Dead & Company ends Grateful Dead's 60th with sunshine and a soaring send-off
Beneath bright blue skies, Dead & Company took the stage for the final night of their sold-out, three-day run at Golden Gate Park, closing out San Francisco's centerpiece celebration of the Grateful Dead's 60th anniversary.
Tens of thousands of Deadheads once again packed the Polo Field on Sunday, Aug. 3, many believing this could be the band's final performance.
The concerts featured completely different setlists each night and a rotating cast of surprise guests, including Billy Strings, Sturgill Simpson (performing as Johnny Blue Skies) and Trey Anastasio.
Sunday's first set opened with a buoyant cover of Sam Cooke's 'Good Times,' followed by a seamless 'China Cat Sunflower' into 'I Know You Rider.'
A funk-driven 'Shakedown Street' got the crowd moving, complete with teases of Phish's 'Ghost' and The Commodores' 'Brick House,' before closing on a high-energy 'Deal.'
The second set opened with 'Scarlet Begonias,' with Anastasio joining in and staying on for a blazing 'Fire on the Mountain.'
Grahame Lesh took the stage with his father's iconic bass, 'Big Brown,' during 'Broken Arrow,' and returned later for 'Cumberland Blues.'
The improvisational 'Drums' and 'Space' segment carried the crowd into deep sonic territory, with a jazz-tinged nod to 'My Funny Valentine.' From there, the mood turned reflective on 'Standing on the Moon,' before surging through Mayer-led versions of 'Sugaree' and 'Sugar Magnolia.'
'The band is hot and the vibe is right,' said Paul Codespoti of St. Louis, a longtime fan who's seen the Grateful Dead 165 times and Dead & Company 100.
All weekend, San Francisco leaned into the celebration.
The concert series served as the anchor for a larger tribute that will continue into the fall, with Dead-themed art exhibitions, tribute concerts, panel talks, and special events.
More than 400 Grateful Dead banners adorned city lampposts. Across San Francisco — particularly the Sunset, Richmond and Haight-Ashbury neighborhoods — Deadheads added color and commerce to the streets.
City officials reported a 50% spike in hotel bookings between July 31 and Aug. 3 — a surge they believe could top the $31 million in economic impact generated by the band's 2023 visit to Oracle Park.
Silvia Koros, who turns 60 next month — the same age as the band — attended all 21 Dead & Company shows this summer, beginning with their Las Vegas residency.
'If you miss one show, that will be the one where they play the song you've been waiting to hear,' she said.
For her, that song was 'Rubin and Cherise,' which hasn't been played live since 1991.
'I'd give my eyeteeth to hear that song,' she said.
Though it never came, Koros found joy in 'China Cat Sunflower,' which she dedicated to her late cat, Georges.
She had brought 3,000 custom-made stickers featuring Georges inside the Steal Your Face logo. By Sunday night, only 100 remained.
'I love this community,' she said.
'Every night is unique,' said Rachel Whitley, who first saw the band with friends from Rhinebeck High School in the early '90s. 'If you miss a night, it's not the full experience.'
She noted that the band had opened 'Playing in the Band' on Friday but never finished it — a signature move that keeps fans guessing. 'We might get the second part tonight.'
By day three, many attendees recognized one another.
Rudy Voit, who flew in from Chicago for all three shows, said he was there for as much the community as the music.
For some, that connection meant as much as the music.
'I knew the trip was worth it the first night when Grahame Lesh brought out his dad's bass for 'Box of Rain,'' Codespoti said. 'That's when I really connected to the music — and once I get there, I stay there.'
By the second set, the sun gave way to a glowing half moon.
As the final notes of 'Touch of Grey' echoed across the Polo Field, fans swayed together and took one last look at a stage that may never host this band again.
By then, whether it was truly the end didn't matter.
