Includes bibliographical references and index.

Released in 1970, 'Workingman's Dead' was the breakthrough album for the Grateful Dead, a cold-water-shock departure from the acid test madness of the late '60s. It was the band's most commercially and critically successful release to date. More importantly, these songs established the blueprint for how the Dead would maintain and build upon a community held together by the core motivation of rejecting the status quo - the 'straight life' - in order to live and work on their own terms. As a unified whole, the album's eight songs serve as points of entry into a fully-rendered portrait of the Grateful Dead within the context of late 20th-century American history. Based on research, interviews, and personal experience, this book probes the paradox at the heart of the band's appeal: the Grateful Dead were about much more than music, though they were really just about the music.