This is a biography of "The Grateful Dead" founder Jerry Garcia. Written with the co-operation of Garcia, it is a warts and all story of how the San Franciscan guitarist tuned in, turned out and started a cult that has flourished and grown in America and around the world over the last 30 years. The archetypal flower-power band, "The Grateful Dead" lived on Haight Ashbury in San Francisco, dropped Acid with Ken Kesey and played at the very first Acid Tests and Golden Gate Park Love-Ins. Garcia, perhaps more than any other musician of his age, took the hippy ideology to its furthest conclusion: he experimented with the longest guitar solos in popular music history. Garcia has come close to death three times, has been in a coma for days, beaten heroin addiction and is currently rehabilitated and about to go back on the road with the Dead. His life has been one of immense flux, strife and incredible achievement. Garcia has played in front of the Great Pyramids of Egypt and been busted for drugs in his car. He has helped save acres of the Malaysian rain forest and seen friends and band mates die of drug overdoses.