Growing Up Dead Publicity

Video & Audio

This short book trailer gives a great taste for what Growing Up Dead is all about. The scenes from the parking lot are from a home movie taken at Hartford '88. A Rochester Deadhead shot them and they've been sitting in a drawer in his house... until now. Thanks to the talented Steve Smock of Prime8Media for his amazing work putting this trailer together.

[Growing Up Dead Book Trailer]

This is a complete reading I gave for Growing Up Dead at Books Inc. in San Francisco, California. The event was held on June 4, 2009. The reading includes three sections from the book and a question and answer period at the end.

[Growing Up Dead Reading at Books Inc]

Here's a link to an interview on KPFA radio out of Berkeley, California. The interview is conducted by David Gans and includes me reading excerpts from GUD and cuts from the Dead shows that I'm reading about. A lovely stew.

 http://cloudsurfing.gdhour.com/peter-conners-interviews

"As the surviving members of the Grateful Dead reunite for concerts in New York this weekend, Soundcheck’s occasional series on superfans continues with a look at Deadheads. Music critic Ben Ratliff of the New York Times; Peter Conners, author of the memoir "Growing Up Dead;" and sociologist Rebecca Adams of the University of North Carolina-Greensboro join us for a look at how these loyal disciples have maintained a vast subculture (and nearly 2,200 concert recordings)."

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/soundcheck/episodes/2009/04/22

This is a February 2009 interview about Growing Up Dead. The interview was conducted in a hotel room in Chicago by Sam Ligon for Keyhole Magazine.

[Peter Conners interview for Keyhole Magazine]

On August, 20, 2009 Growing Up Dead was reviewed on-air NPR's "All  Things Considered."

No music fan is more invested than a follower of the Grateful Dead. Peter Conners' new memoir, Growing Up Dead, chronicles the exhilaration of falling in love with music as if nothing else in life even remotely matters. Conners was an aimless 16 year old when he first heard the whirling, improvised rock of his heroes. He describes guitar runs that send "sparkler streams across the arena" and writes that the sound of a keyboard "swirls down your cochlea, expanding into warm chocolate behind your eyes." Music fans will understand: That's not LSD imagery but just the way music sounds when your surrender has no limit.

Listen to the review at [GUD on All Things Considered] 

Review Highlights

The American Booksellers Association reported Growing Up Dead  as an Indie Music Bestseller in September 2009. The Bestseller List is based on sales at independent bookstores nationwide compiled over an eight-week period ending on September 9, 2009.

"The hardest part of being the Grateful Dead's publicist was convincing the media that Dead Heads were diverse, thoughtful, and not infrequently accomplished.  If I'd just had a copy of Peter Conners' Growing Up Dead, I could have simply handed it out.  The Dead Head subculture was rich and fascinating, and this book is a terrific documentation of it."

--Dennis McNally, Grateful Dead publicist and historian, author of A Long Strange Trip

"This is a very important addition to the Grateful Dead bookshelf: an honest, articulate, celebratory, and inspiring account of life on Dead tour in the 1980s. Peter Conners does a great job of describing the magic."

--David Gans, host of the Grateful Dead Hour, author of Conversations with the Dead

No music fan is more invested than a follower of the Grateful Dead. Peter Conners' new memoir, Growing Up Dead, chronicles the exhilaration of falling in love with music as if nothing else in life even remotely matters. Conners was an aimless 16 year old when he first heard the whirling, improvised rock of his heroes. He describes guitar runs that send "sparkler streams across the arena" and writes that the sound of a keyboard "swirls down your cochlea, expanding into warm chocolate behind your eyes." Music fans will understand: That's not LSD imagery but just the way music sounds when your surrender has no limit.

--Will Layman for "All Things Considered" on National Public Radio

Growing Up Dead is not only a great insider account of life on the road following the Grateful Dead, but a well-written overview of the Deadhead subculture, as well. Author Peter Conners doesn't have to resort to any of the clichés normally applied to the life; he lived it. From the wake-up rituals "on the bus" to the parking lots of summer, it's all here - but so are the thoughts and feelings that led Conners to the scene and, eventually, beyond it. Honest, thoughtful, and an entertaining read, Growing Up Dead offers a look into a lifestyle observed by many but understood by few.

