The Grateful Dead might be honored because the 2025 MusiCares Persons of the Year, the Recording Academy introduced Wednesday, 60 years after the groundbreaking jam band fashioned in 1965 and shortly turned an avatar of the burgeoning counterculture primarily based in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood.
The prestigious music business commendation, which lauds an act’s philanthropy and cultural impression and comes with an all-star tribute live performance historically held two nights earlier than the annual Grammy Awards, will go to authentic Dead members Bob Weir, Phil Lesh , Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann. , in addition to the band’s founding guitarist and first songwriter, Jerry Garcia, who died in 1995. Next yr’s MusiCares gala is scheduled for Jan. 31 on the Los Angeles Convention Center; the lineup for the live performance, for which Don Was will function musical director, might be introduced at a later date.
In a press release, MusiCares government director Laura Segura mentioned the Grateful Dead “have constructed a neighborhood of followers and collaborators who embody the spirit of connection and assist” and hailed the band’s “enduring dedication to social causes “, together with environmental conservation and music schooling. The assertion quotes the surviving members of the Dead as saying they’re “deeply honored to be acknowledged as MusiCares Persons of the Year,” which they name “a testomony to the legacy of music, which has all the time been greater than us — it is concerning the bond between us, the crew and everybody who participated on this lengthy and unusual journey.
“It’s not nearly what we create, it is about ensuring that the folks behind all of it, behind us each night time, those who silently make all of this occur, get the assist they should transfer ahead, it doesn’t matter what could life maintain them in retailer,” added the musicians.
Last February, Jon Bon Jovi obtained the MusiCares Award at a gala that featured performances by Bruce Springsteen, Melissa Etheridge, Jason Isbell, Shania Twain, Jelly Roll and the War and Treaty, amongst others. Previous honorees embrace Joni Mitchell, Dolly Parton, Lionel Richie, Bob Dylan and Barbra Streisand.
The Dead’s recognition comes on the heels of a profitable 30-date residency at Dead & Company’s Sphere in Las Vegas, by which Weir and Hart carried out Grateful Dead repertoire with the assistance of pop hitmaker John Mayer. In an interview with The Times in June, Weir instructed the band may return to the state-of-the-art venue simply off the Las Vegas Strip, calling the group’s jaw-dropping present “a piece in progress.”