What mattered was that they were there. And this time, the sun was out
Dead & Company – Golden Gate Park Setlist (Aug. 3, 2025)
Grateful Dead 60th Anniversary Show – Sunday, Aug. 3
Set 1
'Good Times' (Sam Cooke cover)
'China Cat Sunflower' (Grateful Dead cover)
'I Know You Rider' (traditional cover)
'They Love Each Other' (Jerry Garcia cover)
'Shakedown Street' (Grateful Dead cover with teases of 'Ghost' and The Commodores' 'Brick House')
'Deal' (Jerry Garcia cover)
Set 2
'Scarlet Begonias' (Grateful Dead cover with Trey Anastasio and teases of 'Manteca' and 'Good Lovin'')
'Fire on the Mountain' (Grateful Dead cover with Trey Anastasio)
'Broken Arrow' (Robbie Robertson cover with Grahame Lesh playing Phil Lesh's bass 'Big Brown')
'Hell in a Bucket' (Grateful Dead cover)
'Cumberland Blues' (Grateful Dead cover with Grahame Lesh)
'Drums'
'Space' (with elements of 'My Funny Valentine')
'Standing on the Moon' (Grateful Dead cover)
'Sugaree' (Jerry Garcia cover)
'Sugar Magnolia' (Grateful Dead cover)
'Touch of Grey' (Grateful Dead cover)
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
See Trey Anastasio Perform ‘Scarlet Begonias' and ‘Fire on the Mountain' With Dead and Co
Dead and Co. wrapped up their three-day celebration of the Grateful Dead's 60th anniversary Sunday evening at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park with an epic set that included 'Shakedown Street,' 'Sugar Magnolia,' 'Cumberland Blues,' and 'Standing on the Moon.' The Trey Anastasio Band served as the warm-up act, and the Phish frontman came out during the start of Dead and Co's set to join them on 'Scarlet Begonias' and 'Fire on the Mountain.' It was a moment of jam band bliss with the two songs stretching out for roughly 15 minutes each. More from Rolling Stone See Sturgill Simpson Join Dead and Company for 'Morning Dew' at GD 60 See Dead and Company Perform 'Box of Rain' With Phil Lesh's Son Grahame at Dead 60 Show Dead & Company's San Francisco Livestream: How to Watch the Golden Gate Park Concerts Online Anastasio is a lifelong Deadhead. 'Every once in a while, there's a titanic American musician that comes through the ether,' he told Rolling Stone in July 2024, 'whether it be Louis Armstrong or James Brown. I mean, James Brown had a great band, too. And Jerry had a great band. We were lucky we got to experience that genius of American music in Jerry. We now get to sing his songs. Everybody gets to sing his songs.' When the Dead reconvened in 2015 to commemorate their 50th anniversary at a series of stadium shows, they recruited Anastasio to front the band. 'In my opinion, Jerry was one of the great American singers,' he told Rolling Stone's David Fricke that year. 'Those post-Jerry configurations [of the Dead] – that's always been the issue. I don't think anybody can be Jerry's voice.' 'My thought is, I love Jerry's voice, and I love these songs,' he continued. 'I'm happy to joyously sing whatever comes my way. But my take on it is that everybody sings – the audience too. They'll sing. We'll sing. Everybody knows the words. People have such lifelong relationships to these songs. When I say I'm providing a service – it's to the songs, the memories, the community.' Just months after the 50th anniversary shows, Bob Weir, Micky Hart, and Bill Kreutzmann formed Dead and Co. with John Mayer. They staged a farewell tour in the summer of 2023, but came back together last year for a residency at the Sphere. There was another run of Sphere shows earlier this year. There were early conversations about bringing Phil Lesh into the fold for the 60th anniversary shows. When he died in October 2024, Weir questioned whether it made sense to even have the concerts. 'I wouldn't put anybody in his place, so it would be a trio at this point,' Weir told Rolling Stone's Angie Martoccio in March. 'It'd be me and two drummers. I'd have to think about that.' The shows ultimately went forward with the current lineup of Dead and Co., though Lesh's son, Grahame Lesh, joined them at various points all three nights to represent his father. Kreutzmann, who has battled health problems in recent years and left Dead and Co. in 2023, wasn't there. There are no more Dead and Co. shows on the books, but Weir is confident the music of the Dead will carry on even after he's gone. 'I have no doubt about that,' he told Rolling Stone in March. 'What I'm trying to do is get my concerto project to the point where that is self-sustaining, and then I would probably want other folks to step in when I'm no longer here, and Wolf Bros. is a different deal. That whole thing is constructed so that anyone can step in and do it.' Best of Rolling Stone Sly and the Family Stone: 20 Essential Songs The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs All 274 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
