So Many Roads by David Browne
In what will certainly be an ongoing series featuring reviews of books about popular music, I examine David Browne's work on the important moments in Grateful Dead history.
As I wrote about earlier, I’m currently in the throws of a full-on Grateful Dead phase.
As is my want when I’m in the middle of some kind of phase like this, I immediately try to read as much as I can about that given topic. There’s no shortage of reading material when it comes to the Dead so I decided to start with So Many Roads: The Life and Times of the Grateful Dead by Rolling Stone’s David Browne.
Browne uses an interesting conceit, focusing on the different representative moments in the history of the band to weave his biography of this important American group.
Browne’s decision to focus on these specific moments as a way of telling, more or less, the entire story of the band is very effective. The Dead are a group where those moments feel very instructive as a way of understanding the group, especially for someone really starting to dive into Dead-dom (who knew some of the key people and events but still needed a bit of a primer before getting into the more advanced stuff). You walk away with a better understand of the group, what they wanted to do, and how they went about doing it. But you also don't feel overwhelmed even as you realize there’s so much more out there to discover.
The famous show in 1977 in the Northeast… no, not Cornell but the Englishtown, NJ show which featured at least 100,000 people in attendance allows for a great opportunity to discuss that era of the Dead.
The “Touch of Grey” video shoot certainly works to think about that moment for the band and what came in its wake (which is covered in certain events and shows in the years that followed the massive success of that song). The 1967 Haight-Ashbury bust allows for a consideration of that primal, original Dead and their milieu. The first show when the band’s famous “Wall of Sound” went out on the road. You hear about all these times and Browne does an excellent job using these moments in and instructive way Browne tells the story of the group with these moments as touchstones or the path on which he (and us along with him) all travel.
There’s a cohesiveness to the narrative but also a focus, by using specific times and moments, that might not otherwise be there. It’s a short story collection about the Dead, rather than a novel. But it’s a collection like Winesburg, Ohio or Dubliners in that the smaller stories tell create a larger one
Browne’s book does suffer from the thing that plagues a lot of Grateful Dead-related writing, from what I gather, as it’s pretty light on the 1980s/prime Brent Mydland years. You get a little of it in the “Touch of Grey” video shoot and the aborted recording session at Fantasy Records that Browne recounts. But there does seem to be this gap that I would’ve liked to have seen colored in a bit more (especially because it’s one of the times when the Dead were at their most active though maybe not their apex of influence).
But those quibbles are minor ones. So Many Roads was a great read, something beyond the most general of introductions yet not quite in the deep end that’s best for only the most seasoned of Dead fans.
It does end up being essentially a Jerry Garcia narrative, but that’s to be expected given how he was the driving force of that group (though as one who focuses more on Bob Weir, mainly as a way to distinguish myself/be different, I did get a little frustrated).
But David Browne’s book distinguishes itself amongst the innumerable Grateful Dead tomes by creating something informative and entertaining, ideal for the person beginning their “long strange trip” (ugh, sorry for the hackneyed lyrical reference) or for those who’ve been “truckin’” with the group for a while. I would definitely recommend it.