 | |
| Language | English |
|---|---|
| Subject | Grateful Dead, Deadheads (Music Fans), Rock music, Hallucinogenic Drugs, LSD, Counterculture |
| Published | 2016 (Da Capo Press) |
| Publication place | United States |
| Pages | 480 pages (1st edition, hardcover) |
| ISBN | 978-0-306-82255-1 (1st edition, hardcover) |
Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America is a 2016 non-fiction book by rock journalist Jesse Jarnow. The book describes American psychedelics counterculture in the second half of the twentieth century.
Jarnow is a rock journalist whose writing has been published by Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Wired, and the Village Voice. He began his career writing about the Grateful Dead for Dupree's Diamond News. Jarnow spent nearly a decade researching Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America. Some of the book's material was published in earlier articles for magazines like Wired and Relix. [1] [2]
Heads relies heavily on firsthand interviews. Interview subjects include sociologist Rebecca Adams, photographer Jay Blakesberg, musician and journalist David Gans, Karen Horning, journalist Blair Jackson, musician Ned Lagin, Carol Latvala (wife of Dick Latvala), LSD chemist Sarah Matzar, LSD historian Mark McCloud, Grateful Dead publicist Dennis McNally, artist Jim Pollock, taper Doug Oade, Earth and Fire of Erowid, musician Lee Ranaldo, LSD chemist Tim Scully, concert promoter Peter Shapiro, Rhoney Stanley (wife of Owsley Stanley), and many more. [3]
Heads offers an analysis of American psychedelic counterculture and its effects on mainstream American society. Jarnow describes the Grateful Dead and their concerts as a kind of loosely organized infrastructure for American counterculture, detailing how the band and their fans were inextricably linked to LSD distribution from the 1960s through the 1990s.
In addition to the Grateful Dead's longstanding connection LSD chemist and sound engineer Owsley Stanley, Jarnow describes how Grateful Dead concerts served as a meeting point and social network for high level LSD dealers like Karen Horning and chemists like Sarah Matzer and William Leonard Pickard. The book also discusses how the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration targeted LSD-trafficking Deadheads in the 1980s and 1990s.
The book also examines the influence of LSD and other psychedelics on diverse fields of American culture, especially technology and Silicon Valley. Jarnow describes the psychedelic use of Apple Computer founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, and how early Internet technology like ARPANET was used for countercultural purposes.
Heads also examines how LSD and the Grateful Dead impacted the art world, influencing the New York graffiti clique Rolling Thunder Writers and artist Keith Haring. Jarnow reports that Keith Haring's first commercially available work was a T-shirt Haring designed to sell in the parking lot of Grateful Dead shows.
Heads also offers a history of the Grateful Dead's fans, known as Deadheads. The book presents biographic information about the band's archivist Dick Latvala, the network of Grateful Dead tape trading, and the history of concert promoter Johnny Dwork and the Hampshire College Grateful Dead Historical Society.
In its attempt to cover a range of central narrative within American counterculture and the hippie scene, the book presents histories of the Bread and Puppet Theater, the American jamband Phish, Wetlands Preserve, John Perry Barlow and the Electronic Freedom Foundation, psychedelic pioneer Terence McKenna, and Humbead's Revised Map of the World.
Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America received significant mainstream coverage [4] [5] and generally favorable reviews. [6] [7] [8]
Hua Hsu of The New Yorker described the book as "meticulously researched" and praised Jarnow for his "attempt to complicate and extend the history of psychoactive drugs in this country." [9]
Writing for SFGate, Steve Silberman praised the book for its novel approach to psychedelic counterculture: "rather than giving more screen time to overhyped blowhards such as [Timothy] Leary, Jarnow refreshingly focuses on the overlooked foot-soldiers of the lysergic revolution." Silberman described "most regrettable oversight" as "Jarnow’s failure to explore the Afrofuturist movement and other aspects of non-white psychedelia." [10]
Kirkus Reviews commended book's depth of research: "Jarnow has a bloodhound’s sense of the marrow of an argument and the meat of historic fact." Kirkus questioned some of Jarnow's conclusions about the influence of psychedelic culture, while reiterating the book's writing style and entertaining history: "Though Jarnow is sometimes unduly celebratory and sometimes begs credulity—is the fact that we use emoji on our mobile phones really evidence that the psychedelic revolution carried the day?—his book is a lot of fun to read, and it absorbs its own weight in excess reality." [11]
The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in Palo Alto, California, known for their eclectic style that fused elements of rock, blues, jazz, folk, country, bluegrass, rock and roll, gospel, reggae, and world music with psychedelia. The band is famous for improvisation during their live performances, and attracted a devoted fan base, known as "Deadheads." According to the musician and writer Lenny Kaye, the music of the Grateful Dead "touches on ground that most other groups don't even know exists." For the range of their influences and the structure of their live performances, the Grateful Dead are considered "the pioneering godfathers of the jam band world".
Psychedelic rock is a rock music genre that is inspired, influenced, or representative of psychedelic culture, which is centered on perception-altering hallucinogenic drugs. The music incorporated new electronic sound effects and recording techniques, extended instrumental solos, and improvisation. Many psychedelic groups differ in style, and the label is often applied spuriously.
