The Grateful Dead Conservative (w/ Sophie Haigney)
Added 2023-08-11 20:48:45 +0000 UTCAnother fun summer-y episode for you, our beloved subscribers: This time, we talked to writer, Paris Review editor, and Grateful Dead super-fan Sophie Haigney about a topic we've long pondered: the phenomenon of the "Grateful Dead conservative."
Why is it that right-wing figures including Tucker Carlson, Ann Coulter, and Paul Ryan count the Grateful Dead among their favorite bands? Isn't there something odd about these social conservative luminaries loving the Dead, such avatars of 1960s psychedelia, libertinism, and hippie counterculture? Or else, have we misunderstood something essential about the band — their Americana roots, their individualist ethos, their reverence for transcendent experiences — which makes them particularly suitable to conservative sensibilities?
And also why do we all love them so much — this band that tests our patience, produces largely forgettable studio records, and often sounds, in concert, as if they're playing their own songs for the first time? The mind reels...
Strap in for a long, strange, improvisational trip to the heart of these bewildering matters.
Further Reading:
Sophie Haigney, "Those of Us Who Love the Dead," Gawker, Dec 3, 2021.
— "The Final Dead Shows: Part One," The Paris Review, Jul 17, 2023.
— "The Final Dead Shows: Part Two," The Paris Review, July 18, 2023.
— "The Final Dead Shows: Part Three," The Paris Review, Jul 19, 2023.
Ann Coulter, "I’m A Grateful Dead Fan For Life," Billboard, Jun 24, 2016.
Noah Eckstein, "'Wave That Flag': Meet the Deadheads Who Stump for Trump," Variety, Nov 2, 2020.
Zachary D. Carter and Arthur Delaney, "Why Do Conservatives Love The Grateful Dead? We Ask Tucker Carlson," Huffington Post, Jul 15, 2015.
Dean Budnick, "Behind The Scene: Jake Sherman on Phish, the Grateful Dead and Covering 535 Class Presidents at Punchbowl News," Relix, May 12, 2021.
Martin Longman, "Why Do Republicans Love the Grateful Dead?" Washington Monthly, July 3, 2015
Nick Paumgarten, "Dead Head," The New Yorker, Nov 18, 2012.
Hunter Schwartz, "Grateful Dead fans: Surprisingly Republican," Washington Post, Jul 1, 2015.
Marc Tracy, "Saying Goodbye to the Dead. (Again.)" NYTimes, Jul 14, 2023.
Andy Kroll, "Jon Huntsman: We Need a 'Grateful Dead Tour' to Save America," Mother Jones, Jan 8, 2012.
For KYE-heads aspiring to become Deadheads, Sam has put together "Know Your Dead" Spotify playlist of his personal favorite recordings (hopefully well suited to new and old heads alike).
Comments
From an interview with leaders of the small Deadhead counterculture in Israel, explaining why held ‘Temple Mount Awareness Day’ & brought representatives of the hard-right Temple Institute on their hippie radio show- “Building the Temple and bringing the Jews home to Israel are both part of the process of redemption. Everyone wants to connect to Jerusalem…My dream is to be broadcasting ‘This is Lorelai Kude and Steve Levine live from the Temple Mount bringing you The Grateful Dead.’ The first song I’ll play is ‘Eyes of the World.’" https://m.jpost.com/in-jerusalem/city-front/radio-free-nachlaot
Ben Lorber
2024-02-12 15:14:41 +0000 UTCThis was such a fun episode! Loved it
Carly Hayter
2024-02-12 06:19:30 +0000 UTCJust listened to this with my Deadhead dad on a road trip. He loved it. Cheers!
Peri
2023-08-24 02:41:24 +0000 UTCJust ran across this article "Learning About the Dead: The Role of Elite Preparatory Schools in Shaping Grateful Dead Experience" It is entirely possible that Deadheadism at an elite private school might be a counter-reaction to entitlement and privilege. This explanation raises uncomfortable psychic pathologies, suggesting that psychedelic drug use may somehow be a measure of alienation and withdrawal, and that Deadhead Super-Fans may be suffering from a kind of multiple personality disorder. In this view, such fans are tied by family and culture to the next generation of the ruling class but still seek something spiritual to redeem the profanity of lives insulated from harm by the protections of commerce and law. The tortured caricature that Ann Coulter and Tucker Carlson present comes to mind here. https://deadstudies.org/proceedings/
Seth K
2023-08-19 13:58:08 +0000 UTCReally love these deep cuts music episodes. I second the request for another foray into country music. So much to talk about with regard to right populism. Maybe Suja could return!
