Rock Scully

Rock Scully, co-author with David Dalton of the book [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316777129 Living With The Dead] , was the manager of the band The Grateful Dead from 1965 to 1985. He was a close friend of Jerry Garcia and may be one of the few people who knew the real Jerry up close and personal. Although he receives very little credit from the band, it is largely because of him that the Dead made it big.

Living in The Haight before and during the infamous Summer of Love, Scully first saw the band play at one of Ken Kesey's notorious Acid Tests under the name "The Warlocks." When he was first introduced he thought that they were the ugliest band he had ever seen, and that they were going no where in the music industry. Little to say, he signed on as the band's manager almost immediately. He started to book the band at small local venues like The Fillmore, a place where many bands such as Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, and Quicksilver Messenger Service got their start.

After 1967, the Dead started to hit it off big and Scully began to move up in the music industry, even getting the Dead into concerts like Woodstock and the Monterey Pop Festival. He started getting them record deals with Warner Brothers, and getting tours and albums together. He led the band through good times and bad times until in 1985, he became concerned with his and Jerry's abuse of heroin and called a doctor to come look at Jerry while he checked himself into rehab. The band fired him as their manager saying that he was stealing Jerry from the band.

According to what Scully says in the book, he wasn't "stealing Jerry," Jerry was self absorbed in his heroin addiction, and wouldn't listen to anyone but Scully. Afraid of damaging his friendship with Jerry he never told anyone how bad their addiction was until he quit the band in 1985.