Trackin’ the Truckin’: How Billboard Covered the Grateful Dead for 60 Years

In folklore, “grateful dead” refers to the spirit of a deceased person who is given a proper burial by the protagonist of a story, then does him a favor down the road. In rock, for six decades, it has also been the name of a restless-spirited band that has received its last rites but keeps on keeping on as a living — and jamming — part of American culture. For three days in August in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, the Dead celebrated six decades of the longest, strangest trip in pop music, which Billboard has been trackin’ since the band started truckin’.

Drinking the Electric Kool-Aid

“Can the expanding pop/hippie movement turn [San Francisco] into a major music center?” Billboard asked in its May 6, 1967, issue. The article cited Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company and the Grateful Dead (“a local favorite of the acid set”) as part of “an atmosphere of new things happening.” The piece also mentioned “Topsy’s Topless Band, a female rock quintet which swings exposingly in North Beach.”

Dark Stars

“It was a religious experience,” raved a reviewer in the Dec. 12, 1970, issue of Billboard, testifying that 6,000 Chicago fans “freaked and frolicked for four hours to music by the Warner Bros. sextet, easily the most underrated rock band in the world.” The Dec. 4, 1971, Billboard reported that the Dead — whose “Truckin’ ” would soon reach No. 64 on the Billboard Hot 100 — “have only just begun to receive mass recognition.” Hailing the Dead as “the best dance band in the country,” the writer backhandedly complimented the “gnome-like Jerry Garcia” for his “exhilarating enthusiasm.”

In the Charts

By 1987, the Dead was a live act known for epic performances and the devoted ’Heads who saw as many as possible — but the band didn’t have a big hit single until “Touch of Grey.” The song reached No. 9 on the Hot 100 and No. 15 on the Adult Contemporary chart, sending the In the Dark album to No. 6 on the Billboard 200. As an executive at Arista, the group’s label, noted in the July 25, 1987, issue: “It’s going way beyond the band’s customary base.”

Still Truckin’?

“The band grossed more than $32 million from January-August this year,” reported the Sept. 9, 1995, Billboard, about a month after Garcia died at the age of 53. Without him, however, “the future of the group is in question. The group has canceled its fall tour, and its plans remain uncertain.” But promotion veteran Danny Zelisko envisioned life after death. “If they didn’t continue to play,” he told Billboard, “I’d be very surprised.”

Good Company

Ain’t no grave can hold this band down, to paraphrase an old song. By 1998, the surviving band members reunited as The Other Ones, which in 2003 became the Dead, then — with the addition of John Mayer — morphed into Dead & Company in 2015. The group did a “final tour” in 2023, then a 2024 and a 2025 run of shows at Sphere, plus the Golden Gate concerts. The trip hasn’t stopped: Last year, the ongoing Dave’s Picks live series helped the Dead score a record high number of albums in the top 40 of the Billboard 200. Not bad for a former Bay Area jug band.

This story appears in the Aug. 30, 2025, issue of Billboard.