Those bigger crowds in turn rekindled the parking-lot scene that has been part of Dead culture since the late 1970s at a scale not seen since the days of Garcia. They lasted longer than any post-Garcia configuration of Grateful Dead members-a genuine feat considering the level of animosity and manipulation among those surviving players-and consistently played to crowds that rivaled those the Dead drew in the heady gate-crashing days of the late 1980s and early 1990s, when they were the biggest touring act in the country. The Future of Psychedelics, As Explained by Michael Pollanīut over the course of eight years and 235 shows, Dead and Company performed several miracles. Enlisting Mayer, with his bankable face and blandly virtuosic blues-scorching style, seemed like an extraordinarily obvious cash grab and an artistically suspect decision it seemed equally impossible to imagine Mayer fans wooking out to the red-eyed reggae of “Estimated Prophet” and crusty Deadheads savoring slicked-back versions of old Pigpen songs. The Dead and Company lineup didn’t make immediate musical sense in 2015 and was, quite frankly, very funny for people who didn’t care about Mayer or the Dead.

But with all due respect to Warren Haynes, there has never been anyone quite like Mayer involved with this music before.

Plenty of guitarists have been put in the unenviable position of stepping into Garcia’s role as the band’s primary musical force, to varying degrees of success. The surviving members of the Grateful Dead have reconfigured themselves several times since Garcia’s 1995 death, playing under a variety of names both together (the Other Ones, Furthur, the Dead) and solo (Phil Lesh and Friends, Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros., RatDog). That was when Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir and drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann took the stage at Times Union Center in Albany, New York, for the first gig with their new guitarist and co-vocalist: John Mayer. His final show, at the Hollywood Bowl in 1972, marked the last time a truly charismatic singer performed Grateful Dead music with any of the band’s original members. Though Jerry Garcia was already the band’s intellectual center, Pigpen had been its major draw and frontman, until he wasn’t. He avoided psychedelics, drank bottle after bottle of wine, and stopped touring a few months before his death.

But as the Grateful Dead’s exploratory ethos inevitably led them to new territory and better drugs, Pigpen was left behind. The transition was punctuated by the 1973 death of Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, the harmonica player and vocalist whose ability to command a room and yelp out blues ad-libs for half an hour on “Turn on Your Lovelight” made him an intensely personable figure at one point, he was so recognizable, the band’s label ran a Pigpen look-alike contest. Depending on whom you ask, their first death came only a few years after their 1965 formation, as the raunchy organ jams and all-night raves of their psychedelic days gave way to statelier songwriting and more sophisticated playing.

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