The Grateful Dead scene from the mid ‘80s onward — captured by San Francisco photographer Susana Millman as she became part of the Grateful Dead family, “A Fly on the Wall with a Camera.”
Alive begins with Susana’s friendship with Jerry Garcia, who was a matchmaker in her 1985 marriage to Grateful Dead publicist and biographer Dennis McNally and even walked her down the aisle. The photos are largely from Garcia’s years with the band in the ‘80s and ‘90’s and demonstrate Millman’s warm, intimate style and unique access to happenings onstage, offstage and backstage.
The book is written as a series of vignettes in time and place, with funny personal anecdotes from Millman and McNally adding breadth to descriptions of the complex mini-universe (fans, family, crew, technicians for sound and lights, the intimate friends who made up the extended family) that was the Grateful Dead.
