In 2025, the Grateful Dead will celebrate 60 years since its inception. But even after six decades, the long, strange trip continues — and business is still booming. Founding members Bobby Weir, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart are all resolute: They’re not retiring anytime soon, and the Dead’s world is very much alive and kicking.
In January, Weir will stage the second edition of “Dead Ahead,” the destination concert event in Riviera Cancun, Mexico, that features different lineups of supporting musicians; this year, he’ll be joined by his Dead & Company compatriots Jeff Chimenti and Oteil Burbridge, his Wolf Bros bandmates Don Was and Jay Lane and other guests including Sturgill Simpson, Brandi Carlile and Goose’s Rick Mitarotonda.
And, on Dec. 4, Dead & Co. — the touring ensemble formed by Weir, Kreutzmann and Hart, alongside Chimenti, Burbridge and John Mayer — announced it will reprise its Dead Forever residency at Las Vegas’ Sphere in 2025. The 18 shows, slated to take place from March to May, follow the band’s 30-date run at Sphere in 2024, which grossed $131.8 million. (Kreutzmann played with Dead & Co. from 2015 to 2022 but sat out its 2023 final tour and 2024 Sphere residency; a representative for Dead & Co. confirmed Kreutzmann will not perform with the band at Sphere in 2025.)
“It’s a marvel in terms of what you can do visually with it during a show,” Weir tells Billboard. “It was an interesting challenge for us — but I thought we met it.”
“Very cool, very cool, Sphere, very cool,” Hart says with excitement. “It’s an overpowering sensory experience.” The venue, which can incorporate haptic feedback into its seats, was a revelation for the longstanding “Drums/Space” segment of Dead shows that he leads: “I’m going down to 16 [Hz] cycles, 17, 18 — that’s where the Lord lives,” says Hart, who has long studied the connections between music and neurological function, referencing a frequency of brain waves. “That raises consciousness. That’s where the good stuff is.”
Meanwhile, Kreutzmann has reinvigorated the Dead’s catalog — and mixed in tunes by artists from Talking Heads to Little Feat — in recent years by enlisting rotating crews of exciting younger talent in ensembles Billy & The Kids and Mahalo Dead, including Billy Strings, Tom Hamilton (Joe Russo’s Almost Dead), Daniel Donato (Daniel Donato’s Cosmic Country) and Aron Magner (The Disco Biscuits).
“Why do I like the younger musicians?” he posits, before answering himself with a hearty laugh: “They’re more alive than I am!”
Here’s what else fans can potentially expect from the band’s members in the near future.
A Bittersweet Reunion?
Weir, Lesh, Hart and Kreutzmann honored the Dead’s golden anniversary in 2015 with five Fare Thee Well stadium shows that were billed as the final time the four would perform together. (They were accompanied by Bruce Hornsby, Jeff Chimenti and Phish’s Trey Anastasio.) But Weir reveals that before Lesh’s October death, they were considering doing it again: “We had some plans,” he says. “We were talking about the possibility of reconvening and playing, just the four of us. It would have been real interesting, when Phil was still with us, to try to do that.” Kreutzmann says he’d still “do that 60th in a second,” though he adds, “Phil wanted to do it, too. He had a dream that he was going to get to play with us three one more time. And that didn’t happen — but that’s how it goes.”
A ‘Special’ Anniversary Release
Rhino Entertainment — which celebrated the band’s 50th anniversary in 2015 with an 80-disc 30 Trips Around the Sun box set that collected 30 unreleased Dead shows, one from each year it was active — has a surprise in store for GD60. “We’ve been working on something that we feel is special and commensurate with an anniversary as big as this,” says David Lemieux, the Grateful Dead’s legacy manager and archivist. “Mark [Pinkus, Rhino president] and I got on the call about a year ago [to begin working on it], and when we started talking about it, we both couldn’t contain our joy.”
Publishing (In) House
Amid the recent spate of publishing catalog sales by rock legends, “I haven’t even thought about” selling the Dead’s, Weir says. “I’m not entirely sure I’m anxious to sell it. But at the same time, if the price was right and somebody with that amount of financial wherewithal had that amount of motivation to buy it, I’d have to talk to him.” Reveals Activist Artists Management founding partner Bernie Cahill: “We’ve been approached and that’s been a conversation, but it’s not something the band’s pursuing at all.”
Still Truckin’
“What great musician ever retires?” Weir says when asked if he’d ever quit the road. “Do it as long as you can. Never give it up ever, ever,” Hart says. And Kreutzmann is even bolder: “I’m going to play forever.”
This story appears in the Dec. 7, 2024, issue of Billboard.