Benjamin Pletcher
2023-08-18 09:11:32 +0000 UTCSecond that
Benjamin Pletcher
2023-08-18 08:54:58 +0000 UTCThat's pretty bonkers, thanks for filling us in!
Bugsy
2023-08-17 00:46:03 +0000 UTCI can’t let this ep go by without shouting out KYE alum Dave Weigel, who found a moment to plumb Jon Huntsman’s deep fandom of Captain Beefheart: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2011/09/jon-huntsman-passes-the-captain-beefheart-test.html Unlike Huntsman’s tossed-off reference to the Dead on the trail, he seems like a guy who is genuinely super into Beefheart. Since the Magic Band has close to zero relevance to the broader culture (unlike the Dead), it’s hard to see how his fandom has any political angle, which makes me like him just a smidge.
Justin
2023-08-16 21:18:03 +0000 UTC"Investment Banker or a Drop Out Who Sells Weed & Grilled Cheeses" lol
Joel
2023-08-16 02:10:48 +0000 UTCReally enjoyed the episode. I saw a bunch of Dead shows 1983-87, and then stopped. Mostly because while I loved 67-72 Dead, the music just wasn't doing it for me. But also I got pretty sick of the whole scene. I thought it was a very conformist environment, with everybody dressed the same, etc. In retrospect I wish I had gone to some of those 88-90 shows which sound pretty good. Anyway, I still listen to 67-72 Dead nearly daily, along with a lot of Garcia-Saunders shows, because they're great for doing programing to. One thing I wanted to mention is the phenomenon of the Deadheads who are fanatically right wing and pro-settler when it comes to Israel. To some extent this can be a subcase of "progressive except for palestine" but perhaps a case could be made that it's something more. Shaul Magid writes about this here: It’s the ‘spirituality,’ stupid How is it that American hippies, once utterly devoted to counter-culture causes, turned into die-hard right-wingers when they came to Israel? https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/its-the-spirituality-stupid/
Seth K
2023-08-16 00:36:00 +0000 UTCMatt, Sam, and Sophie: Loved this episode! Made a lot of puzzle pieces click into place for me. I grew up in Atlanta and attended an elite, WASP-y prep school in the 1990s. I went to my first Dead show when I was 16, in 1992 (I saw Jerry!) and of course I went with a huge group from my high school. But we were the self-proclaimed liberals of our school, at least at that time. Definitely suburban kids rebelling. Later, in my mid-20s, I was so confused to learn that my friend's new husband, a self-proclaimed Libertarian who voted Republican straight down the line, was also a HUGE, obsessive, pot-smoking Dead Head. I was even more perplexed when a friend told me that she recently went to a WASP-y country club in Atlanta, and most of the men there were wearing cloth belts, half with Sea Island embroidered on them, the other half with the Grateful Dead logo embroidered on them. HUH? The prep school piece is very relevant here, I think. The Dead lets these guys relax, get mellow, feel that there is a way to float above politics, and also, they can define the Left by the "hippies" in the parking lot in need of miracles and selling grilled cheeses. And so, they think, the two options in life are to become an Investment Banker or a Drop Out Who Sells Weed & Grilled Cheeses. And while they can admire the "libertarian" spirit of the grilled cheese hackers, such a dichotomy confirms their own straight-laced, fiscally conservative identity. Another thing this episode made me remember: After Bush won re-election in 2004, a friend of mine who was pretty active in Bay Area Democratic politics got super, super high with Bob Weir to commiserate.
Susan Rebecca White
2023-08-15 21:16:57 +0000 UTCwhat a unicorn of a crossover episode for me, personally. don't sell the listerners short - i'm sure there are plenty of dead fans among us!
