Every Deadhead knows how she or he feels about every Grateful Dead song and how the lyrics and/or music impact them personally. And many Deadheads know – from shows and late-night listening sessions fueled by who-knows-what – is aware of those impact on friends and acquaintances. 

But reading Charles Beard’s Golden Wisdom from the Grateful Dead: Life Lessons in Their Songs is to hear about those impact on a stranger – an opportunity to compare and contrast and, perhaps, catch a nugget or two neither the reader nor his friends thought of previously. 

Wrapping the chapters between a “Prologue” and “Epilogue,” Beard examines “The Other One,” “Ripple,” “Truckin’,” “Help on the Way,” “Scarlet Begonias,” “Loser,” “U.S. Blues,” “Franklin’s Tower,” “Black Peter” and Touch of Grey” and makes no bones of being a Robert Hunter/Jerry Garcia partisan, calling theirs “the greatest and most dynamic songbook of any American rock band.” 

There’s a great quote from self-professed “junior varsity” lyricist John Perry Barlow, who says that without him and other JV writers, the Dead’s musical garden would’ve been all roses – gorgeous but with little variety. 

Retired after 30-plus years in IT and now a septuagenarian living in Texas, Beard first experienced live Dead – and acid, coincidentally – in 1968 in St. Louis and continues to see the spin-off bands as he can. His enthusiasm hasn’t waned after all these decades and that enthusiasm reminds those of us who maybe got started in the ’80 that our trip will also likely last a lifetime. 

Beard’s perspective on the Grateful Dead is unique to Beard, just as mine is unique to me and yours is unique to you. That’s what makes Golden Wisdom a joy to read; for while Beard is not an experienced author, he’s an enthusiastic one. And you matter how many shows and late-night listening sessions fueled by who-knows-what the reader may have experienced, they’ve never heard this one.