What you see in the finished book isn’t how it all started, of course. With this book in particular, I’ve been researching, interviewing, writing and gathering pieces for more than 15 years, so what you’ll find here are some of those pieces that have found their way into to final book in a different form or didn’t make the final cut at all. Keep watching here for more bits and pieces.
An Interview with Dan Healy
I spent nearly two hours with Dan Healy backstage at Sandstone Amphitheater in Bonner Springs, KS on June 21, 1991 talking about the Dead and asking questions before the Dead’s performance. We were in a room with his young son, and at one point Jerry walked through the room, then a few minutes later, Bobby walked through. Earlier I’d had a chance to visit with Vince Welnick, so it was a great day for me.
Peter McQuaid Talks about working with the Dead
Peter McQuaid had worked with the Bill Graham organization before he was brought into the Dead’s organization in 1993 to run Grateful Dead Merchandise. Under his leadership, the Dead experimented with a number of approaches to selling merchandise in new and different places. He later became CEO of Grateful Dead Productions after Garcia died. In this piece he talks about working with the Dead and some of their merchandising experiments.
THE GRATEFUL DEAD: Customer Loyalty and Service Quality
This is the first published piece I wrote on the Dead. It was published as a case in a textbook on Customer Service. It’s been revised twice since it first appeared and will can now be found in the latest version of Superior Customer Value by Art Weinstein published in 2012.