The Tao of Jerry Garcia: 31 Trippy Quotes From the Grateful Dead Co-Founder
Jerry Garcia isn't just one of the most beloved rock stars ever, a legendary guitar player, and leader of the greatest rock band of all time from its inception in 1965 up through his passing in 1995. The Grateful Dead co-founder was also a font of casual philosophical wisdom, offering up pearls of insight throughout his life on anything from religion to finance to art. Here are some classic nuggets of Garcia genius to guide you through life. On God'There was one dream when I thought everybody on Earth had been evacuated in flying saucers and the only people left were these sort of lifeless automatons that were walking around, and there's the kind of sound of that hallow mocking laughter, when you realize that you're the butt of the universe's big joke.' —1989 More from Rolling Stone See Sturgill Simpson Join Dead and Company for 'Morning Dew' at GD 60 See Dead and Company Perform 'Box of Rain' With Phil Lesh's Son Grahame at Dead 60 Show Dead & Company's San Francisco Livestream: How to Watch the Golden Gate Park Concerts Online 'The date that holds significance for me is 2012. That's Terence McKenna's alpha moment, where the universe undergoes its most extraordinary transformations. He talks about these cycles, which, in each epic, more happens than in all previous time…. They're huge transformations in consciousness. This is going to peak in 2012.' —1993 'After I came out of my coma, I had this image of myself as these little hunks of protoplasm that were stuck together kind of like stamps with perforations between them that you could snap off. They were run through with neoprene tubing, and there were these insects that looked like cockroaches which were like message-units that were kind of like my bloodstream. That was my image of my physical self, and this lasted a long time.' —1994 I have been spoken to by a higher order of intelligence – I thought it was God. It was a very personal God, in that it had exactly the same sense of humor that I have. I interpret that as being the next level of consciousness.' —1994 On Drugs'Being high, each note is like a whole universe. And each silence. And when you're playing and you're high on acid in these scenes, it is like the most important thing in the world. It's truly, pshew, cosmic.' —1972 'To get really high is to forget yourself – and to forget yourself is to see everything else – and to see everything else is to become an understanding molecule in evolution, a conscious tool of the universe. And I think every human being should be a conscious tool of the universe. That's why I think it's important to get high.' —1972 'I'm the sort of person that will just keep going along until something stops me. For me and drugs, the bust helped. It reminded me how vulnerable you are when you're drug dependent. It caught my attention. It was like, 'Oh, right: illegal!'' —1987 'Drug use is kind of a cul-de-sac: It's one of those places you turn with your problems, and pretty soon, all your problems have become that one problem. Then it's just you and drugs.' —1987 'In my life, all kinds of drugs have been useful to me, and they have also been a hindrance to me. As far as I'm concerned, the results are not in.' —1991 'Q: If you were made Clinton's drug-policy adviser, what would you do?A: I would advise him to make everything legal immediately. Take the profit out of it and the whole criminal structure will collapse. The next part is the health aspect, making drugs that are clean and in knowable, understandable doses. Why not spend research money on making drugs that are good for you, that are healthy? Is the problem that we don't like people changing their consciousness? I don't think that's a good enough reason not to have drugs.' —1994 His Peers'Maybe Chuck Berry was the first rock musician because he was one of the first blues cats to listen to records, so he wasn't locked into the blues idiom. Nobody has to fool around with musty old scores, weird notation and scholarship bullshit. You can just go into a record store and pick a century, pick a country, pick anything, and dig it, make it a part of you, add it to the stuff you carry around and see that it's all music.' —1969 'I knew Janis eight years ago, and she was singing her heart out in the funkiest places you could imagine, with abscesses on her arms, dumpy