Thought a few of you might enjoy this feature from Barron's
The Grateful Dead: What a Long, Lucrative Trip It’s Been
By Andy Serwer
Feb 12, 2025, 11:22 am EST
Over the decades rock ’n’ roll has become, among other things, a mega-business—and in some instances, a massive wealth-creation machine. But the music industry is also hugely opaque, with hundreds of millions of dollars sloshing around, sometimes accounted for and sometimes not.
Now with the publication of The Economic History of the Grateful Dead: A Look Inside the Financial Records of America’s Biggest 20th Century Touring Act, we can see the numbers behind the music, at least of the Grateful Dead, the great American proto-jam band that has engendered a vast, multigenerational, cultlike following.
The book was written by David Davis, who—with serious bona fides as a Deadhead (82 Dead shows and scores more of the band’s various offshoots) and as a finance dude (35 years of entertainment advisory and private-equity work for Houlihan Lokey, Content Partners, and Arpeggio Partners)—dug deeply into the financial records of the band.
The big takeaway? “The Grateful Dead made more money than any other touring band” in the U.S., says Davis. “They played, like, 2,400 gigs that generated over $400 million of ticket sales over 30 years [from 1965 to 1995].” That, Davis says, is more than Bruce Springsteen, U2, the Eagles, and even the Rolling Stones.
“During that [same] time, the Rolling Stones played 400 shows in the United States,” he says. “They took in almost $276 million, so they were making three or four times as much per gig as the Dead, but the Stones just didn’t play as much.” (Of course, all these figures are in yesterday’s dollars and before ticket prices for concerts exploded at a much higher rate than inflation.)
The Dead toured relentlessly, playing some 80 shows a year, while bandleader Jerry Garcia would play another 70 or so on his own. “Jerry and the band just loved to play,” Davis says. But, he says, that was just one facet of the Dead that set them apart.
The Dead, Davis notes, played a different set list of songs every show, recorded each show, then put those recordings in a vault and later sold those recordings on CDs, vinyl, and digital downloads. They allowed the audience to record their performances and share those recordings. The band played free shows, which helped to introduce them to a bigger audience, and they created a fan-friendly ticket service with very low handling fees.
“They would also run a deficit, when, for example, they played in Egypt for free or at a high school in Alaska, and then to finance it, they’d play at Giant Stadium at the Meadowlands in front of 60,000 people,” Davis says. In other words, the Dead had passion projects but were smart enough to fund them.
The Dead were also cutting edge when it came to technology, using state-of-the-art sound and lighting systems and were early adopters of computers for their back-office work—befitting for the Bay Area’s No. 1 rock ’n’ roll band. That tech savviness extends to today when two of the original band members joined other musicians of the modern Dead & Company band and created a multimedia Las Vegas residency experience at the Sphere for 16,500 fans a night, generating nearly $4 million per night in ticket sales. Those shows came some 60 years after the formation of the band.
Davis heard about the Dead’s financial records stored at the University of California, Santa Cruz, library archive and began to comb through 200 banker’s boxes of records. (He says his book contains only about 1% or 2% of the documents he reviewed.) The idea for the book, he says, was hatched during a conversation with a group of friends (including yours truly) at the Drover Steakhouse in Omaha, Neb., during a Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting weekend a number of years ago. Be warned, though—the book isn’t a nonfiction narrative, rather it’s a self-published, mostly wonky sourcebook highlighted by receipts, contracts, and P&Ls.
“Deadheads are like serious baseball fans. They keep stats. They want to know everything. They are an extension of the band,” says famed tech investor Roger McNamee, a lifelong Deadhead who once advised the Dead and plays guitar in the band Moonalice. “On a topic with nearly 100 books, Dave Davis has found something really original. It’s a welcome addition to the canon.”
Davis sent a copy of the book to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, a confirmed Grateful Dead fan (or Chief Deadhead of the Fed). We don’t know if Powell has taken a look, though, as a Fed spokesperson told me as a rule, the Fed doesn’t comment on books. That’s too bad, because it would be great to get Powell’s take on chapters like “Zero Book Value Assets 1982,” “First Quarter 1973 Financial Statements”—and especially on how the Dead set ticket prices.
