Dead and Loving It

摘要

Kreutzmann, Bill with Benjy Eisen. Deal: My Three Decades of Drumming, Dreams, and Drugs with the Grateful Dead. St. Martin's. May 2015.416p. photos. ISBN 9781250033796. $27.99; ebk. ISBN 9781250033802. music Angry, defensive, often inarticulate, this memoir by the Dead's founding drummer is frustrating to read. Much of it appears to be barely edited transcripts of Kreutzmann talking. It can be assumed that his collaborator, Benjy Eisen, assembled the manuscript, but if he did any fine tuning, it is not readily discernible. Kreutzmann's accounts of his drug use and abuse are constant and tiresome, and, though he has gone through rehab twice, there is little insight into what this process was like, or why he used drugs in the first place. The book's last 40 or so pages, which recount Jerry Garcia's death and its aftermath, are tremendously moving, and here the work finally hits its stride. This leaves the reader wishing that the rest of the story had been told with as much emotion and understanding. VERDICT Deadheads, by the very nature of their dedication, will not want to skip this, in spite of its , problems. Casual fans and others won't have much reason to pick it up. [See Prepub Alert, 11/10/14.].