and strung out, head all fucked up, wearing the plainest, most nondescript clothes you've ever seen. She was really singing, and nobody was even listening.' —1971 'Dylan was able to tell you the truth. He was able to talk about the changes that you'd go through, the bummers and stuff like that – and say it in a good way, the right way. Back in the folk music days, I couldn't really dig this stuff, but on Bringing It All Back Home he was really saying something that I could dig, that was relevant to what was going on in my life at the time. Whether he intended it that way or not is completely unimportant.' —1972 'The Beatles were real important. They were a little model, especially the movies – the movies were a big turn-on. Just because it was a little model of good times … it was like [they] were saying, 'You can be young, you can be far-out and you can still make it.' They were making people happy. That happy thing – that's the stuff that counts – was something we could all see right away.' —1972 'The Rolling Stones never did have a cool audience. [At concerts] Jagger would make his little speech about turn on the lights so we can see you, and everybody would scream and run up to the stage. It was so predictable. They knew it would work. They're good – they don't need any tricks.' —1971 'I didn't get serious about music until I was 18 and I heard bluegrass. I heard Earl Scruggs play five-string banjo and I thought, 'That's something I have to be able to do.' I fell in love with the sound, and I started earnestly trying to do what I was hearing. That became the basis for everything else that was my model.' —1994 On Health'I'm basically a lazy fuck. Things have to get to the point where they're screaming before I'll do anything. I could see it coming, and I kept saying to myself: Well, as soon as I get myself together, I'm going to start working out. I'm going on that diet.' —1993 On Money'I've always thought the Grateful Dead should be sponsored by the government or something. It should be a public service, you know, and they should set us up at places that need to get high. That's the kind of thing we should be doing. We shouldn't be in business.' —1972 'Somehow, we've ended up successes. But this ain't exactly what we had in mind, 12,000-seat halls and big bucks. We're trying not to redefine. What can we do that's more fun, more interesting?' —1973 'We really manage ourselves. The band is the board of directors, and we have regular meetings with our lawyers and our accountants that take about three hours, every three weeks. The last couple of times, I've been there screaming, 'Hey, you guys!' Because there are times when you go onstage and it's just plain hard to do and you start to wonder, 'Why the fuck are we doing this if it's so hard?'' —1991 On the SixtiesIt wasn't a gig, it was the Acid Tests, where anything was OK. Thousands of people, man, all helplessly stoned, all finding themselves in a roomful of other thousands of people, none of whom any of them were afraid of. It was magic, far-out, beautiful magic.' —1969 'The [Black] Panthers are righteous. What they're doing is actual, practical things. They got a free breakfast trip, and they're starting a free shoes thing – they're starting shoe factories and stuff like that. They're really doing things, man. They're into action, and that's something we can understand 'cause we're from a place where talk is cheap.' —1970 'I thought we were experiencing a lucky vacation from the rest of consensual reality to try stuff out. I didn't have anything invested in the idea that the world was going to change. Our world certainly changed. Our part of it did what it was supposed to do, and it's continuing to do it, continuing to evolve. It's a process. I believe that if you open the door to the process, it tells you how to do it and it works. It's a life strategy that I think anyone can employ.' —1994 On SongwritingI don't write them unless I absolutely have to. I don't wake up in the morning and say, 'Jeez, I feel great today. I think I'll write a song.' I mean, anything is more interesting to me than writing a song. It's like pulling teeth. I don't enjoy it a bit.' —1991 'I don't feel I have what it to takes to be a writer. I've never been able to sustain an idea and get it down. It's hard for me to do it with music, too. My own preferences are for improvisation, for making it up as we along. The idea of picking, of eliminating possibilities by deciding, that's difficult for me.' —1993 'Robert Hunter's really good about writing into my beliefs. He knows I'm going to be battling with my intelligence about whether I can sing this lyric or whether I'm going to feel like an idiot singing it.' —1994 'I don't think of my ideas as being far-out, musically. What works for me is the emotional component, not the technical.' —1993 On Books'My life would be life would be miserable if I didn't have those little chunks of Dylan Thomas and T.S. Eliot. I can't imagine life without that stuff. Those are the payoffs: the finest moments in music, the finest moments in movies. Great moments are part of what support you as an artist and a human.'