Behind-the-scenes photos of the Grateful Dead in their early years

The Grateful Dead poses at The Panhandle park in San Francisco in 1967. From left are Bill Kreutzmann, Bob Weir, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh and Mickey Hart.

When the Grateful Dead started out in 1965, they were a neighborhood band. They played in bedrooms and basements — far from the stadium shows and hordes of fans we associate with them today.

Many of their early performances were at the Acid Tests. These parties centered on the use of LSD, which was still legal in California until October 1966. Here, the Dead found their footing and developed a style that was deeply improvisational.

“The Dead were free to play their music without the need for the standard tropes of the time,” music journalist David Gans writes in a new book, “The Grateful Dead by Jim Marshall.”

From left, Lesh, Kreutzmann and Garcia perform at a free Grateful Dead concert on San Francisco’s Haight Street in 1968.

Hart plays the drums at a Haight Street concert in 1968.

Weir plays the guitar at the Northern California Folk-Rock Festival in San Jose in 1968.

Marshall, a legendary music photographer, was no stranger to the San Francisco music scene when he first encountered the Dead at the 1966 Trips Festival. He bought his first Leica camera in 1959 and set out in the city’s North Beach neighborhood. Compelled to document what was happening around him, he started photographing in the jazz clubs around town.

He established himself as a photographer and made album art for jazz greats like Miles Davis and John Coltrane early in his career. When a nascent hippie counterculture began to emerge, Marshall was right there in it, making pictures.

“The Grateful Dead knew who he was — and that if he took their photograph, it would be a great photograph,” Amelia Davis, Marshall’s longtime assistant, told CNN.

Lesh and his girlfriend, dancer Rosie McGee, hang out in the dressing room of the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco in 1966. Amelia Davis, the longtime assistant of photographer Jim Marshall, said the women in the Dead’s circle never really got credit for what they did. They were an important part of the Dead community and supported the band, she said.

As the band grew, their live performances became wildly successful, more than their studio work ever was. No two shows were the same, as the Dead played different songs each night — and played them differently every time. While you’d never go to multiple shows of a typical rock tour, Gans said, you had to go to multiple Dead shows just to see what was new. The band’s unique performances eventually drew an audience “big enough to allow them to survive on their own terms,” he said.

“They created a form of music making that was deeply compelling to the people who were genetically suited to it and was of zero interest to the people who didn’t get it,” Gans said.

Marshall primarily photographed the band in the Bay Area, but he also traveled to shows on the road, including the Monterey Pop Festival and Woodstock. He’d make thousands of photos of the Dead over the years and meticulously file them away in his archive alongside pictures of other icons such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Johnny Cash.

The Grateful Dead flick off Marshall in 1966. “They deeply respected each other and they gave each other s–t relentlessly,” David Gans said of the relationship between the band and Marshall. “That’s kind of the way it is in the manly, manly world of psychedelic rock and roll.”

McKernan performs at the Family Dog on the Great Highway, a venue in San Francisco, in 1970.

Jerry Garcia is photographed in 1970. He died from a heart attack in 1995, and the Dead disbanded a few months later.

Though not a hippie by any means — he wore his hair short and always sported a button-down with a corduroy blazer — Marshall was still a “world-class misfit” who belonged in the “freak milieu” of San Francisco, as Gans puts it.

“You just had to be a valid character like the rest of them,” Gans said. “Jim was every bit the giant in his field as his subjects were in theirs, and everybody knew that.”

Because of this, Marshall was able to get great access to the musicians he photographed. Davis said they trusted him to take great photographs and never show them in compromising positions.

Lesh embraces McGee at the Northern California Folk-Rock Festival in 1968. Marshall is reflected in Lesh’s sunglasses.

McKernan talks with Janis Joplin at the Northern California Folk-Rock Festival in 1968.

Garcia, Carolyn Adams and their dog, Lady, sit on the steps of the Dead’s communal home, 710 Ashbury Street, in 1967. Garcia and Adams, nicknamed “Mountain Girl,” married in 1981.

Weir makes a funny face at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967.

Marshall’s photos are close-up, shot with a short, fixed-length lens using available light. During the shows, he was right in there with the band. He would elbow to the front of the pack, doing anything he needed to get the shot he wanted. The camera was his instrument.

“Jim knew his equipment so well that it was second nature to him,” Davis said. “When he took these photos, he composed them in the camera. … He knew exactly what he was photographing, and he always got the shot.”

Being in tune with the Dead helped.

“He was improvising with them on stage and vibing off of them with his camera,” Davis said. “He was just as much a part of that as they were.”

Weir, Garcia and Jack Casady, the bassist of Jefferson Airplane, at the Newport Pop Festival in Costa Mesa, California, in 1968.

You can see it in the photos. They’re intimate and honest, like the viewer is right there with the band — a frozen moment in time.

Davis and Gans said Marshall’s Grateful Dead photos are special not only because they show the band performing on stage, but because they capture the musicians as people, too. We see them goofing off, hanging out at their home at 710 Ashbury and interacting with other San Francisco artists.

“They were great performers and hugely instrumental in improvisational music, but they were also human beings,” Davis said. “It was this amazing band, but they were also very human.”

McKernan is photographed at the band’s 710 Ashbury home in 1967. He sang and played the keyboard, harmonica and percussion instruments.

Garcia smokes during the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967.

Garcia and Weir play at the Northern California Folk-Rock Festival in 1968.

Deadheads, as the band’s fans are called, like to say “the music never stopped,” referencing a song from the Dead’s vast catalog. They’re right. Even though the days of Acid Tests and street shows are long gone, Gans said the community now is bigger now than it was even at the time frontman Jerry Garcia died in 1995.

This weekend, thousands of Deadheads are gathering at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park to celebrate 60 years of the band’s music. Dead & Company, a spinoff band featuring original members Bob Weir and Mickey Hart, are carrying the torch with three days of shows and the music that is loved by so many.

“The Grateful Dead by Jim Marshall: Photos and Stories from the Formative Years, 1966–1977,” published by Chronicle Books, is available for preorder.