Ryan Brake
2023-08-15 15:23:02 +0000 UTCgotta second your assessment of the Jokermen x ep -- absolutely top-notch
JF
2023-08-14 18:39:36 +0000 UTCPhil's bass tone on this --- willllldd
Where there’s a Wills there’s a Way
2023-08-14 18:36:07 +0000 UTCGod this is tasty. Ty for the rec.
Joel
2023-08-14 18:23:24 +0000 UTClol "Pigpen's faux black man delivery"
Joel
2023-08-14 18:09:47 +0000 UTClol
Joel
2023-08-14 18:02:33 +0000 UTCAwesome ep! Up there with Shuja Haider on country music and the Know Your Enemy x Jokermen crossover ep, which is honestly one of the best pieces of Dylan criticism I think I've ever encountered. The discussion of the syncretic quality of the Dead's music and how that could be related to the variable interpretations of the lyrics, imagery, and even their sound was so fascinating.
Joel
2023-08-14 18:01:16 +0000 UTCkeep the culture episodes coming! the theory episodes are great too but i always found myself far more engrossed with the “CulturalInstitutitonxConservartism” epsiodes. Ive barely even listen to the dead and loved this one! Y’all mentioned one of the few times they did get political in a song was the song about Bobby Sands, and that makes so much sense to me that conservatives would be able to wave that away, particularly in America. How many times have you heard a white conservative or even moderate deflect critiques of colonialism or institutional racism by citing Ireland? It happens all the time and most Americans who wouldnt be exposed to a lot of the details of that sitaution probably didnt see the troubles in political terms
Lyon Teesdale
2023-08-14 15:34:14 +0000 UTCGreat episode. I'm a white Grateful Dead fan from Connecticut (public school-educated, though), so this one felt made for me. In the spirit of overthinking it, there's another layer to the Dead's libertarian streak that feels even more conservative to me, or maybe even reactionary. One thing the documentary series "Long Strange Trip" makes clear is that, while Jerry was very committed to a life free of formal rules or regulations, there was always an informal hierarchy at Dead shows. Jerry was the bandleader, as much as he would deny that and say everyone in the band was on an equal footing. And, of course, everyone else was there because of the band, and a lot of people were overtly worshipful. Then there's the whole Hell's Angels thing. Jerry may have cited vaguely anarcho-libertarian reasons for not excluding the Angels from shows, but there's no question that the Angels themselves were tyrants. So inviting them in was a recipe for imposing various forms of private domination. I don't think any of this was intentional on Jerry's part or especially thought through. He seems to have been either ambivalent about the power he held over other people or willfully ignorant of it. But the dynamic he fostered — a negative "liberty" that allows private domination to fester — is something I associate with the American right.
Ned Resnikoff
2023-08-14 14:06:54 +0000 UTCAnother great episode. The band were socialists, they all paid themselves the same even the roadies, they made collective decisions. In fact they won labor prizes in Cal for job safety. Jerry's mom was politically active, in the labor movement. The Jerry on Jerry box set gives a lot of background.
Frank Hunter
2023-08-14 13:09:38 +0000 UTCPS I love the show don't change a thing
Elias Ponvert
2023-08-14 03:32:42 +0000 UTCIt’s striking how few of the big classic rock bands are American (especially if you exclude multinational groups like The Band and CSNY, and backing bands like Petty’s Heartbreakers and Springsteen’s E Street Band). The Dead are one of only a few major all-American rock bands from that era, and they are even more unusual if you consider their cult following and longevity. CCR has a bunch of enduring hits, but they were only active for about five years. I don’t know whether this contributes to the conservative appreciation for the Dead, but it’s interesting.
Taylor Washburn
2023-08-14 00:08:21 +0000 UTCGreat episode. Also wanted to note that I was at a couple of the dead and co. shows this summer in Boulder and during US Blues, Bob Weir’s wife came onto the screens holding up a “VOTE” sign which on the surface is non-partisan, but at this point in time at least is definitely a liberal coded statement. So just another example of the modern iteration of the band being more willing to be a little more explicitly political. PS You know our love for KYE will not fade away.
