One Dead & Company fan's nearly 50-year journey to Golden Gate Park

SAN FRANCISCO – Here's a prediction for you: The Dead will never die. Not going to happen. Ever.

Why? Because at this point, 60 years after the Grateful Dead made their mark on this psychedelic town, it's no longer about the band personnel as much as it is all about The Vibe.

Sure, the music creates that vibe, which summons the tribe with its swirling jam-band sound, but arguably those tunes can be conjured by others possessing the right Dead mojo.

All to say that Dead & Company's final show of a three-night stand in Golden Gate Park Sunday, Aug. 3, was nothing less than a reaffirmation that what the original quintet forged with spirited abandon is likely to live on well past any mortal expiration dates.

Anchored by two original members, guitarist Bob Weir and drummer Mickey Hart (drummer Bill Kreutzmann has retired to Hawaii), Dead & Company tore through two sets filled with hits that left 60,000 fans singing, twirling, grooving and communing in a large but orderly field, with not a disagreement in sight. As the "Scarlet Begonias" lyric goes, "Strangers stopping strangers / just to shake their hand."

Credit goes to singer and guitarist John Mayer in particular, who has taken on the Jerry Garcia mantle with both reverent study and spirited abandon. His blistering, weaving solos on songs like "China Cat Sunflower," "Shakedown Street," "Deal" and "Sugar Magnolia" deftly mixed his blues chops with Garcia's trademark flights of fancy.

But if there was a closing night highlight, that came courtesy of the frontman from the evening's opening act, the Trey Anastasio Band. Anastasio, Phish's co-founder, who memorably anchored guitar and singing duties for the Dead's 2015 Fare Thee Well tour, joined the band for the second-set opener, "Scarlet Begonias," which transitioned memorably into "Fire on the Mountain," a one-two punch known to Deadheads as "Scarlet-Fire."

Seeing Anastasio resume his lead guitar duties with the band was to witness a man in the midst of a joyous epiphany, never more so than when he and Mayer faced each other for dueling solos. If the Polo Fields in Golden Gate Park could have levitated, they would have.

For those keeping track, the other songs the band broke out Sunday included "I Know You Rider" (which pro forma came right out of "China Chat Sunflower"), the Robbie Robertson tune "Broken Arrow," the Weir-John Barlow-Brent Mydland rocker "Hell in a Bucket," the retro "Cumberland Blues" and the close-out favorite, "Touch of Grey."

Weir, who at 77 looked like a bearded poncho-wearing gun slinger, mostly contributed his trademark up-stroke rhythm chords, and occasionally took the mic. His voice, once a youthful bellow on staples such as "Samson and Delilah," is now more of a whisper, and it was deftly dispatched to handle songs such as "Standing on the Moon" and "Sugaree."

Looking around the crowd, it was fascinating to note the breadth of ages, which suggests that by continuing in various incarnations since 2005, a decade after Garcia's death in 1995, the band has managed to mainline its music into a new generation of fans. Stints like the one the group performed at the Sphere in Las Vegas, which brought an appropriately trippy visual sensibility to a vast catalog of trippy tunes, has also helped keep the band's legacy alive.

It was hard not to chuckle looking around at the various T-shirts and hoodies that read "Dead & Company Final Tour 2021," right next to another one that said the same thing only with a different year.

Speaking of years, it was 1979 when I dashed to my seats inside Madison Square Garden, a high-schooler newly baptized into the world of the Grateful Dead. Of course, by then, I had a small suitcase full of Maxell tapes from epic Dead shows in 1969 and 1972 and felt that, by 1979, I had essentially missed the Dead bus.

If someone back then had said, "Rest easy, you'll see most of these guys conjure this ephemeral magic in 2025," I'd have surmised the drugs must have been powerful.

And yet, here we are. Mark my words, at some point soon folks will roll out to a concert to hear the Dead do their musical best, and not one of the original members will be there. And it won't matter. Humans may fade way, but the music never stops.