Grateful Dead Houses and Party Pads, Then and Now

The Grateful Dead were unlike any band. This group of nonconformist, counterculture hippies epitomized the psychedelic rock movement of the 1960s and became one of the most famous music groups of all time.

They were something new and something different. The conservative press was enamored with them. They became so influential even in their earliest years that they managed to change (inadvertently) the makeup of an entire San Francisco neighborhood. 

We’re looking at the real estate, past and present, of the Grateful Dead as a band and its core members: Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann and Bob Weir. Come take a long, strange trip through the various party pads and homes of the Grateful Dead.

On Dec. 4, 1965, the Warlocks changed their name to the Grateful Dead and took to the “stage” at one of Ken Kesey’s Acid Test parties held in an 1895 Victorian house in downtown San Jose, California. It was the first official on-stage performance of the Grateful Dead, the legendary jam band that became one of the most influential music groups in history. 

“We took our equipment, we took LSD, we plugged in and we played,” Bob Weir said in his Netflix biography, “The Other One: The Long Strange Trip of Bob Weir.”

This house was originally located at 43 S. Fifth Street but has been moved to 635 St. James Street after a buyer offered to renovate and preserve it. It’s private property and hasn’t been up for sale since 1997, when it sold for $225,000. 

The most famous Grateful Dead house is 710 Ashbury Street in San Francisco, which the Grateful Dead and others moved into in 1966. Jack Kerouac’s friend Neal Cassady (who was immortalized as Dean Moriarty in “On the Road”) lived here, too, as did others.

It was Weir’s job to answer the door. One day, on Oct. 2, 1967 —  two weeks before Weir’s 20th birthday — cops raided the house, looking for drugs. And they found them, in the form of that dastardly plant, marijuana. 

Over a dozen police officers, city inspectors and state agents arrested Weir and the late Ron “Pigpen” McKernan since they were the only two home at the time. So, too, were six women and two business managers. The cops confiscated a pound of pot. 

The police claimed the band intended to sell and distribute the bud — a crime that held a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison. But ultimately, the biggest penalty was a $200 fine. And no one went to jail.  

This photo was taken in 1967 at 710 Ashbury when the Grateful Dead held a news conference to protest the drug bust and explain why it was all a bunch of garbage. You can watch the Grateful Dead’s 1967 news conference on YouTube. 

From left to right, the group members and people in the photo are: Ron McKernan, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh, managers Rock Scully and Dan Rifkin, Bob Weir, Jerry Garcia, attorney Michael Stepanion and equipment manager Robert Mathews. 

According to property records, the house hasn’t been sold since 1973, when someone picked up the legendary place for $55,000. It’s easily worth $1.5 million and probably more due to the Dead’s pedigree. 

While the house is a private residence, Weir’s Netflix documentary gives us a peek inside the home as it is today (technically in 2014, when the documentary was filmed).