Deal: My Three Decades of Drumming, Dreams, and Drugs with the Grateful Dead

When Kreutzmann was 16, in the early 1960s, he saw Jerry Garcia play bass in a band called Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions. He decided then and there that he was going to follow Garcia forever. A couple of weeks later, Garcia called Kreutzmann and asked him to join a band, which they first called the Warlocks and then the Grateful Dead. Like one of the Dead's meandering, free-form jams, Kreutzmann's memoir wanders capaciously from one moment to the next, never settling for long on any particular aspect of his life. Kreutzmann recalls his introduction to Mickey Hart, who eventually joins the band and teaches him the rudiments of drumming. He provides his own history of the Dead through chronicles of the band's albums and the personnel involved in making them; he explains that 1970's Workingman's Dead was all about discovering songs, and American Beauty, from the same year, is all about having the harmonies to sing the songs. Kreutzmann offer his take on each band member, recalling many of his long, strange trips on various hallucinogens, as well as the ups and downs of his personal life. When he met his wife, Aimee, it changed his life. He concludes that his book is really simple love story about letting your heart guide you through an incredible journey, but his rock-and-roll memoir never really achieves emotional transcendence. (May)