McCartney Times

When the baby-booming generation first heard The Beatles in the early 1960s, it was akin to the big bang for culture. After that moment, nothing would ever be the same. Life was to change for the better, and on the back of the coattails of four young upstarts from Liverpool, society was thrust into the orgiastic light of the future with its fluidity, musical experimentation and artistic enlightenment.

One band hearing The Beatles had a transformative effect on was psychedelic poster boys, the Grateful Dead. Frontman Jerry Garcia was particularly captivated by the sugary sounds of the Liverpool quartet, however, his love for the band wouldn’t be immediate. His friend and bandmate in Newe Rider of the Purple Sage, David Nelson, recalled them both first hearing The Beatles, and the pair’s reactions were markedly different to everyone else’s.

One evening, in high school, Garcia phoned Nelson excitedly proclaiming: “’We’ve got to go down to St. Mike’s Alley now. They’re playing this group, the Beatles. They’ve got the album, and I want you to check it out.’ So we went and got coffee and sat there looking at each other, listening on the sound system to the Beatles’ first album; the ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ album,” Nelson recalled.

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Source: How The Beatles inspired the Grateful Dead