo Alto.

“It was New Year’s Eve, basically he invited us in. We had enough fun that night that we decided it was too much fun to walk away from,” Weir said.

Kreutzmann recalled seeing Garcia and Weir play in a club.

“I was completely blown away by Jerry’s ability to hold the audience in his hands. Jerry held the light for everyone,” he said. “That week he called me and said, ‘Hey, do you want to be in a band?’ I said, ‘Of course’.”

Kreutzmann later brought Hart into the band in 1967.

“Bill invited me to play and sit in. When I heard the band, I was like, ‘Huh.’ We all got turned on to the Grateful Dead in different ways, but we really got turned on to it,” Hart said. “We got some.”

Garcia also recruited Phil Lesha classically trained musician, to play bass. Lesh, one of the band’s original members, died in October aged 84.

The legacy of the Grateful Dead

In their 30 years as a band, the Grateful Dead scored only one Top 40 hit with “Touch of Grey” and not a single Grammy nomination.

“We’ve had people come up to us and say, ‘You’re never going to make it. You’re playing too long. You’re playing too loud,'” Kreutzmann recalled.

But over their decades together, they built a legion of followers known as “Deadheads” who began recording and sharing their concerts.

“You would look from the stage and it looked like a forest of trees of microphones,” Kreutzmann said of their fans recording their concerts.

Their record company advised against allowing fans to record, but the band refused, saying they were not concerned about piracy.

“It was the smartest thing we ever did,” Kreutzmann said.

The Grateful Dead played more than 2,300 concerts, and fans recorded most of them.

“Those tapes went out all over the world,” Hart said. “They were also our archivists.”

When Garcia died in 1995, the band broke up after 30 years together. They weren’t sure they could find a way to continue without their front man.

“When Jerry left it was the end of the Grateful Dead. Period. There’s just no way you can replace a Jerry Garcia,” Kreutzmann said.

The surviving members left to start other projects and bands, but the spirit of the Grateful Dead would always live on. Weir said Garcia visits him in dreams from time to time, including recently.

“In the dream, Jerry comes to me and he says, “Listen, I’m inviting a song in to meet you. I want you to meet this song.’ … What that dream did was it solidified in me the idea that yes, when we play the songs, they are living things,” Weir said. “They come and visit our world, and they come through us.”