Write to Andy Serwer at andy.serwer@barrons.com
The Grateful Dead: What a Long, Lucrative Trip It’s Been
By Andy Serwer
Feb 12, 2025, 11:22 am EST
Over the decades rock ’n’ roll has become, among other things, a mega-business—and in some instances, a massive wealth-creation machine. But the music industry is also hugely opaque, with hundreds of millions of dollars sloshing around, sometimes accounted for and sometimes not.
Now with the publication of The Economic History of the Grateful Dead: A Look Inside the Financial Records of America’s Biggest 20th Century Touring Act, we can see the numbers behind the music, at least of the Grateful Dead, the great American proto-jam band that has engendered a vast, multigenerational, cultlike following.
The book was written by David Davis, who—with serious bona fides as a Deadhead (82 Dead shows and scores more of the band’s various offshoots) and as a finance dude (35 years of entertainment advisory and private-equity work for Houlihan Lokey, Content Partners, and Arpeggio Partners)—dug deeply into the financial records of the band.
The big takeaway? “The Grateful Dead made more money than any other touring band” in the U.S., says Davis. “They played, like, 2,400 gigs that generated over $400 million of ticket sales over 30 years [from 1965 to 1995].” That, Davis says, is more than Bruce Springsteen, U2, the Eagles, and even the Rolling Stones.
“During that [same] time, the Rolling Stones played 400 shows in the United States,” he says. “They took in almost $276 million, so they were making three or four times as much per gig as the Dead, but the Stones just didn’t play as much.” (Of course, all these figures are in yesterday’s dollars and before ticket prices for concerts exploded at a much higher rate than inflation.)
The Dead toured relentlessly, playing some 80 shows a year, while bandleader Jerry Garcia would play another 70 or so on his own. “Jerry and the band just loved to play,” Davis says. But, he says, that was just one facet of the Dead that set them apart.
The Dead, Davis notes, played a different set list of songs every show, recorded each show, then put those recordings in a vault and later sold those recordings on CDs, vinyl, and digital downloads. They allowed the audience to record their performances and share those recordings. The band played free shows, which helped to introduce them to a bigger audience, and they created a fan-friendly ticket service with very low handling fees.
“They would also run a deficit, when, for example, they played in Egypt for free or at a high school in Alaska, and then to finance it, they’d play at Giant Stadium at the Meadowlands in front of 60,000 people,” Davis says. In other words, the Dead had passion projects but were smart enough to fund them.
The Dead were also cutting edge when it came to technology, using state-of-the-art sound and lighting systems and were early adopters of computers for their back-office work—befitting for the Bay Area’s No. 1 rock ’n’ roll band. That tech savviness extends to today when two of the original band members joined other musicians of the modern Dead & Company band and created a multimedia Las Vegas residency experience at the Sphere for 16,500 fans a night, generating nearly $4 million per night in ticket sales. Those shows came some 60 years after the formation of the band.
Davis heard about the Dead’s financial records stored at the University of California, Santa Cruz, library archive and began to comb through 200 banker’s boxes of records. (He says his book contains only about 1% or 2% of the documents he reviewed.) The idea for the book, he says, was hatched during a conversation with a group of friends (including yours truly) at the Drover Steakhouse in Omaha, Neb., during a Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting weekend a number of years ago. Be warned, though—the book isn’t a nonfiction narrative, rather it’s a self-published, mostly wonky sourcebook highlighted by receipts, contracts, and P&Ls.
“Deadheads are like serious baseball fans. They keep stats. They want to know everything. They are an extension of the band,” says famed tech investor Roger McNamee, a lifelong Deadhead who once advised the Dead and plays guitar in the band Moonalice. “On a topic with nearly 100 books, Dave Davis has found something really original. It’s a welcome addition to the canon.”
Davis sent a copy of the book to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, a confirmed Grateful Dead fan (or Chief Deadhead of the Fed). We don’t know if Powell has taken a look, though, as a Fed spokesperson told me as a rule, the Fed doesn’t comment on books. That’s too bad, because it would be great to get Powell’s take on chapters like “Zero Book Value Assets 1982,” “First Quarter 1973 Financial Statements”—and especially on how the Dead set ticket prices.
Write to Andy Serwer at andy.serwer@barrons.com
