The Grateful Dead Join TikTok on 4/20

The Grateful Dead officially joined TikTok on Wednesday (April 20). Coincidentally, the band entered the platform on the biggest “stoner holiday” of the year, 4/20.

In conjunction with Rhino Entertainment, the band’s TikTok channel (@gratefuldead) will serve as a platform to celebrate the decades-long history of the band, now nearly 60 years since they first formed in Palo Alto, California.

The new TikTok community welcomed the band’s generations of fans with an inaugural post: a remaster of their 1969 live recording of “St. Stephen” at the Fillmore West in San Francisco, California.

The 30-second video also features archival concert footage and other candid scenes from Shakedown Street, along with handmade artwork and other technicolored snapshots from the era, all answering the question asked at the beginning of the clip: “People are crazy about the Grateful Dead, how can you account for that?”

Moving ahead, content on The Grateful Dead page will be updated on a daily basis with more music and other surprise clips.

The Grateful Dead’s official TikTok account also arrives one month after the introduction of their music to the platform, which allows users to make their own videos, soundtracked by their choice of songs from the band’s extensive catalog.

During their time together, from 1965 through 1995 and the death of founding singer Jerry Garcia at the age of 53, The Grateful Dead released 13 albums in addition to nine live releases, from their eponymous 1967 debut through their final Without a Net in 1990. Throughout the decades, the band also released a number of compilations and other special releases, including the most recent Sage & Spirit in 2019, as well as The Story of the Grateful Dead box set in 2020.

News of the band’s TikTok page comes as The Grateful Dead spinoff band Dead and Company announced their final tour this year. The outfit features original Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir and drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, along with John Mayer on guitar and vocals, bassist Oteil Burbridge, and keyboardist Jeff Chimenti.

Photo: Kirk West/Getty Images