--Brian Robbins for Relix Magazine

"Categorizing Peter Conners' Growing Up Dead: The Hallucinated Confessions of a Teenage Deadhead is like trying to pigeonhole The Grateful Dead themselves: difficult and not very useful. It's part memoir, journalism, sociology, history, and drug culture exposé. But mainly Conners has written a heartfelt, entertaining, and appropriately scattered coming of age story. If the book were a film (and man, could it ever be!) it'd be co-directed by Cameron Crowe and Richard Linklater, and would play like Dazed And Confused meets Almost Famous - but in Conners' screenplay William Miller takes acid and smokes weed." [read complete review]

--John Dworkin for Blurt Magazine

“Poet and editor Conners (Emily Ate the Wind) offers a perspective often missing from other Dead chronicles: that of one of the suburban teens in the late 1980s and early 1990s who dropped out of high school and/or college to follow a band whose members were 30 years their senior. Unlike most Dead fans (and rock critics) from the 1960s and 1970s, the band’s music wasn’t the most important thing to Conners and his Gen-X companions—the focus was on “becoming and living as a Deadhead outside the Grateful Dead concert,” So while Conners offers some earnest and often hilarious chapters about his teenage stoner life (“One of the problems with teenage drug abuse is that you never get to know what your adult brain would be like without it”), his most inventive chapters offer second-person accounts of what really went on at a typical Dead show in the 1980s. “You are thrilled. You smoke the Indica. You east some mushrooms… The situation is post-verbal.”

--Publisher's Weekly

"Part memoir, part social history... [Conners has an] engrossing personal story and breezy style. Recommended for Dead followers and rock music fanatics."

--Library Journal

"But while there have been plenty of Dead books aimed at the faithful, novelist and prose poet Peter Conners directs Growing Up Dead: The Hallucinated Confessions Of A Teenage Deadhead—his examination of and adamant non-apology for his former lifestyle—at general readers."[read complete review]

--The Onion (AV Club)

"No 1960s nostalgia to be found in this Deadhead memoir: Conners actually tracks the lives of teenagers who dropped out and started following the Grateful Dead around on tour in the '80s and '90s. An interesting perspective on the Dead's long, strange trip decades after it began."

--Creative Loafing Sarasota, February 2009

--New York Post, April 2009

"I just finished reading Peter Conner's book Growing Up Dead and I really liked it. It bought back a billion memories but it also took me farther/further than my own Dead experiences on a journey of vicarious good times. It' recalls both the late era Dead scene and the music/philosophy that proceeded it as well as how teen rebellion is inspired, cultivated, and turned into something beautiful when it moves along to music. I'd give it about twenty-three stars, with twenty stars the most a book can earn."

--J.T. Dutton, author of Freaked

"Growing Up Dead is also an entertaining look at a subculture, in which you'll read how Conners compares and contrasts such related groups as beatniks and hippies; what life is like in the world surrounding the concerts and in the tent cities, set up in the parking lots outside shows, and in the constant pursuit of a music that speaks to you. As he writes, the music is the most important thing. When it's all said and done, he writes, "The music is with us." [read complete review]

--Jack Garner, arts critic for Rochester Democrat & Chronicle

"For some readers, Growing Up Dead may be a familiar memoir. Conners will help any Deadhead recall their own experiences: their first show, first great high, and so on. For me, this was cultural or social anthropology. Until I read this book, all I knew about the Grateful Dead was that they made tie-dyed t-shirts famous, and that they allowed fans to make bootlegged copies of their shows.... As I read Growing Up Dead, I could imagine me asking to tail along with some Deadheads to go to a show. And I laughed hard about it.... Deadheads will enjoy this book for the memories. I enjoyed it because it made me more curious as I read it. I give it thumbs-up." [read complete review]

--Stuart Nachbar, from American Chronicle

"Conners’ memoirs are delivered with refreshingly pure passion, Deadhead antics and band performances contrasted by his own story, starting with dumb teenage antics in Rochester, New York, and interspersed with background on the band, LSD and Prankster philosophy. If the 80s shows were joyful, acid-fried celebrations, by the 90s the Dead’s fame and freewheeling attitude was turning against them, attracting negative elements, while Garcia’s drug problems were dulling the live experience. Conners departed to struggle as a writer, finally producing this, in turn, mesmerising, moving, comical, honest testimonial to both the Dead and one of the most dedicated bodies of fans music will ever see." Read the complete review at [GUD Review in Record Collector]

