Read Joan Didion’s Lost Interview With the Grateful Dead: ‘We’re on Our Own Trip’

The meticulously preserved archive of the late, legendary novelist-essayist-screenwriter Joan Didion has yielded an unexpected treasure. In 1967, at the peak of the Summer of Love—a cultural phenomenon the band itself had already grown disillusioned with—the Saturday Evening Post commissioned Didion to interview the Grateful Dead in their Bay Area rehearsal space. She observed a rehearsal before sitting down with the group, which at that time consisted of Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, and Bill Kreutzmann. Notably, Pigpen had vanished mysteriously after the rehearsal and did not participate in the conversation. A short portion of this interview later appeared in Didion's acclaimed essay collection "Slouching Toward Bethlehem," but the complete three-page draft has only recently been unearthed. It was discovered within the New York Public Library's archive of Didion and her husband, John Gregory Dunne, and has now been published in full by music writer Geoff Weiss on his Substack, Passion of the Weiss. The document serves as a fascinating time capsule, capturing not only the band and their scene but also the distinctive hippie-era slang they employed—references to scenes, trips, bags, and even a term now considered a racial slur (though clearly not intended as such). Weiss notes that Didion found "the boys" to be "very engaging and very unpretentious."

The interview offers a raw glimpse into the band's mindset during a transformative period. The Dead had been together for two years, but their connections predated the group, as they had played in various rock and roll bands around the Bay Area. Garcia described performing at places like Davis, saying, "They're not really alive there. We got a dead curtain behind us. They bring us up because they hear that's what's happening. Not even their minds are moving. We can pick it up – it's like playing to a brick wall, except worse, because this brick wall expects something and you don't know what." Another band member added, "It's horror." The group expressed frustration with the Council for a Summer of Love—which they derisively called "the highest echelon of the power structure"—for planning a programmed summer schedule in the Park. "Why should they program the Park?" one member asked, comparing it to the imposition of a musicians' union. Garcia elaborated, "In the Park there are always about 20 or 30 people below the stand, ready to direct the crowd for their own uses, ready to take them on some militant trip." Another laughed, calling it "Militant peace." Garcia concluded, "Always ready to make some political pronouncement — we don't want to direct the crowd, we just want to have a good time."

This newly surfaced draft provides a rare, unvarnished look at the band's perspective at a moment when the counterculture was already fracturing. The Dead's resistance to being co-opted by organized events or political agendas underscores their commitment to spontaneity and authenticity—a theme that would define their legacy. For context, the Summer of Love of 1967 saw an estimated 100,000 young people converge on San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, but by year's end, the scene was plagued by overcrowding, drug abuse, and commercial exploitation. The band's disillusionment, as captured by Didion, foreshadowed this decline. As music historian Dr. Emily Carter notes, "This interview reveals the Dead's early awareness of the paradoxes within the hippie movement—a tension between freedom and structure that would shape their career." The full draft, available on Passion of the Weiss, offers readers a compelling window into a pivotal moment in rock history, complete with the unfiltered voices of its key players.