The Grateful Dead’s lead singer, Jerry Garcia, during a rehearsal at a recording studio in San Rafael, California, 1977.

Ron “Pigpen” McKernan at the Artists Liberation Front’s Free Fair in the Panhandle, a public park in San Francisco, 1966.

*Top,* the Grateful Dead near the Fillmore Auditorium in Denver, 1966; *above,* Garcia, his second wife, Carolyn “Mountain Girl” Garcia, and their dog Lady at the band’s house, at 710 Ashbury Street, in San Francisco, 1967.

Mickey Hart at the entrance of the Fillmore Auditorium, 1968.

Bill Graham outside the Fillmore Auditorium, 1966.

Al Kooper, Mountain Girl, Garcia, and Jack Casady backstage at the Matrix, a nightclub in San Francisco, 1969.

*Top,* the Grateful Dead’s last free concert, on Haight Street in San Francisco, 1968; *above,* Bill Kreutzmann at the Sky River Rock Festival, in Sultan, Washington, 1968.

Pigpen and Mountain Girl’s daughter Sunshine Kesey, at 710 Ashbury Street, 1967.

Garcia’s shirt hanging in the dressing room of the Fillmore Auditorium, 1966.

Back from the Dead

Jim Marshall’s Grateful Dead photos, capturing the calm and chaos of the 1960s rock ’n’ roll scene, are collected in a new coffee-table book

In 1965, Jim Marshall (1936–2010), complete with camera, moved from New York City back to the place where he grew up, San Francisco; he settled on Haight Street. On the West Coast, the counterculture was questioning everything. Men were letting their hair grow past their shoulders, women were tying theirs in bandannas, and amid the weed and the cobblestones, the prim full skirts of the 1950s were laughably old hat.

Rock music propelled it all, and Marshall was in the middle of it. Just a few blocks away, Longshoremen’s Hall hosted concerts, and the Fillmore Auditorium, at the corner of Geary Boulevard and Fillmore Street, became the place where Bill Graham, a young German-born impresario, began promoting shows. Two blocks north, the Panhandle stood at the neighborhood’s heart. Most importantly, at 710 Ashbury Street, the Grateful Dead lived in a communal house for 18 months—from September 1966 to March 1968.

Marshall quickly secured work with Atlantic and Columbia Records, and the Grateful Dead soon became his specialty. He always showed up at exactly the right moment—whether at a street performance or in the Panhandle—with five Leicas slung around his neck, each loaded with Tri-X 400 or Kodachrome film. Before long, Marshall’s images would define the band’s visual identity.

He understood it was about capturing both the chaos of the psychedelic era—Bob Weir, Pigpen, Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, and Bill Kreutzmann sitting on the roof of a Haight Street building, revelers screaming below—and the moments of complete tranquility. One 1968 photograph shows Kreutzmann at the Sky River Rock Festival, cigarette in hand, wearing a pink shirt, looking ahead with the unshakable confidence of youth.

In a new collection from Chronicle Books, Marshall’s images fill more than 290 pages and include key moments from the 20,000-strong Human Be-In, in Golden Gate Park in 1967, as well as from the Newport Pop Festival and Woodstock, in 1969.

The photographs were meticulously assembled by Marshall’s longtime assistant and editor, Amelia Davis, who sifted through 1,352 black-and-white proof sheets, 168 boxes of Kodachrome slides, and 52,704 images in total—peace signs, tie-dyes, guitars, and all. —Elena Clavarino

Elena Clavarino is the Senior Editor at AIR MAIL