The Grateful Dead's Palo Alto roots

The Grateful Dead are usually filed under San Francisco and the Haight. Their roots run 30 miles south. The core of the band met in Palo Alto music stores, played their first folk and bluegrass gigs on University Avenue and debuted as an electric band in a Menlo Park pizza parlor. Carolyn "Mountain Girl" Garcia told the Palo Alto Historical Association that "Palo Alto was the magic carpet."

Our page on Palo Alto in the 1960s sets the scene. This page goes deeper on the band itself, with dates and addresses where the record supports them. It leans on the historical association's account, the Palo Alto Weekly, InMenlo and the Lost Live Dead research blog. Where they disagree, we say so.

Garcia comes to Palo Alto

Jerry Garcia arrived in Palo Alto in 1960 at 18, fresh from a discharge from the Army. He had little money and no fixed address. The historical association says he and lyricist Robert Hunter lived for a time in their cars, parked side by side in a Palo Alto lot.

The daytime hangout was Kepler's Books on El Camino Real in Menlo Park. Hunter recalled it as "a place for young Stanfordites and the young ne'er-do-wells like us to meet." In 1960 Garcia and Hunter played as a folk duo at the store. Phil Lesh met Garcia there in 1961, according to the Palo Alto Weekly.

Nights often ended at The Chateau, a rambling three-story Victorian at 2100 Santa Cruz Avenue in Menlo Park where Garcia, Hunter and other young musicians lived or crashed. On February 20, 1961, after a party there, a car carrying Garcia crashed on Junipero Serra Boulevard. His friend Paul Speegle was killed. Garcia was treated at Stanford Hospital and later called the crash the moment "where my life began." He threw himself into music.

Folk clubs on University Avenue

In the early 1960s downtown Palo Alto had a small but serious folk scene. St. Michael's Alley at 436 University Avenue was a coffeehouse where Joan Baez had sung a few years earlier. The Tangent at 117 University Avenue was a folk club upstairs from a pizza parlor. Garcia's bluegrass group, the Wildwood Boys, played there in 1963. Our page on the history of University Avenue covers the street's other eras.

Garcia was becoming a skilled banjo player. He married Sara Ruppenthal at the Unitarian church in Palo Alto on April 25, 1963. The reception was held at Rickey's Garden Hotel on El Camino Real, according to the historical association.

Dana Morgan Music and the jug band

To pay the bills, Garcia taught guitar and banjo at Dana Morgan Music, a store on Bryant Street downtown. On New Year's Eve 1963 he was waiting in the back of the shop for students who never showed up. In the usual telling, a 15-year-old Bob Weir heard the banjo and walked in. "We started jamming," Weir later recalled. By the end of the night they had decided to form a jug band.

The result was Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions. Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, a Palo Alto High School dropout with a love of blues, played harmonica and sang. The historical association counts 25 or 30 gigs over about eight months. Jug band music was a fad. The players were already looking past it.

Going electric as the Warlocks

The Beatles changed their minds. "The Beatles were why we turned from a jug band into a rock 'n' roll band," Weir said. In early 1965 Garcia, Weir and Pigpen formed the Warlocks with drummer Bill Kreutzmann and bassist Dana Morgan Jr., son of the music store's owner. Pigpen moved to keyboards and harmonica.

The historical association says the band rented instruments from Swain's House of Music at 451 University Avenue. In 1965 Garcia and Weir also taught guitar at Guitars Unlimited, 1035 El Camino Real in Menlo Park, according to InMenlo.

Magoo's Pizza Parlor, May 1965

The Warlocks played their first show on Wednesday, May 5, 1965, at Magoo's Pizza Parlor, 639 Santa Cruz Avenue in downtown Menlo Park. Research by the Lost Live Dead blog, which checked the address against old photos, found that they played every Wednesday that month: May 5, 12, 19 and 26. Local memories say the crowds of teenagers grew big enough to draw the police, though the exact reason the run ended is not documented.

Dana Morgan Jr. was not working out on bass. Phil Lesh came to the May 26 show and Garcia asked him to take over, even though Lesh had never played bass. He learned fast. That fall the Warlocks played a dance at Menlo School on Valparaiso Avenue, which Weir had briefly attended. Our guide to Santa Cruz Avenue covers the street today.

From the Warlocks to the Grateful Dead

In late 1965 the band learned that another group was already recording as the Warlocks. They needed a new name. Garcia opened a dictionary and found "grateful dead," a folk tale motif about a spirit who repays a kindness. The historical association places the moment in Bob Weir's apartment on High Street in Palo Alto and names the dictionary as a Funk and Wagnalls. Other accounts put it elsewhere. Nobody disputes that the name stuck.

By then the band had fallen in with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, whose circle had started on Perry Lane near the Stanford golf course. Garcia and Lesh had jammed at Perry Lane parties. On December 4, 1965, the band played its first show as the Grateful Dead at a Kesey Acid Test in San Jose. Two weeks later, on December 18, it played the Big Beat Acid Test in south Palo Alto. In February 1966 the newly named band left for Los Angeles. Soon after, it settled in San Francisco.

The places, then and now

InMenlo gives Menlo School's address as Atherton, where its campus lies just across the Menlo Park line.

A self-guided Dead walk

You can see the sites in an afternoon. None has a plaque, so this is a walk for imagination. A good order:

1. Start on University Avenue at number 117 for the Tangent, then walk to 436 for St. Michael's Alley's old address. Our downtown guide has food stops.
2. Cut over to Bryant Street, the block where Dana Morgan Music stood.
3. Take Caltrain one stop north to Menlo Park and walk to 639 Santa Cruz Avenue.
4. Finish at Kepler's on El Camino Real, still selling books more than 70 years on.

Later Palo Alto ties were looser. The historical association notes the band played at Stanford in 1989. The New Riders of the Purple Sage, Garcia's country side project, played Peninsula School in Menlo Park in 1969, 1970 and 1971. For music in town today, see our live music guide. For Menlo Park in general, our Menlo Park page is the place to start.

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