YEAR
1994
INDUCTED BY
Bruce Hornsby
CATEGORY
Performers
No band embodied the psychedelic rock era’s mind-expanding, counterculture vibe better than the Grateful Dead.
During marathon concerts marked by communal, peaceful atmospheres, the San Francisco troupe combined traditional genres such as folk, bluegrass and roots with experimental, freewheeling musical excursions.
HALL OF FAME
ESSAY
By Davin Seay
Evolution. Its a process measured in eons. But every so often, when a historic juncture is reached and critical mass achieved, evolution takes a breathtaking leap forward. In one moment, things are as they always were. In the next, they will never be the same again.
San Francisco. 1965. It was a time and place where the potent charge of rock & roll hotwired an epochal transformation, a generational shift that set the world wobbling. Music was an express agent of that change, articulating and animating the social and spiritual convulsions shredding the air.
But as much as music was the midwife of sixties revolution, it was also being revolutionized, goosed up the evolutionary ladder by a once-in-a-lifetime assemblage of pilgrims and pioneers, staking out new frontiers of consciousness along the rugged Western edge.