Psychedelia usually refers to a style or aesthetic that is resembled in the psychedelic subculture of the 1960s and the psychedelic experience produced by certain psychoactive substances. This includes psychedelic art, psychedelic music and style of dress during that era. This was primarily generated by people who used psychedelic drugs such as LSD, mescaline and psilocybin and also non-users who were participants and aficionados of this subculture. Psychedelic art and music typically recreate or reflect the experience of altered consciousness. Psychedelic art uses highly distorted, surreal visuals, bright colors and full spectrums and animation to evoke, convey, or enhance the psychedelic experience.
A Deadhead or Dead head is a fan of the American rock band the Grateful Dead. The Deadhead subculture originated in the 1970s, when a number of fans began traveling to see the Grateful Dead in as many shows or festival venues as they could. As more people began attending live performances and festivals, a community developed. The Deadhead community has since gone on to create slang and idioms unique to them.
William Leonard Pickard is one of two people convicted in the largest lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) manufacturing case in history. In 2000, while moving their LSD laboratory across Kansas, Pickard and Clyde Apperson were pulled over while driving a Ryder rental truck and a follow car. The laboratory had been stored near a renovated Atlas-E missile silo near Wamego, Kansas. Gordon Todd Skinner, one of the men intimately involved in the case but not charged due to his cooperation, owned the property where the laboratory equipment was stored.
Augustus Owsley Stanley III was an American-Australian audio engineer and clandestine chemist. He was a key figure in the San Francisco Bay Area hippie movement during the 1960s and played a pivotal role in the decade's counterculture. Under the professional name Bear, he was the sound engineer for the Grateful Dead, recording many of the band's live performances. Stanley also developed the Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound, one of the largest mobile sound reinforcement systems ever constructed. Stanley also helped Robert Thomas design the band's trademark skull logo.
The psychedelic drug lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) was first synthesized on November 16, 1938, by the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann in the Sandoz laboratories in Basel, Switzerland. It was not until five years later on April 19, 1943, that the psychedelic properties were found. Today, the discovery of LSD is celebrated worldwide during the annual Bicycle Day holiday, serving also as the day celebrating the psychedelic revolution in general.
The Psychedelic era was the time of social, musical and artistic change influenced by psychedelic drugs, occurring from the mid-1960s to mid-1970s. The era was defined by the proliferation of LSD and its following influence in the development of psychedelic music and psychedelic film in the Western world.
Alton Kelley was an American artist known for his psychedelic art, in particular his designs for 1960s rock concert posters and album covers. Along with artists Rick Griffin, Stanley Mouse, Victor Moscoso and Wes Wilson, Kelley founded the Berkeley Bonaparte distribution agency in order to produce and sell psychedelic poster art.
Richard Allan Latvala was an American tape archivist for the Grateful Dead. He started the CD series Dick's Picks, a series that selects live music from Grateful Dead concerts. The first volume of Dick's Picks was released in 1993. The series continued after Latvala's death in 1999 until 2005, with later volumes being selected by David Lemieux. In 2012, the series inspired a spin-off officially known as Dave's Picks.
The Grateful Dead is the debut studio album of Grateful Dead. It was released by Warner Bros. Records in March 1967. According to the biographies of both bassist Phil Lesh and drummer Bill Kreutzmann, the band released the album as San Francisco's Grateful Dead.
Nicholas Sand was a cult figure known in the psychedelic community for his work as a clandestine chemist from 1966 to 1996 for the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. Sand was part of the League for Spiritual Discovery at the Millbrook estate in New York, has been credited as the "first underground chemist on record to have synthesized DMT" and is known for manufacturing large amounts of LSD.
Psychedelic music is a wide range of popular music styles and genres influenced by 1960s psychedelia, a subculture of people who used psychedelic drugs such as DMT, LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin mushrooms, to experience synesthesia and altered states of consciousness. Psychedelic music may also aim to enhance the experience of using these drugs and has been found to have a significant influence on psychedelic therapy.
The Acid Tests were a series of parties held by author Ken Kesey primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area during the mid-1960s, centered on the use of and advocacy for the psychedelic drug LSD, commonly known as "acid". LSD was not made illegal in California until October 6, 1966.
The hippie subculture began its development as a youth movement in the United States during the early 1960s and then developed around the world.
Robert "Tim" Scully is an American computer engineer, best known in the psychedelic underground for his work in the production of LSD from 1966 to 1969, for which he was indicted in 1973 and convicted in 1974. His best known product, dubbed "Orange Sunshine", was considered the standard for quality LSD in 1969. He was featured in the documentary The Sunshine Makers.
Folk Time is an album by the Hart Valley Drifters, an American folk music band. It was recorded in 1962 at the studios of KZSU, a radio station at Stanford University. It was released by ATO Records on November 11, 2016.
Jacaeber Kastor is a writer, artist, gallery-owner and curator of psychedelic art. He is former owner of the successful Psychedelic Solution gallery in New York’s West Village.
Dave's Picks Volume 43 is a three-CD live album by the rock band the Grateful Dead. It was recorded on November 2, 1969 at the Family Dog at the Great Highway in San Francisco, California, and on December 26, 1969 at McFarlin Memorial Auditorium in University Park, Texas. It was released on July 29, 2022, in a limited edition of 25,000 copies.
Bear's Sonic Journals: Sing Out! is a three-CD live album of acoustic music by various artists. It features performances by Jerry Garcia & Bob Weir, Country Joe McDonald, Kate Wolf, Rosalie Sorrels, and the Rhythm Devils. It was recorded at the Berkeley Community Theater in Berkeley, California on April 25, 1981. The album includes a 50-page booklet of essays and photos. It was released on February 23, 2024.