Brendan Kane
2023-08-13 23:34:09 +0000 UTCJust voicing my support for the music episodes!! I would like a regular country music episode in fact. I will be listening to Sam’s Dead playlist even tho I’m a lady who wonders why it doesn’t sound good. I want to know more about disco Dead
Megan Baker
2023-08-13 22:48:26 +0000 UTCPlease keep the music episodes coming! I never got into the Dead, but I that's because it was too close to me-- I grew up in West Marin, my mom was in the 60s SF psychedelic scene, Garcia went to the rehab facility down my street when I was a kid, and I would even end up hanging out with his daughter for a couple years in our early 20s (though that was pure chance of social circles in a small place, I didn't realize who her dad was for a while). One thing she told me speaks to the dark side of the obsessiveness of some Dead Heads: many felt such a deep sense of ownership over her dad that they would tell her to her face that she didn't know him or understand him. It could be very toxic for her. Anyway, thanks for another great episode!
DC
2023-08-13 22:44:49 +0000 UTCWhich band's fans would you describe as "charming?" Also, I'd like to know the kind of music these three should, in a proper world, all gravitate to? Tell me what kind of music to like!!
Bw T
2023-08-13 21:21:13 +0000 UTCThis pod drops as I'm in the middle of the audiobook of "Chuck Berry: An American Life", and my mind is reeling :) Chuck Berry, like The Dead, was a borrower, a blender and a mixer. Early on, performing for all black crowds in St. Louis, he would cover hillbilly songs (Hank Williams, The Louvin Brothers) as a halfway-joke, mugging and exaggerating a country twang. The audience, halfway-joking back, would actually square dance! But he of course loved country music; it's everywhere in his style (Maybelline is literally based on a Western Swing tune). Berry's lyrics, hailing Rock-and-Roll as a liberatory force for the white teens of America to blow-off school, drive fast and buy Chuck Berry records, are shot through with messages of black struggle for independence and mobility. The book has a great passage about "Promised Land" (a Dead staple) as being full of nods to the Freedom Riders. (Is that lost on Bob Wier? Who knows. I'm sure it's lost on Tucker Carlson and Anne Coulter.) The point is, Berry's boundary breaking was always dangerous, mischievous, subterranean. It had to be. Early rock and roll was synonymous with mixing and blending, but not the laid-back Dead kind. That said, the acid tests, the open psychedelia, were not without danger and were a somewhat political act, I guess. Berry and the Dead do share the theme of movement and travel though, and commerce! The Dead's iconography is unbeatable!! That Blues for Allah skeleton...? come on
Peter McKay
2023-08-13 19:42:10 +0000 UTCThe Grateful Dead (their music plus dancing bears and Steal Your Face skulls) were a very big part of Greek life culture at my alma mater, the University of Mississippi. Perhaps the same is true at other SEC schools. I always found it fascinating how you’d see references to the Dead everywhere, but it seemed to fit right in with Reagan Bush 84 koozies, Colonel Reb t-shirts, Trump flags, etc.
Liam
2023-08-13 19:17:13 +0000 UTCExhibit A for beyond-right DH’s https://x.com/mainemagamovers?s=21&t=wjOow_92i5UTbZ9I-U7DEg
Dan Kolbert
2023-08-13 17:24:50 +0000 UTCListening to Carlson defend his love of the Dead (the bit about self-indulgence), I’m struck that it’s ultimately not about an ideology (he kind of scrambles to tack that on), but about aesthetics. There’s a way that for conservatives, ideology is so critical unless the Art is just So Good that it gets a pass on aesthetics alone.
Jenna Harmon
2023-08-13 14:16:33 +0000 UTCBig fan of the music eps & really enjoyed this! Would also love an ep revisiting country music with all the recent discourse re: Aldean and the new anti woke Childers wannabe
Hannah C
2023-08-13 12:38:22 +0000 UTCIndispensable, brilliant podcast series. But spending an hour with TGD? Hard… HARD pass… 😵💫
Craig Lammes
2023-08-13 12:06:24 +0000 UTCI think he meant entomology
Dan Kolbert
2023-08-13 03:48:44 +0000 UTCI think you guys are over thinking this. I’m on the cusp of the baby boom/gen x. Went to a private college in New England. There were plenty of preppy dead heads. A solid demographic. The hedonism was, I think, a big part of it. They were the original yacht rock band. abortion was also a very preppy GOP issue once upon a time. Which I obviously don’t need to tell you. And finally - is there any evidence that there are more DeadHeads in todays GOP than anything else? I bet the Stones are pretty popular with the libertarian crowd too.
