Grateful Dead - Searching for the sound: my life with the Grateful Dead

In his marvelously economical and engrossing memoir, Lesh, the bands bassist, recounts the Deads creation against the backdrop of the Bay Areas beatnik culture and its historic performance at Woodstock (and nonperformance at Altamont), but he also takes a frank look at the drug abuse that marred the groups later years, as well as his own struggles with alcohol and with liver disease. Through it all, Lesh proves to be as capable and enthusiastic a writer as he is a musician. He consistently exhibits a peculiar and poetic fondness for language, transforming what could have been a routine exercise in nostalgia into a work as graceful and sublime as a box of rain.

Dave Itzkoff, New York Times

The Deads one and only bass player manages to make Searching for the Sound a fun ride. Lesh does an admirable job hitting the high points (no pun intended) of the bands career, including memories of the San Francisco hippie scene and experimentation with drugs. Even for the most well-read Deadhead, theres enough between the covers to make it worth a look.

Scott Bauer, Associated Press

Searching for the Sound provides an emotionally forthright reckoning of the Deads lush life. Lesh offers the best descriptions yet of the Deads approach to recording.

Richard Gehr, Village Voice

Deadheads will surely celebrate Leshs honest, intimate remembrances.

Publishers Weekly

It is with great anticipation that we look to Phil Lesh to add his ultimate insiders perspective on the high adventures and low moments of this league of misfits who emerged amid the nascent hippie culture to blend jazz, pop, rock, blues, folk, and bluegrass into an improvisational, psychedelic swirl. Lesh is intellectual, articulate, and reflective, and he shows a tremendous warmth toward his band mates. Its the small, intimate moments Lesh shares that make the book so special.

Regan McMahon, San Francisco Chronicle

Leshs unparalleled insider perspective, along with his sly, ironic humor, makes for an insightful and entertaining read. Lesh is at his best when articulating his unwavering belief that the Grateful Deads ecstatic, exploratory music and its inherent spiritual communing can be an engine to transform human consciousness.

Jay Trachtenberg, Austin Chronicle

Leshs tome is a lively read, with just the right mix of dirt, drugs, and diligent tour diaries.

Michael Endelman, Entertainment Weekly

The first band member to lift the veil for a candid behind-the-scenes look at the rise of the Dead. Lesh doesnt skirt around the dark side. It is the bands personal mix, on and off stage, that is the heart of his story. Lesh was there at the beginning and is an engaging guide, providing plenty of details about the bands inner workings, philosophical leanings, and musicological influences.

Greg Cahill, Metro Active

Now the Dead will always be with us. A frank memoir that discusses how destructivemurderous, evensubstance abuse was to the band Lesh devoted his life to. An endearingly enthusiastic depiction of the Deads first two years, during which they would sometimes practice for seven hours a day and hone their sound at hundreds of live shows.

Seth Mnookin, New York Times

People are either Deadheads or Deadphobics, and rarely the twain shall meet, except that reading Phil Leshs humane and wistful memoir of thirty years as the bands bassist could convert many a skeptic. Lesh proves to be a witty and engaging guide. His heart is pure, his intent honorable, and his memory is clear.

John Foyston, Portland Oregonian

Essential. Lesh is insightful and self-critical about some of the pivotal moments of the band.

Mark Brown, Rocky Mountain News

Like Lesh, his new autobiography is alternately sobering and playful. It chronicles Leshs high school days as a jazz and classical-music loving trumpeter, his switch to bass and blues and rock, and the truly long, strange journey that saw his genre-leaping band and its legions of fans experience heady highs, numbing lows, and much in between. Lesh expertly chronicles the bands rise from its humble jug-band origins into an improvisation-happy ensemble that combined rock, blues, jazz, country, soul, and more into an alternately exhilarating and meandering whole. He writes with sensitivity and insight.

George Varga, San Diego Union Tribune

To my brothers in music:

Jerry Garcia

Bob Weir

Bill Kreutzmann

Ron McKernan

Mickey Hart

Tom Constanten

Keith Godchaux

Donna Godchaux

Brent Mydland

Vince Welnick

Bruce Hornsby

And to my wife, Jill, and my sons, Grahame and Brian, without whose love and encouragement this book would never have been written.

I was permitted to hear an incredible music. I heard the gestation of the new world the sound of stars grinding and chafing, of fountains clotted with blazing gems. Music is planetary fire, an irreducible which is all sufficient; it is the slate-writing of the gods.

Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer