Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America
| Country | United States |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Grateful Dead, Deadheads (Music Fans), Rock music, Hallucinogenic Drugs, LSD, Counterculture |
| Published | 2016 (Da Capo Press) |
| Pages | 480 pages (1st edition, hardcover) |
| ISBN | (1st edition, hardcover) |
Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America is a 2016 non-fiction book by rock journalist Jesse Jarnow. The book describes American psychedelics counterculture in the second half of the twentieth century.
Jarnow is a rock journalist whose writing has been published by Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Wired, and the Village Voice. He began his career writing about the Grateful Dead for Dupree's Diamond News. Jarnow spent nearly a decade researching Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America. Some of the book's material was published in earlier articles for magazines like Wired and Relix.
Heads relies heavily on firsthand interviews. Interview subjects include sociologist Rebecca Adams, photographer Jay Blakesberg, musician and journalist David Gans, Karen Horning, journalist Blair Jackson, musician Ned Lagin, Carol Latvala (wife of Dick Latvala), LSD chemist Sarah Matzar, LSD historian Mark McCloud, Grateful Dead publicist Dennis McNally, artist Jim Pollock, taper Doug Oade, Earth and Fire of Erowid, musician Lee Ranaldo, LSD chemist Tim Scully, concert promoter Peter Shapiro, Rhoney Stanley (wife of Owsley Stanley), and many more.
Heads offers an analysis of American psychedelic counterculture and its effects on mainstream American society. Jarnow describes the Grateful Dead and their concerts as a kind of loosely organized infrastructure for American counterculture, detailing how the band and their fans were inextricably linked to LSD distribution from the 1960s through the 1990s.
In addition to the Grateful Dead's longstanding connection LSD chemist and sound engineer Owsley Stanley, Jarnow describes how Grateful Dead concerts served as a meeting point and social network for high level LSD dealers like Karen Horning and chemists like Sarah Matzer and William Leonard Pickard. The book also discusses how the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration targeted LSD-trafficking Deadheads in the 1980s and 1990s.
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