There are millions upon millions of bands in garages, warehouses, living rooms, and in this digital age, even on home computer spaces, each with big dreams of changing the world in spite of the harsh reality that very few do.   But we can believe in that dream, because every once in a while life exceeds our wildest dreams; such is the case of the Grateful Dead.

For The Dead to go from a team of unconventional San Francisco musicians who gathered in a Victorian-styled flat in the mid-sixties, to becoming a world-wide phenomenon that continues to entertain, inspire and sell years after their last performance, some text-book elements had to sow the seeds for the magic to fall into place.

According to Jerry Garcia interviews, the Grateful Dead never sought nor imagined a life of fame and fortune, they only sought to do what they loved:  write and perform music.   And they did so relentlessly for years.   Concert schedules of their early days show the tenacity required of any professional endeavor:  just keep going.

Innovation was equally unplanned, they seemed not to know how to do their shows any other way than their own.   While the norm was polished, theatrically provocative or clean-cut simplicity, The Dead would have none of it.  If modern bright colors and rigid lines were the design aesthetic of the time, The Grateful Dead favored stylized art deco imagery that was hand rendered in such a psychedelic stylized way as to be nearly illegible.   Illegible advertising?  Couldn't possibly work.   But it did.

Passion:  no question that each member of The Grateful Dead believed with complete commitment in their work.   No successful businessperson has ever succeeded without passion and commitment.   Their sense of community, of a sort of help-your-brother Utopia never relented, even at 70 Phil Lesh's website is more about charitable projects than his own music or live show sales. 

In business, tenacity, innovation and passion are consistent elements of success, preached relentlessly and appropriately.   Upon these blocks, a foundation is built upon which the necessary "magic" can happen:   an astute and enterprising concert promoter named Bill Graham can show up, discover you and set a course.   An exponentially large audience can begin to pay attention, and gravitate toward your work creating on its own a sense of community and belonging that only attracts more and more.    

Much has been written on the management style of The Grateful Dead, their art, their lives, their culture and philosophy.   Much has become the stuff of legend, embellished in memory like the youth we struggled through, but later came to miss nostalgically.

At the end of the day, all the magic and marvel that is the history, mystery and mastery of The Grateful Dead began with eleven young men who just wanted to play some music, and accidentally and instinctively built an empire and changed the world.