![]() 9, 1995, at age 53.Ī few months later, the surviving band members decided to retire the name Grateful Dead. After a short stay at the Betty Ford Clinic, he checked himself into Serenity Knolls, a substance-abuse clinic in northern California, where he died of a heart attack on Aug. The Dead was scheduled to have a few months off after this show, and Garcia sought help. The band members have since admitted that by this point, they had stopped listening to each other while they were playing. "I'd hit my crash cymbals as hard as I could, just to wake him up," the drummer wrote in his autobiography. Kreutzmann claims that Garcia occasionally nodded off during concerts. He would forget not just lyrics but even what song he was playing. Several gate-crashing incidents marred their summer tour, and some venues and cities were refusing to host the Dead. Things had gone sour in the band's world. You'd be hard pressed to find a Deadhead who thinks that this - the band's final concert before Garcia's death - was a good one. The band quickly found a replacement in Vince Welnick, but the pressure of touring, the burden of increased fame and Garcia's return to heroin use conspired to make the band's last five years on the road largely forgettable. But he died of a drug overdose in July 1990. ![]() ![]() Brent Mydland had joined on keyboards in 1979 and added energy to a band of aging hippies. The Dead were riding high for the rest of the decade. And "Touch of Grey" - a song they'd been playing in concert for five years - became an unexpected hit single in 1987. Once he recovered, the band recorded their first studio album in seven years. Garcia cleaned up in the mid '80s, but he slipped into a diabetic coma in 1986 and nearly died. They felt the music was suffering, and many fans agreed. His bandmates, setting aside their strong inclination toward personal freedom, staged several interventions. It was a rejuvenated Grateful Dead that took the stage at the Brendan Byrne Arena on this night - Weir's 42nd birthday.īy the early 1980s, Garcia had become addicted to heroin and had put on weight.
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