Alive With the Dead

Photographer Susana Millman experienced her first Grateful Dead show on Dec. 29, 1977, at San Francisco’s Winterland. Fast-forward 40 years and Millman has published a unique 264-page coffee-table-style photo book, Alive With the Dead, or A Fly on the Wall with a Camera, covering her years spent with the iconic band and the personalities and carnival-like revelry that went along with it. Living and working with band members and those close to them—including her eventual marriage to the band’s publicist and biographer, Dennis McNally, in 1985—gave Millman the access to visually capture the scene. With words/notes by McNally, the book includes hundreds of great, and unique, images from the 1980s through today. Here one can see members of The Dead in suit and tie (with Garcia walking Millman down the wedding aisle), Bob Weir locking eyes with a duck and Mickey Hart vacuuming a stage carpet.

Millman and McNally will give a video presentation on the book at the Wake of the Dead concert this Friday, Sept. 22, 7:30 p.m., at Chico Women’s Club.