--Kris Needs, from Record Collector

"I feel this book is a must for anyone’s “The Scene” historical library shelf, even though it only covers the last eight years of a thirty+ year American phenomena, it covers the introspectional emotions of it beautifully.  This is not a history of the band, nor of the music itself, (even though he does cover some of its historical background I wasn't aware of,) but it is informative in its description of the reality of it, and I think Mr. Conners has done an excellent and entertaining job of it in Growing Up Dead." [GUD Review in Old Hippie's Groovy Site]

--The Old Hippie's Groovy Site

Reader Feedback

"I loved this book. It caught a part of my life that I treasure and sometimes still miss. Peter Conners captured the life we late comers (because most of us weren't even born yet) to the Show. He captures the moment of Jerry's death and reaction to it so precisely. "I had already mounred the loss of the Dead scene that had enriched my life. Somehow, though, I had never given up the possibility that I could go back there." (pg. 254). A thought I always kept with me after Jerry's death and even just a little bit further while the band went on for a few years. I always thought I could go back to the Road and the Lot and find what I lost. And my other favorite quote "Yet when you listen to this music, you still feel the same physical, spiritual, and intellectual charge you did when you were a teenager. You are just as soncially engaged as the days when touring and keeping up with the Dead was a daily fact of life. When touring and keeping up with the Grateful Dead was your life. But it isn't anymore. It's not even an option. And sometimes you wonder how this can be." (pg. 265) I feel that this two quotes capture what us Heads feel at times, especially now. I loved how Conner could put into words so wonderfully our experiences and life. They were all different, yet the same. Conners captures these moments for us to relive again. He shows the world, that we Deadheads were more than just stoners spinning in our bliss, we had and have lives and are smarter than what people saw on the outside of our lives. The Dead and Jerry live on in us all. We may take different paths, but still we are the community that watches over us every day. Read this book if you are a Head and even if you're not and want to gain some understanding of someone you may care about. It's an excellent book and a must have for Deadheads everywhere."

"This book was just like following The Dead, exhilarating, exasperating,vivid, fun and a little bit treacherous. So many descriptions hit so close to home, especially the ending, which easily could have been a description of me. If you ever traveled to see The Dead, or just rolled across town to see them, read this book."

"WHAT A GREAT BOOK! I COULDN'T PUT IT DOWN UNTIL I WAS DONE. SO TASTEFUL AND HONEST. A MUST READ FOR ANYONE WHO EVER FOLLOWED THE DEAD TO BRING BACK THE MEMORIES AND ALSO FOR HEADS LIKE ME WHO NEVER GOT TO FOLLOW THEM BUT DREAM THAT THEY HAD. PUTS YOU RIGHT THERE IN THE BUS WITH THEM. I WOULD THINK MOST HEADS (DEAD/PHISH/KELLER/GOVT MULE- WHATEVER YOUR FANCY) WILL LOVE THIS BOOK FROM BEGINNING TO END. AMAZING HOW CHILDHOODS CAN RELATE EVEN WITH PEOPLE FROM A DIFFERENT AREA AND DIFFERENT GENERATION.
GREAT JOB PETER AND THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR WRITING IT!

MAKE SURE YOU CHECK HIM OUT ON MYSPACE AND FACEBOOK AS HIS UPCOMING BOOK SOUNDS JUST AS AWESOME.

PS. I SWEAR THIS IS NOT A PAID ADVERTISEMENT (LOL)"

"As I read Peter Conners' book, 'Growing Up Dead' I couldn't help but relate much of what he was writing about to my own life. Being a year older than Conners I too hopped on "the bus" almost exactly one year before him. We no doubt crossed paths, danced next to each other or hung out in parking lots across America. The Dead for me were a welcome retreat from the cold, gritty industrial midwest city of Cleveland to a much warmer world where life seemed to begin. At least at the age of 16/17 it seemed that way. Afterall, at that age one has few responsibilities leaning heavy on their shoulders. However, the time that I spent on the road is still very much part of who I am today. One senses all of the above with Conners' tale and it is hard not to instantly warm to your guide and want to take that trip down the golden road again.

