"Garcia: An American Life is the first comprehensive biography of the late leader and guitarist of the Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia (1942-1995). Garcia's saga courses through some of the most fascinating epochs of postwar American history: From the flowering of Haight-Ashbury through Woodstock and Altamont, the Dead became synonymous with the libertine values of the late'60s counterculture, and Garcia was widely recognized as the group's musical and spiritual leader."--BOOK JACKET.

"Though many of his fans, the Deadheads, nearly deified Garcia, his personal life showed his all-too-human frailties: He was an absentee father to his four girls; his relationships with women were complex and difficult; and he fought a long, ultimately unsuccessful battle with drug addiction.

Veteran rock journalist Blair Jackson has stitched together Garcia's story from more than a hundred of his own interviews with Garcia, his friends, lovers, and bandmates, and from thousands of pages of source material from the '50s through the '90s."--BOOK JACKET.

"Although the book chronicles the ups and downs of Garcia's life, the focus never strays far from his enormous creative gifts - his passion for music and his brilliance as a guitarist and songwriter. Garcia: An American Life also includes forty-eight photos, many of them previously unpublished."--BOOK JACKET.