Joan Didion’s Lost 1967 Grateful Dead Interview Published in Full

In 1967 the *Saturday Evening Post* sent journalist Joan Didion to interview the Grateful Dead during a Bay Area rehearsal. Present were Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann and Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, who left before the interview began. The three-page draft, reduced to a brief excerpt in Didion’s *Slouching Toward Bethlehem*, resurfaced in the New York Public Library among Didion and John Gregory Dunne’s papers. Jeff Weiss published the full text on his substack POW Mag.

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The interview occurred at the height of the Summer of Love, when the band had been together for two years and performed at venues such as the Fillmore, Avalon and UC Davis. The period saw a surge of counter-cultural activity across the Bay Area.

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Didion, a novelist-essayist known for cultural reporting, described the band as “very engaging and very unpretentious.” The band members—Garcia (guitar), Weir (guitar), Lesh (bass), Kreutzmann (drums) and McKernan (keyboards)—provided candid remarks about their music, audience expectations, and the planned “Council for A Summer of Love” program for Golden Gate Park.

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The manuscript records period slang, references to “scenes, trips, bags,” and a term that would now be identified as a racial slur, though the speakers did not intend it as such. Band members compare performing to “playing to a brick wall,” criticize the idea of a musicians’ union, and reject directing crowds, preferring “militant peace” and spontaneous shows.

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Jeff Weiss highlighted Didion’s observation of the band’s lack of pretension and noted that the complete interview offers a rare primary source on the group’s early self-perception. The *Saturday Evening Post* assignment, the archival discovery, and the digital publication are presented without additional editorial framing.

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Scholars of 1960s counter-culture have flagged the interview’s language as offensive by contemporary standards, emphasizing the shift in cultural discourse. The presence of a racial slur, even unintentionally, illustrates evolving expectations for respectful terminology.

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• “Always ready to make some political pronouncement — we don’t want to direct the crowd, we just want to have a good time.” — Jerry Garcia, guitarist, Grateful Dead

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• “It’s like why should there be a musicians’ union, stuff like that.” — Anonymous Grateful Dead member

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• “It’s horror,” — Anonymous Grateful Dead member

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The full three-page interview is now accessible through POW Mag, offering researchers and fans a primary document for further study of the Grateful Dead’s early years and the 1967 San Francisco cultural milieu.

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