The Music Never Stops: The Grateful Dead’s Enduring Legacy (2025 Update)
The Music Never Stops: The Grateful Dead’s Enduring Legacy (2025 Update)
Update to the January 2024 article “The Music Never Stops – The Grateful Dead’s Enduring Legacy” chronicling the Grateful Dead’s 60th anniversary, and GD60 Dead & Company festivities in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park
It has now been sixty years since the beginnings of the Grateful Dead; from the back alleys of Palo Alto to their 1965 debut at Magoo’s Pizza Parlor, to the rousing Acid Tests, to decades of legendary tours of coliseums and stadiums. Kris Kristofferson once remarked in a documentary that the Grateful Dead “did an amazing thing; they made their moment last for thirty years.”
In the three decades since the untimely passing of Jerry Garcia in August of 1995, his surviving bandmates have achieved an equally amazing milestone. They improbably made the Grateful Dead’s legacy last for another thirty years and counting, in the form of The Other Ones (1998-2002), The Dead (2003-2009), Furthur (2009-2014), GD50 Fare Thee Well (2015), and longest successor Dead & Company which celebrates its tenth year in 2025 concurrently with the Grateful Dead’s sixtieth anniversary.
In January 2024, Psychedelic Scene documented the twenty-nine years of post-Grateful Dead lineage up to that point, with updates on each of the remaining core members’ most recent projects. At the time, Bob Weir and Mickey Hart debuted a new offshoot named Dead Ahead in the proving ground of Cancun, Mexico with various special guests like Sturgill Simpson, Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi, featured alongside their Dead & Co. bandmates (sans Mayer) following that band’s final tour in summer 2023.
Meanwhile to start 2024, Phil Lesh separately celebrated thirty years of his own eponymous project with his sons and tribe at the Warfield Theatre in San Francisco, which would come to be Phil’s final live performances. Lesh persevered in the following months while hosting Terrapin Clubhouse sessions at his home studio, including Darkstarathon broadcasts and collaborations with stand-out guests such as Peter Rowan, Stu Allen, and Holly Bowling alongside Phil and his sons Grahame and Brian.
In early 2024, there was early speculation that Dead & Company could become the third band to perform at the Sphere in Las Vegas following U2 and Phish. This rumored revelation came to pass in the form of multi-month residencies in 2024 and 2025. The immersive views provided by the band’s Sphere concerts delighted the throngs of Deadheads in attendance, including this reviewer as described in this Dead & Co. concert review at the Sphere on May 31st 2024.
Julie Kurzenberger
Throughout last year, there were incessant rumors that in summer 2025, GD50 uber-promoter Peter Shapiro would reconvene the ‘core four’ of Weir, Lesh, Hart and Kreutzmann for a limited GD60 concert series in California and Chicagoland resembling the “GD50 Fare Thee Well” in June & July of 2015, as later described by Weir and Kreutzmann in an interview. However, much has changed in the past eighteen months.
Phil Lesh sadly passed away in October 2024 at the age of 84, a heartbreaking loss for all Deadheads. It is to Lesh’s credit that he has forged an impressive legacy as his tutelage and lineage continues with his sons Grahame and Brian, who do their best to carry on their father’s tradition in the form of Grahame Lesh & Friends. Sadly, the hopes that Weir, Lesh, Hart, and Kreutzmann could re-congregate for a ‘GD60’ celebration in 2025 would not come to be; which is inconsequential to the greater loss of the passing of Lesh, a musical composer for the ages and a legendary bassist of our time.
In November 2024, Bob Weir & Wolf Bros. featuring the Wolf Pack embarked on a short symphony mini-tour backed by local orchestras in Cincinnati, Chicago, and New Orleans in what encompassed Weir’s most ambitious musical excursions in the past decade and largest accompanying ensembles to date. The following month, the Grateful Dead were recognized at the 47th annual Kennedy Center Honors with an extensive montage and on-stage tribute which included Dead Ahead personnel Don Was, Jeff Chimenti, Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi, Sturgill Simpson, Rick Mitarotonda and more; with Weir, Hart and Kreutzmann attending as honorees.
Michael Stegner
Entering this year, Dead & Co’s off-shoot Dead Ahead returned to Riviera Cancun, Mexico for an excursion named the 2025 Dead Ahead Festival which resembled their January 2024 debut. At the same time, Dead & Company’s members, promoters and production company as well as San Francisco’s mayor and city council recognized the need to celebrate their predecessor the Grateful Dead, the foremost torch-bearing Golden Age band in the Bay Area for their sixtieth anniversary.
This observance came to pass this first weekend of August in a three-day run in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park Polo Fields, where the Dead had performed in the late 1960s, 1975, and 1991. It would be Weir and Hart’s first onstage appearances in Golden Gate Park since the wake for Jerry Garcia on August 13th 1995. To ensure that this GD60 anniversary celebration transcended Dead & Company’s less laudatory ten-year hurrah, the concert organizers recruited some of the top names from related genres to compliment the weekend’s festivities: Billy Strings, Sturgill Simpson, and GD50 guitarist-at-large Trey Anastasio, all three of whom opened for Dead & Company in consecutive order during the three-day weekend.
Strings – who has quickly become this generation’s bluegrass all-star – opened the proceedings on Friday before memorably guesting with Dead & Co. on “Wharf Rat.” Sturgill Simpson aka Johnny Blue Skies joined in the fun on Saturday while sitting in and singing on “(Walk Me Out in the) Morning Dew.” On Sunday, Trey gleefully dueled extensively with John Mayer on his Dead & Co. debut “Scarlet Begonias-> Fire on the Mountain,” which followed his “Mission in the Rain” dedication to Jerry during his Trey Anastasio Band set earlier that day. Missing in action was drummer Bill Kreutzmann, who to this point has not returned to the fold since retiring from Dead & Co. before their final tour in 2023.
AliveCoverage
Meanwhile the weekend’s unexpected and unassuming MVP was Grahame Lesh, whose musical maturation was evident throughout the weekend as he guested with Dead & Company for a song all three nights on bass, not his preferred instrument electric guitar. At the same time, Grahame and brother Brian simultaneously hosted “The Heart of Town All-Star Concert Series with Grahame Lesh & Friends” with a slew of Dead-adjacent luminaries at San Francisco’s Pier 48 concurrently during the weekend’s GD60-related festivities which were prevalent throughout the city.
As far as what’s next for Dead & Company, it is heavily rumored that the band’s annual residency at Las Vegas’ Sphere will resume in spring of 2026; perhaps following a winter return to Cancun for its offshoot Dead Ahead. John Mayer has a short run of concerts scheduled for this coming fall. While the dogged Bob Weir often reconvenes his Wolf Bros. side project in the off-season, no upcoming shows are currently scheduled.
Concert Review: Dead & Company August 2nd & 3rd, 2025 at Golden Gate Park
The Music Never Stops: The Grateful Dead’s Enduring Legacy (Jan. 2024)
Dead & Company at The Sphere – Live Review (May 2024)
The Top 10 Active Jam Bands (2025)
Gallery
Recent Articles
