Jobs pressed an icon and it began playing “Friend of the Devil.” One of the features he showed us was that the device played music. In early 2010, when I was editor of Fortune Magazine, Steve Jobs visited to demo the iPad. It all worked out for everyone in the end,” says McNamee.Īs for Jerry Garcia, he has become and remains the stuff of legend. “Fare Thee Well was a beautiful thing, an encore for Phil and the beginning of something new for the rest of the band. And after a number of musical fits and starts, including the band’s 50th anniversary Fare Thee Well concerts in 2015 - the last time all of the surviving members of the Grateful Dead played together - the remaining members formed Dead & Co. In a 2006 Lesh-driven deal, the Vault was licensed to Rhino records, a division of Warner Music. Not surprisingly, all the dealmaking came to naught. Other band members responded: "There has never been - nor will there ever be - any discussion of selling our Vault, our music, our name, our legacy. In late 1999, Dead bassist Phil Lesh put out a statement: "The Grateful Dead have never accepted corporate sponsorship or venture-capital money, and I remain unalterably opposed to any deal that would lease, license or otherwise collateralize the music in the Vault." ![]() In late 1999 MTV News reported that, “The band has been approached by numerous high-tech firms, including Microsoft, with unsolicited offers of capital for the project, but until recently the remaining members shunned all suitors." MTV quoted band spokesperson, Dennis McNally, as saying: "The board feels that these venture capitalists are in sympathy with Grateful Dead ideals. (Photo By Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile for Web Summit via Getty Images) Roger McNamee, Founding Partner of Elevation Partners, on Centre Stage during day two of Web Summit 2021 at the Altice Arena in Lisbon, Portugal. He put together a possibility of both software and deals with other bands like U2, Dylan and Dave Matthews bands, that if the Dead had gone through that would have been iTunes.” “We cannot measure the value of volunteering to go to the Grateful Dead's office and try to straighten out the mess that was their web strategy. “Roger McNamee, who, at the height of his Internet success, volunteered one day a week,” says Selvin. The exact sequence and details of some events are not crystal clear, but the bottom line is that along the way, the band turned specifically to McNamee for help. There was also a proposal to create a company called Deadweb which would IPO with a valuation of $480 million. In addition to entertainment, it will have a museum, library, merchandise store, restaurant, record store and research center.”Īnother document mentions conversations with the likes of Silicon Valley venture capital firms like Accel, Sequoia, and Kleiner Perkins. According to the business plan, this would be a “a 65-70,000 square foot facility located in the heart of San Francisco…projected to draw almost a million visitors annually. In one set of discussions, $65 million was bandied about as the amount of money the band needed to raise to build out the digitization and sales efforts of its so-called Vault - the tape collection of its shows - plus the building of a Terrapin Station. (Another informed source doesn’t recall Bannon.) An informed source says even then-banker Steve Bannon made a pitch. The Dead sought financial advice and had conversations with a number of bankers and advisors including, at one point, Houlihan Lokey. Photo of Jerry Garcia (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images) “The Grateful Dead is much more than buying a ticket or buying a t-shirt,” says Joe Jupille, professor of political science at the University of Colorado and an amateur Grateful Dead historian. And this doesn't include merchandising and music sales which bring in many hundreds of millions more. will likely make tens of millions this year, too. In 2020 Variety reported: “The band grossed $250 million in the past five years, averaging a box office of $2.3 million per concert…” The original Dead sold $393 million in tickets alone from 1965 to 1995, according to the Grateful Seconds blog (put out by my pal and banker, Dave Davis). The Grateful Dead, in all its iterations, have become a huge business over the years. (Note to Deadheads: I’m no expert here-though I’m a big fan and did see them in Baltimore, March ‘73.) Filling in for the late Jerry Garcia-who passed away in 1995-is guitar virtuoso and heartthrob, John Mayer. ![]() ![]() The current incarnation of the Grateful Dead today is Dead & Co, as a number of its original members have either passed away or no longer play with the band. As it turns out there are some salient business connections - some fascinating and others more obscure - to the Dead.
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