“No tricks, just music, hard, lyric, joyous — pure and together, dense and warm as a dark summer country night. There’s the Dead, and then there’s everybody else.”

“I am, or have been, a certified Grateful Dead freak; I don’t know how many Dead concerts I’ve attended, but it has to be more than 25, which for this record addict is a record. What’s more, I never made a conscious decision to lay off.”

The funeral notices had been printed. They were small stiff cards, bordered in black, reading “HIPPIE. In the Haight-Ashbury district of this city, Hippie, de­voted son of Mass Media. Friends are invited to attend services beginning at sunrise, October 6, 1967, at Buena Vista Park.”

"His buddies are LSD cultists, Hell's Angels, peace marchers, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac hangers-on, a bookshop owner, a helicopter pilot wounded in Vietnam, and people who prefer anonymity, like Mountain Girl"