Dan Kolbert
2023-08-13 01:20:59 +0000 UTCI hear Nate Hochman's got some free time.
Adam Lewis
2023-08-12 21:24:59 +0000 UTCI like your pod and am actually interested in the topic. Bur this was unlistenable. You evidently don't care but there is actual well researched source materials about the dead, lsd, facism, and the 60’s “liberation of the Id“ but whatever. I guess just do you boo.
Sneakin Sally
2023-08-12 20:07:12 +0000 UTCThomas Frank talks about Barlow and what became of the Dead's counter culture ethos in One Market Under God.
Neal J
2023-08-12 19:58:57 +0000 UTCok yeah next time we'll have someone who can speak to the "etymology of the culture"
Sam Adler-Bell
2023-08-12 19:40:59 +0000 UTCThe Dead Kennedys identified the right wing tendency among Bay Area hippie bros and called it out in their first single “California Uber Alles”. Growing up listening to punk rock I could never see Phish or GD as anything but smug, silly and self indulgent.
Daniel Kamen
2023-08-12 19:29:36 +0000 UTCHuge deadhead know a lot of characters in the the dead orbit personally. Huge missed opportunity in how this was discussed both in how history and sociology was discussed. Maybe a guest who can speak on the etymology of the songs, and the culture, thats actually seen the grateful dead and understands the scene. Seeing slow and co featuring johnny salami and talking bout lot like a travel writer, most def aint it.
Sneakin Sally
2023-08-12 19:03:44 +0000 UTCBuffalo’s own Mike Caputo - Trump HHS lackey, Manafort hanger on and driver for Roger Stone - DEADHEAD!
Jane Cameron
2023-08-12 18:59:05 +0000 UTCGreat episode; you touched on this a little bit in talking about John Perry Barlow but I immediately thought of Fred Turner's book From Counterculture to Cyberculture, which traces that libertarian streak from the early web back through 60s happenings to the collaborative nature of Cold War R&D. Certainly a lot more there!
Nik
2023-08-12 18:52:07 +0000 UTCLong-time fan, first-time poaster here. Like Sam I used to obsessively download live Dead shows in high school in the early 2000s. Seeing Dead & Co last month (inspired actually by your tweets- thank you!) rekindled my love- so that now, in my mid-30s, perhaps appropriately, I’ve returned to my Deadhead roots. All thanks to you guys. Anyway, one fascinating data point in the band’s political arc was their 1971 Black Panthers benefit show. It speaks to the band’s political ambiguity you describe. One of the comments here was quite revealing- “the overlap between Panther supporters and Dead fans was not large, and certainly smaller than the Panthers expected, since the turnout was a only in the low hundreds. Most of the audience were Panthers, with a small hippy SDS contingent, my friends and I…I still remember the embarrassment I felt for the Dead as their shambling approximations of "Midnight Hour" and "Lovelight", characterized by Pigpen's faux black man delivery, failed to connect at all…The Panthers stood aa a mass at the back of the auditorium, as far as possible from the stage, with the hippy SDS cohort a few feet in front of them, a vast, empty of chasm of space separating our two groups from the band. I think everyone, the band, in particular, was relieved when their set ended. Funny how their loose feel for the backbeat never bothered me as it did that night. It was one of the strangest evenings ever, I'm sure, for the band, and defintely for the few fans that were there.” http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2010/02/march-5-1971-oakland-auditorium-oakland.html?m=1
Ben Lorber
2023-08-12 17:04:59 +0000 UTCsorry for spamming the comments, but I just wanted to say that this episode was fantastic -- and yes, it was most likely *not* every listener's cup of tea (for two??). On behalf of all the amateur GD hermeneuticists that I know, thank you.
Where there’s a Wills there’s a Way
2023-08-12 15:05:27 +0000 UTCsend him a super crispy Bettyboard and get ready to welcome him to the cositive club ❤️
Where there’s a Wills there’s a Way
2023-08-12 15:00:47 +0000 UTCI saw John Mayer playing with herbie Hancock in 2005. It was the weirdest thing because it was the height of his popularity but he was just playing in herbies band. Hell of a show. 20 minute rendition of chameleon was incredible.
