And what a choice it was, as the bears have taken on a whimsical life of their own in the cult surrounding the Dead.īut it gets trippier. They first appeared on the back cover of the album The History of the Grateful Dead, Volume 1 (Bear’s Choice). The dancing bears weren’t there from the start – indeed, they had their debut in 1973, well into The Grateful Dead’s career. “Bear” Stanley and the Backstory of the Grateful Dead Bears While you don’t need an advanced degree in semiotics to uncover the mysterious magic of the dancing bears, some crib notes certainly won’t hurt. Where symbolism is concerned, the dancing bears are certainly nutrient-rich, chock full of good-for-you allusions, metaphors, and insinuations. Let’s get up close with Grateful Dead’s surreal and iconic dancing bears. Then you’re going to want to strap in for this one, because it’s going to be quite a ride. ![]() The culture is still going strong over 25 years after the band played their final concert, and it shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.Ĭheck out the our version for all generations at Old Bone Rule.Consider yourself a dyed-in-the-wool Deadhead? A lover of the cultish and mysterious? A fan of all things Ursa (that’s bear in Latin for the kids at the back)? It’s incredible to see the impact and influence that the Grateful Dead have had on American pop culture, both through their music and the art associated with it. This continued for 20+ years after the bear was first introduced, and still continues to this day. All of a sudden people were wearing the bears at Dead shows and elsewhere, and the symbol continued to gain momentum while also being free advertising for the band. Soon fans began to bootleg the original Grateful Dead bears as well as spin-off designs onto t-shirts, stickers, and whatever else they could dream up. It’s easy to see how the symbol became so heavily associated with the band, and have come to represent the music, the energy, and of course, the LSD. So people were tripping on Owsley’s dancing bear acid while watching the Grateful Dead, who had recently released a live album with the bears on the cover. It’s a lot more fun to imagine the bears dancing along to the music, though, so we’re happy to pretend that Bear never made that distinction.Īfter the release of the album, the dancing bears started appearing on Owsley Stanley’s blotter art, which also happened to be in heavy circulation at Grateful Dead concerts. Stanley later clarified on his website that while the bears are commonly perceived to be dancing, they are actually doing a high step march. There are five different Grateful Dead bears on the album cover, in colors red, orange, yellow, green, and blue, though bears have since appeared in many different colors in different Grateful Dead related artworks. ![]() ![]() Thomas used that leaden bear as his basis for the design, which features a more cartoon style bear doing the “dancing” motion. Before the album and the bears, there existed a 36-point lead slug that was used in printing as a font type. As the name implies, the live recordings that appear on the album were hand-picked from Stanley’s personal archives by Owsley himself, with minimal input from the band. The first appearance of the Grateful Dead bears in the public sphere was on the back cover of the Bear’s Choice album. He also designed the Steal Your Face logo in collaboration with Bob Thomas, and the Grateful Dead bears were inspired by his association with the band. That’s an entirely different story for another day, but basically, Bear Stanley was an extremely important person to both the Grateful Dead and the countercultural movement of the 1960s. He was basically the one who started the entire tape trading culture that surrounded the Grateful Dead, as he always recorded soundboard masters when he ran sound at a show, and inevitably the tapes ended up in the hands of Deadheads, and spread from there. ![]() Owsley “Bear” Stanley both engineered and recorded to tape many of the shows that the Grateful Dead performed in the 60s and 70s. In addition to being the band’s sound engineer in the early days, Stanley was also the chemist behind the creation and distribution of a large proportion of the LSD that was being consumed in the United States in the 1960s and beyond.
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