In the Cowsills’ hit “Hair”, there’s the line:
“It’s not for lack of bread
Like the Grateful Dead…”
Is it as simple as it sound? Were the Dead known for their, uh, poorness?
Well, they all lived togather in one house, at one point, at 710 Ashbury Street in Frisco, about a block south of Haight.
Materialism is a tool of The Man, y’know.
I think Ukelele Ike nailed it.
Of course, then in the 80s the Dead were consistently one of the top grossing concert acts. Tools of the man, indeed.
The song “Hair” is of course not original with the Cowsills. It came from the musical Hair, which was eventually made into a movie. What’s being asked in the song is whether the character singing the song is letting his hair grow long because he can’t afford a haircut. He says that that isn’t the reason. In any case, even if the Grateful Dead was a struggling band at one point, they were never so poor that they couldn’t have gotten haircuts.
Good point, WW. I also have the feeling that Rado and Ragni put that line in the song because a) it was an easy rhyme, and b) mentioning the Grateful Dead in a lyric they were writing in 1966-67 made them look au courant.
And Chrome is correct in stating that the Dead were, for several years, the top-grossing concert band in the US. Yes, they did live in Marin County and own nice automobiles. But they also started the Rex Foundation, which funds impoverished avant-garde composers, supports the arts and education, and does other nifty stuff.