From the Warlocks to the Acid Tests
The Grateful Dead formed in Palo Alto, California, in 1965, initially as the Warlocks -- a name they shared, unknowingly, with another band. The core lineup coalesced around Jerry Garcia (guitar, vocals), Bob Weir (rhythm guitar), Phil Lesh (bass), Bill Kreutzmann (drums), and Ron "Pigpen" McKernan (keyboards, harmonica). They chose their permanent name from a passage in Funk & Wagnalls dictionary: "the motif of a dead person who finds no rest until his debts are paid."
The band's early identity was forged in the crucible of Ken Kesey's Acid Tests. Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and a veteran of government-sponsored LSD experiments at the Menlo Park VA Hospital, began hosting communal gatherings in late 1965 where attendees ingested LSD (still legal in California until October 1966) amid a sensory onslaught of music, strobes, and projection. The Grateful Dead became the house band, and the Acid Tests became their laboratory. As Garcia later recalled: "The Acid Tests were our first exposure to formlessness. Formlessness and chaos lead to new forms. And new order. Ordinary Chaos."
