The Grateful Dead - American Beauty

In the mid-60s, the Grateful Dead evolved from good-time jug band to psychedelic explorers, pushing further into the cosmos than any of their peers, but unable to truly capture that experience in the studio, and after raking up huge debts trying to do so, something had to change.

Their second album of 1970, American Beauty, showcases a band reborn. Proper, honest-to-goodness songs, acoustic guitars, and mellow harmonies, it would become one of the defining albums of their career, and a pointed reaction to the horrors of the Vietnam War, which was entering into its final stages.

On Long Player, Steven Rainey takes a good look at the long, strange trip of the Grateful Dead.