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Lost 1967 Joan Didion Interview With the Grateful Dead Unearthed

A previously lost interview from 1967 between Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead has been discovered. Didion, on assignment for the Saturday Evening Post, met the band in their Bay Area rehearsal space.

Variety Music·May 19, 2026·via Variety Music

Lost 1967 Joan Didion Interview With the Grateful Dead Unearthed

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May 19, 2026 8:51am PT

Read Joan Didion’s Lost Interview With the Grateful Dead: ‘We’re on Our Own Trip’

By Jem Aswad

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Jem Aswad

Executive Editor, Music

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It would seem that even an archive as thoroughly curated as that of the late, legendary novelist-essayist-screenwriter Joan Didion still bears some surprises.

In 1967, the Saturday Evening Post assigned Didion to interview the Grateful Dead in their Bay Area rehearsal space at the height of the Summer of Love (with which the group was already disilluioned). She watched a rehearsal and then interviewed the band — then comprised of Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan and Bill Kreutzmann — minus Pigpen, who had mysteriously disappeared after the rehearsal.