Living With the Dead: Twenty Years on the Bus With Garcia and the Grateful Dead [Hardcover]

Rock Scully (Author), David Dalton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1995

The Grateful Dead's longtime manager provides an entertaining eyewitness account of the band's behind-the-scenes history, from the writing of their greatest songs and their legendary encounters with other celebrities to their emergence as cultural icons. 200,000 first printing. $150,000 ad/promo.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

When Scully first saw the Grateful Dead perform, in San Francisco in 1965, he thought they were the "world's ugliest band." He promptly signed on as their manager and lived with them for the next 20 years; in 1985, fresh from a heroin detox clinic, he quit or was fired amid charges (all false, says he) of misusing the band's money. His account of those years, written with the coauthor of Marianne Faithfull's autobiography, is not addressed exclusively to an audience of Deadheads. In fact, they may be disappointed by the low profile Jerry Garcia keeps in Scully's memories. He does remember the LSD and the drugs and the hazy high jinks: the souring Haight-Ashbury scene, Woodstock and Altamont, the "endless party rolling down the road." He describes Garcia as "magnetic, affable, inquisitive, approachable and infinitely benign," and that's about as deep as it gets. A few of the albums, especially early ones, get some attention, but Scully is more interested in the Dead as a social phenomenon. And after 20 years, with Garcia getting ever deeper into drugs and isolation, the group, he says, became both a self-parody and a "cash cow." Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Scully's 20-year tenure as Grateful Dead manager ended on a sour note, and he is barely mentioned in other books on the band. Nonetheless, in this first in-depth biography of the group, he displays a vivid, unflinching eye for detail, which is surprising considering the prodigious amounts of drugs he (and they) ingested. Highlights include colorful descriptions of Ken Kesey's acid tests (for which the Dead were the house band) and life in the Haight-Ashbury scene of the late 1960s. The reverential depiction of the late Jerry Garcia dominates sketches of the other band members, but Scully's insider status gives readers a rare view into the Grateful Dead inner circle. Recommended for popular music collections. Not as essential but no less interesting is editor Ganz's (Playing in the Band, LJ 7/85) compilation of some of the heartfelt and eloquent Internet postings that started appearing within minutes of the announcement of Garcia's death on August 9, 1995. Lovingly assembled, this book is far more effective than Linda Kelly's recently published Deadheads (LJ 11/1/95) at helping the uninitiated understand the otherworldly bond between the Dead and their fans. Recommended for larger collections.?Lloyd Jansen, Stockton-San Joaquin Cty. P.L., Cal.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 381 pages
• Publisher: Little Brown & Co (T); 1st edition (November 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316777129
• ISBN-13: 978-0316777124
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #558,549 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read this one first..., February 11, 2006

By 

Ryan McNabb (Ooltewah, TN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Living With the Dead: Twenty Years on the Bus With Garcia and the Grateful Dead (Hardcover)

If you are wanting to read the "back story" behind the music and are just now starting your homework, let me suggest you start here. Why? Why here, when this is obviously a flawed, overly subjective work seen through a prism of chemical distortions, bringing us what are probably broken and incorrectly reassembled memories? Because this is a book you will finish. You will read this from cover to cover and most likely love it, and because this book is (more than any other out there) about the FUN of the Grateful Dead. That part gets left out - a lot.

Other reviewers are not wrong - the last half of this book is largely about Scully and Garcia's drug addiction. But it isn't, as is made clear, like everyone else was a health food nut. (Well, Bobby was, but that's beside the point.) And there is also a ton of history going on during this time, too. (For one thing, we learn some of the reasons that Bob Dylan was so devoted to Jerry and said such gracious things about him later.) But what made it all work, the glue that held it together, was the fact that this music was just so much more fun than anything else going on. This book is about that fun, and this book is fun to read. There aren't many books that have made me laugh harder.