—1991 'I fell in with a teacher who turned me on to the intellectual world. He said, 'Here, read this.' It was 1984 when I was 11 or 12. That was when I was turning on, so to speak, or became aware of a whole other world that was other than the thing you got in school, that you got in the movies and all that; something very different.' —1972 On Concerts'I have a real problem with standing onstage. I feel like an idiot most of the time. It's like getting up in front of your senior class and making a speech. Basically, when you get up in front of a lot of people, you feel like an idiot. There's no getting around that.' —1991 'Here we are getting into our 50s, and where are these people who keep coming to our shows coming from? What do they find so fascinating about these middle-aged bastards playing basically the same thing we've always played? There must be a dearth of fun out there in America. Or adventure. Maybe we're one of the last adventures in America. I don't know.' —1991 Best of Rolling Stone Sly and the Family Stone: 20 Essential Songs The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs All 274 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
See Dead and Company Perform ‘Box of Rain' With Phil Lesh's Son Grahame at Dead 60 Show
Dead and Company paid tribute to the late Phil Lesh on the opening night of their Dead 60 anniversary concerts in San Francisco by bringing out Lesh's son Grahame for 'Box of Rain.' The Bob Weir and John Mayer-fronted band have sparingly performed the Lesh-sung American Beauty classic, one of the bassist's signature songs, since their inception in 2015; Dead and Company played 'Box of Rain' only one other time in the past three years, at their first Sphere weekend since Lesh's death in October 2024. More from Rolling Stone See Sturgill Simpson Join Dead and Company for 'Morning Dew' at GD 60 Dead & Company's San Francisco Livestream: How to Watch the Golden Gate Park Concerts Online The Tao of Jerry Garcia: 31 Trippy Quotes From the Grateful Dead Co-Founder Grahame Lesh — who led an all-star band, similar to his father's Phil & Friends, at a pre-Dead 60 concert Thursday at San Francisco's Pier 48 — handled lead vocals and wielded his father's bass for 'Box of Rain,' then stuck around to join Dead and Company for a rendition of 'Playing in the Band.' Friday night's opening concert of the Dead 60 weekend took place on what would have been Jerry Garcia's 83rd birthday on August 1. As the shows at the Golden Gate Park mark the Grateful Dead's 60th anniversary, Garcia was also remembered as his daughter Trixie appeared onstage to introduce Dead and Company, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Billy Strings, who opened the show Friday, later joined Dead and Company on 'Wharf Rat': Dead and Company will return to Golden Gate Park, where the Grateful Dead staged at least 14 gigs spanning from 1967 to 1991, on Saturday and Sunday night. Rolling Stone spoke with Bobby Weir about the band potentially reuniting for the 60th anniversary, which Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, and Mickey Hart discussed before Lesh died. 'I think when Phil checked out, so did that notion, because we don't have a bass player who's been playing with us for 60 years now. And that was the intriguing prospect.… I think you need somebody holding down the bottom. Phil had all kinds of ideas that were pretty much unique to him. I grew up with Phil holding down the bottom in his unique way,' Weir said. He added: 'I suppose I could go back out. I wouldn't put anybody in his place, so it would be a trio at this point. It'd be me and two drummers. I'd have to think about that. I haven't thought about it — it's just now occurring to me that it's a possibility that we could do that, since you asked.… I guess we'll just see what the three of us can pull together.' Best of Rolling Stone Sly and the Family Stone: 20 Essential Songs The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs All 274 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked Solve the daily Crossword