Mae Berens
2023-08-12 11:15:44 +0000 UTCExcuse me, but Tucker Carlson went to St George's School in Rhode Island, not Connecticut. Do better.
Elias Ponvert
2023-08-12 04:54:54 +0000 UTCDon't hold back, Matt!
Know Your Enemy
2023-08-12 04:30:12 +0000 UTCannnnd here he is, folks!
Where there’s a Wills there’s a Way
2023-08-12 04:13:17 +0000 UTCSupposedly, some o fJerry’s last words referenced Netscape’s IPO. “Netscape opened at what?”
John Presnall
2023-08-12 03:58:09 +0000 UTCIt makes total sense that costive personalities, charmless geeks, belted-up sadists, and utterly tasteless characters would profess to like the Dead, so clearly that it’s a wonder this episode was ever thought necessary. Perhaps this was addressed towards the end—patience is not infinite—but the better question would be why these three would gravitate to the band too?
Matt Gately
2023-08-12 03:44:50 +0000 UTClistening to this opening discussion with the Dew from RFK 10/73 in the background
Where there’s a Wills there’s a Way
2023-08-12 03:13:03 +0000 UTCPlus, the long lines of men at restroom at these aging rock concerts. I joke that this concert is brought to you by Flomax.
John Presnall
2023-08-12 03:05:39 +0000 UTCSaw the Dead a few times in late 80s in Mass. Recently saw Dead & Co in Houston. No dummies, they played US Blues in Houston. Hilarious to hear Ann Coulter saying Deadheaddom doesn’t want the govt to tell them how much water is in the toilet. I remember instead, if it’s brown flush it down, if it’s yellow it’s mellow. Given the people I knew at the time in the 80s, there was a class element. Educated, relatively privileged kids able to get access to and able to take a lot of drugs, without being full on Deadheads-let alone hanging out with outlaw motorcycle clubs.
John Presnall
2023-08-12 03:04:12 +0000 UTCYesssss thank you. The Dead doc Long Strange Trip has some interesting moments re: Jerry’s interest in politics, or lack thereof - generative for thinking about where hippie meets libertarian (or apolitical?). This episode also speaks to the complicated feelings I had about “the Dead bro” at the two Jerry Fest shows I went to last weekend (RIP Jerry). -Female Deadhead and KYE superfan (from Connecticut)
Kathleen Reeves
2023-08-12 02:34:04 +0000 UTCExcited for this one. Recently I was at a work event where I noticed the partner of a co-worker I would never expect to like the Dead had a “Play Dead” sticker on his cooler. I asked him about it and he shrugged, “It’s more fun to like the Grateful Dead than to hate them.” I liked him so much more after that.
Scot Sedley
2023-08-12 01:20:13 +0000 UTCI saw a YouTube video where Jerry essentially referred to himself as a job creator in the 80s and I could never get it out of my head!
Eric Colantonio
2023-08-11 23:36:14 +0000 UTCMy ex-wife made a similar remark about the very long line to the men's room and very short line to the women's room when we saw Liza Minnelli on Broadway. A little different tho.
Rick Perlstein
2023-08-11 23:27:02 +0000 UTCAndrew Hickey's mammoth dead episode in his "A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs" explicitly ties the band's hippie capitalism to tech bro libertarianism. It's worth checking out – he is clearly not a fan, and his wariness about their music, their milieu and some of their conservative fans added up to a very different answer on the question of why such horrible people so loved them. https://open.spotify.com/episode/4Lxsld04BXOXOiP3YqayIZ?si=e3813e231ec94047
Gary Mairs
2023-08-11 23:23:24 +0000 UTCA golden opportunity to reuse the episode title "Grow Up, Men."
Adam Lewis
2023-08-11 22:56:52 +0000 UTCOut on the road today, I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac A little voice inside my head said, "Don't look back. You can never look back"
Ted Whalen
2023-08-11 20:55:00 +0000 UTCBeen wanting to see a Dead ep. Can't wait to listen.
Henry Martyn
2023-08-11 20:51:14 +0000 UTC