Where you go after this is your own business: if you want to read a superb biography and perhaps the most important book of the whole genre, read the Garcia biography. "Dark Star" is heartbreaking but very insightful, and much of it makes "Living With The Dead" seem tame by comparison, as it is all first person interviews of persons involved. The McNally book is probably the completest, but is often as dry as toast and completely disengaged from the joy this band dispensed. So start here for fun, and to get a taste for what the life was like, and put a little color in the cheeks of all those black and white photographs.

And as to why this book doesn't get much into the music, it's because no book could get in to the music and talk about anthing else. Scully was not a Dead head - he would probably rather have seen a Stones concert any night. He worked for the band, he didn't follow them for love of the music. If you want to get inside the actual music, that's a whole separate library you need to read. We aren't talking about the songs, we're talking about the band, and this is as good a place as any to meet them, and better than most.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars More Dead, not as much Garcia, January 19, 2001

By 

Brooks Williams "So. Awesome." (St. Louis, MO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Living With the Dead: Twenty Years on the Bus With Garcia and the Grateful Dead (Hardcover)

I've read a ton of books on the Dead and this is my favorite so far in that it's more about the band than Garcia. Granted, there's a lot more about Garcia, but it's not as bad as some of the other books. I was thinking that I'd love to see a book written by Donna -- or any of the other members of the Dead. Hell, a quick essay by Tom Constantine would be great too! Scully tends to write more about the party atmosphere of the Grateful Dead. Great anecdotes and personal stories that you don't really find anywhere else. Things like "The Bobby Problem" had me giggling as I read... it's funny and chock full of good info. I definitely recommend it. The only thing this book is missing is more discussion of the music. Blair Jackson's "Garcia" handles this better, but there's still room for improvement. Overall, I've loved reading this book. A real pleasure for any fan of the Dead

17 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars What was it...If you can remember the sixties then you..., August 29, 2003

By 

Junglies (Morrisville, NC United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

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This review is from: Living with the Dead: Twenty Years on the Bus with Garcia and the Grateful Dead (Paperback)

This is an immensely readable swashbuckling tale by the first mate on the good ship Grateful Dead for some years at least. The reader is transfixed by the gory tales of drug use and abuse of sex and life on the rock 'n' rollroad. You are mesmerized by tales of dosing everyone who came within reach with LSD and standing back and watching the reactions. With each page there is new excess and with every other page the narrator recounts some contact with the authorities or other and escapades of derring-do and close shaves.

What a long, strange trip indeed. Of course, the writers' credibility must be in question to some degree. Given his early confession of consuming many tabs of acid much of which of the strength and purity that only Owsley Stanley could muster, the exact occurrences must have some dubious quality about them.

As Joni Mitchell has pointed out sex sells along with lurid tales of goings on in the rock and roll universe. In this case the many references to under age sex with band members throughout the book are some of the obvious sensationalist traps used to entice the unwary reader.

The trouble is that it is so easy to read dammit and so many of us want to know more about what our anti-heroes get up to. And it must be true too because, you know, he was there when it all went down. Well there is that side of things but then how can you believe everything that you read?

My fascination with the Grateful Dead came about through listening to their music, on record and in performance. Whether I got to know anything about their private lives really had nothing to do with my enjoying their sounds. Sure they became celebrities and they got big and sure they as musicians were exposed to things that most people do not. But there is nothing new in that and they were not the first or will be the last to meet ferryman through drug use. The fact remains that most of the people who enjoyed the Dead enjoyed their music first and foremost even if they did like to party to it.

When I finally put this down I felt revulsion about how someone so close to his hero Jerry Garcia could lay bare his humanity so cruelly for all the world to see. Garcia may not have been a saint but did he have to see his dignity destroyed by one who purported to be his friend.

What is missing most from this book is the music and the relationships involved. If you want sensationalist stories dripping with lurid day-glo details then get this book now. If you want to know more about the man, men and their music read something else.

Rock Scully was an integral part of the Grateful Dead organisation for a long time. It is a pity that he did not do the justice to everyone in that organisation that they deserved.