The Steve Brown Interview

​Psychedelic Storm Chasers

​by Steve Brown

​The scene was a very psychedelic scene. A psychedelic scene has to deal with not just the adventure but that when you walked in you didn’t know what would happen. You didn’t know if you were ever going to come down, you didn’t know if you were going to get busted, you didn’t know if you were going to die (’cause that did happen on tour). At the same time, for those of us who made it through the door, it changed our lives forever.

​The Grateful Dead were never about “just the music.” The Grateful Dead were always about collective consciousness. Ken Kesey and Wavy Gravy are also about collective consciousness. It means that “we are us.” Back in the day, if you were to go to a Dead show, the show started when you hit the parking lot. There were the drum circles, the disco bus, the vendors. We were psychedelic storm chasers that, both internally and externally, had a self-sufficient community that went from place to place. Music was not only a soundtrack. The Grateful Dead at their peak were able to channel the energy from the crowd, absorb it, and give it back. That didn’t necessarily translate into music all the time. Sometimes that translated into weird space sounds. Sometimes that translated into a dark jam, but they were able to relate with what was going on in the scene and then reflect it and translate it back to us. At the same time that we were absorbing that energy, we were dancing; we were reflecting and sending that energy back to them. It was one big group mind. That was the magic of The Grateful Dead. Even though Jerry’s health started to suffer from the overall scene, that collective community—that’s really what it was all about.

​I was very fortunate that I got to tour with The Grateful Dead for almost a decade. That somehow landed me here in the Northwest. We were completely surrounded by freaks from all generations. I live near Eugene, Oregon, a town where nobody really ever grows up. The Hippies are still the Hippies, the Punks are still the Punks, the New Agers are still the New Agers.