I highly recommend this book to anybody who saw or travelled with the Grateful Dead. There is much here that one can relate to. That said, the book is a valuable read for anybody interested in subcultures or a curiousity into the uniquely American phenomenon that is/was The Grateful Dead!

Thanks for sharing your story with us, brother Peter!"

"Growing Up Dead is the most accurate depiction of Deadhead culture...Family!...I have ever read. As a big part of that scene for so many years myself, I can honestly say that Peter Conners has not written fluff here. Every page tells it exactly like it was and, to some degree, still is. For me, this book had profound effects on all levels. I could read a chapter; close my eyes and BE THERE once again! The vivid imagery, smells, tastes, emotions...they're everywhere throughout this work. Any book that can cause a person to laugh, cry, smile, reminisce, be inspired & have their life truly validated is one that MUST BE READ. Growing Up Dead just so happens to be that book! If you never went to a Grateful Dead show but were always curious about what really went on, this is the book for you. If you went to 1 show or 100 shows, this book is for you. As a longtime Deadhead, I am so grateful to Peter Conners for telling his story...our story...for the world to read, see and FINALLY understand. The "Long Strange Trip" continues...."

"Wow.. this book brought back some memories... If you ever went to a Dead show or just always wanted to go, pick up this book. Peter helps put you right at the show. So many memories went flooding thru my head as I read the stories of Peters touring days. This book is an insightful look into the life of a typical deadhead.. I should know, I was one!!"

"This book was fantastic! I love how Peter Conners, put us in his place in parts of the books. I'm a second generation dead fan and i'm personally very interested in deadheads and they're stories and this book definately sums up one boys journey from surburban teen,to dead head. I love being firmilar with the dead because i grew up where the heart of the band was from.The ending to the book is very very worth getting to."

"Because I think of myself as a generationally misplaced deadhead, this book was a joy. I was able to ride in the VW bus and hear accounts of the grateful dead show's I wish i'd been at. I was also able to see parallels between the scene going on then, and the scene that continues now with Phish, String Cheese, and music festivals across the country.

Not only were the anecdotes fantastic and detailed, but their was also a surplus of information about the grateful dead themselves- great for an amateur deadhead, like myself. This book was a quick read, it flows so well and invites you to continue reading the whole thing through."

"I heard about this book on the Sirius/XM show "Tales of the Golden Road" when Peter was a guest. I decided to give it a shot although Gary Lambert (unfairly) ripped the title, specifically the "tales of a...". I knew I would like the story having an affinity for the Dead. I wasn't old enough to catch the Dead but their music, while in high school, lead me to other national touring acts that embodied similar experiences. The stories were excellent mixing personal experiences with well researched cultural and historical nuggets dispersed throughout. What was a pleasant surprise was how much I enjoyed Peter's writing style and the strange organization of the book. I highly highly recommend everyone read this book if you have even a casual interest in live music and the live music experience."

"I love when you can accidentally learn a lot during a book that is also just plain fun to read. Having only been to one Dead show in my life, my understanding and appreciation for the people and the (sub)culture grew tremendously.

Now that I'm done with the book, I find myself missing the nightly Trip that I was taking along with the Author."

Dear Mr. Conners: I'm not sure if this email will ever find its way to you, i have never felt compelled to email an author of a book before. But, i can honestly say your book was the best i've ever read. As a 17 year old growing up in New Hampshire and finding my own niche among the music culture, your book reached me on a new level that no literature has ever before. You captured the essence of what its like growing up as a stoned out teenager in the east, and i thank you for that. Your book gave a type of sympathetic understanding to what its like to grow up the way i am, and the way you did. From acid soaked road trips with friends, to sitting in jam rooms with tight friends for hours i felt like i knew you, like you sat around with me in those rooms and freaked out on acid. i've never felt so connected to a book. Thank you for writing Growing Up Dead. I've been carrying it around like a bible and passing it along to my friends. If this email ever makes its way to you don't feel too obliged to respond, it'd be rad, but people have things to do. Thank you again for writing that book, its changed me in a great way.

[Read Some Amazon Customer Comments Here]