Grateful Dead consists of Bob Weir, Bruce Hornsby, Jerry Garcia, John Perry, Mickey Hart, Phil Lesh, Robert Hunter, Vince Welnick.
The Grateful Dead was an American psychedelia-influenced rock band. Formed in 1965 in San Francisco from the remnants of another band, "Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions," the Grateful Dead were known for their unique and eclectic songwriting style—which fused elements of rock, folk music, bluegrass, blues, country, and jazz—and for live performances of long modal jams.
Some of the band's fans followed the band from concert to concert for years. These so-called Deadheads were renowned for their dedication to the band's music. Many followers referred to the band simply as The Dead.
The Grateful Dead's career began under the name "The Warlocks" in Palo Alto, California, but as another band was already recording under that name (interestingly, it was the future Velvet Underground), the band had to change its name in order to get a recording contract. After meeting their new manager Rock Scully, they moved to the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco. Many bands from this area, such as Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother & the Holding Company, and Santana, went on to national fame, giving San Francisco an image as a center for the hippie counterculture of the era. (Also see entry for the San Francisco Sound.) Of these bands, the Grateful Dead had members with arguably the highest level of musicianship, including banjo and guitar player Jerry Garcia, blues musician "Pigpen" McKernan, the classically trained Phil Lesh and drummer Bill Kreutzmann . The Grateful Dead most embodied "all the elements of the San Francisco scene and came, therefore, to represent the counterculture to the rest of the country" .