Growing Up Dead: The Hallucinated Confessions Of A Teenage Deadhead
by Pete Connors

Pills, thrills and bellyaches: the Deadheads’ Bible

“Maybe we’re just one of the last adventures in America,” said Jerry Garcia explaining away the legions of devoted Deadheads who’d brave hell, high water and sometimes ridicule or hostility to follow The Grateful Dead around America’s arenas, bonding together in lysergic communion for whole tours in their own travelling circus. Suburban kid Pete Connors was instantly hooked when he first saw the band at the age of 16 in 1987, spending the next five years travelling in a VW camper van with his Deadhead family, relishing pre-show car park drug rituals and the epic sonic excursions of his heroes.

Connors’ memoirs are delivered with refreshingly pure passion, Deadhead antics and band performances contrasted by his own story, starting with dumb teenage antics in Rochester, New York, and interspersed with background on the band, LSD and Prankster philosophy. If the 80s shows were joyful, acid-fried celebrations, by the 90s the Dead’s fame and freewheeling attitude was turning against them, attracting negative elements, while Garcia’s drug problems were dulling the live experience. Connors departed to struggle as a writer, finally producing this, in turn, mesmerising, moving, comical, honest testimonial to both the Dead and one of the most dedicated bodies of fans music will ever see.

4 stars 4 stars 4 stars 4 stars

ISBN 9780306817335, 256 pages

Reviewed by Kris Needs
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