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Rosie McGee

Rosie McGee

Photographer, author, and Grateful Dead insider who documented the band's first decade (1966-1974) as Phil Lesh's girlfriend and band family member; published "Dancing with the Dead—A Photographic Memoir."

Jul 16, 2026

63:47
A few months after shooting So Far, Rosie McGee was at the Greek shows as well.
63:52
Instead of just going to visit and hang out and listen to music and dance, I started bringing my camera again a few times.
64:02
Took some great photos, you know, photos that I'm very proud of, but that also was a real, um, exciting thing for me to come back and be able to, to take new photos from a completely different perspective than I'd had.
64:24
Back in the day, I was the girl with the camera that was part of the band's family, and that was a very different thing, and now I had access, but I was still a distance from, physical distance from the band.
64:43
One of Rosie's most beautiful photos comes probably from after the first night at the Greek.
64:48
It's the one I call Aftermath, which is a black-and-white photo.
64:53
It was probably at the end of day one when, uh, uh, the, the theater had been emptied of people.
65:02
It was dead silent, and, uh, I went back down the audience stairs and saw a completely deserted Greek Theater, and with all of the, the amps and the, the cabinets covered for the night 'cause they, they were gonna have a gig the next day, and just this huge spotlight in the upper right-hand corner shining down on it, and this completely deserted amphitheater with a, a surprisingly small amount of litter.
19:27
There was always change on the horizon.
19:30
Owsley was our benefactor, and, and, you know, I used to call him our b- benevolent dictator, but, uh, [laughs] you know, he just, he dictated everything.
19:41
But he hel- held the purse strings, and he, he paid for everything.
19:46
It's been documented extensively about his imposing a all-meat diet on us, because that's how he believed humans were supposed to eat.
19:58
And by the time we moved back to the Bay Area, the guys had had enough, the women had had enough, and the, uh, once we got to Olin Poly, the guys started to get some gigs in the city, and started making a little of their own money.
20:16
And so, um, [laughs] we, we had, I think it was the women that called it, but we had what we called a, a vegetable mutiny.
20:26
[upbeat music]

41 MINS LATER

61:12
But it wasn't OlymPalli.

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