NYT on Dead and Company: A Contemporary Cultural Touchstone
Since MSNBC published this piece by Michael Cohen on 7/15/23 about “Why Republican and Democratic Deadheads are coming together” in San Francisco as Dead and Company concludes its “last tour,” I’ve received a few unexpected media calls.
Cohen’s piece notes a 2015 national poll that found Dem, GOP and Independent voters alike viewed the Grateful Dead in a positive light.
A couple of journalists noticed in prior reporting that I was the guy who paid to do a poll on the Grateful Dead in 2015. I opted to do so around the five 2015 “Fare Thee Well” shows in San Francisco and Chicago commemorating the final use of the name “Grateful Dead” by the surviving band members.
Yes, but why would someone do that? they inquired further.
Easy answer: After spending a lot of time seeing Dead shows in the 80’s and 90’s the band had penetrated American culture in a unique and positive way — and surely across party lines. It didn’t take a genius to see and understand the band’s mass appeal.
But their broad-based positive “favorability” rating was just my hypothesis.
I needed corroborating data.
I got it from a bipartisan GOP/Dem team — the good folks at Public Opinion Strategies (POS) and the Mellman Group. I’d worked with both firms over the years and knew I’d get the objective info.
After the poll results were tabulated — and my theory confirmed — we collectively decided to release the survey and crosstabs in conjunction with the final Fare Thee Well Chicago shows.
Chuck Todd on Meet The Press cheerfully touted the poll findings: “Guess what?” he exclaimed to viewers at the end of the show, “The Grateful Dead unifies America!”
Now — 9 years after this 2015 data was compiled — I have no doubt this nearly 60 year-old Grateful Dead phenomenon is now even more favorably viewed since Dead and Company became such a touring Colossus.
That’s just a hypothesis and don’t need a poll; attendance and gross receipts tell the story. Pollstar reports the band’s cumulative gross earnings since forming in 2015: $434.2 million and 4.08 million tickets sold. Amazing.
As the New York Times noted today: “A funny thing happened as this new band Dead and Company wound its way across the United States: The Dead became a cultural touchstone again.”
Grateful Dead founding member Bob Weir has continually stressed as a board member of the nonpartisan voter registration group, Headcount, that music is one of the few things that can still bring Americans together.
Despite negative naysayers, “purists” and self-appointed guardians of the Dead legacy, I say thanks to Dead and Company for putting this great body of work front and center in the national consciousness once again for more generations to see, enjoy and celebrate.
What a success it was.
