The Grateful Dead’s legendary San Francisco Halloween shows

A Grateful Dead concert was always as much a celebration and a ritual as it was a musical performance — that was why fans called them shows. From their early days performing at author Ken Kesey’s happenings the Acid Tests, the band knew that a concert could be something more, and they made events such as New Year’s Eve and Mardi Gras grand spectacles, replete with parades, balloon drops and more. But the festival that many Deadheads loved the most was Halloween, one that also had deep roots in the band’s history.

That began in the ’60s, when the Dead were still ensconced in the Haight. Many hippies remembered Halloween 1967 as a peak of the era, when the Dead performed at Winterland with their fellow bands Quicksilver Messenger Service and Big Brother and the Holding Company at an event dubbed “Trip or Freak.” But for the Dead, the most historic Halloween of the era was the year before: the “Dance of Death Costume Ball,” held at California Hall on Polk Street, with Quicksilver Messenger Service, folk singer Mimi Fariña — and, according to contemporary accounts, “six authentic witches.”

It almost didn’t happen. That night, Ken Kesey and his friends the Merry Pranksters held an event called the Acid Test Graduation, which was originally supposed to feature the Dead. As the band who had provided the soundtrack for Kesey’s multimedia extravaganzas, the Dead were the centerpiece of the Acid Tests, Kesey famously calling them the “faster-than-light drive” for the proceedings. But the Dead’s absence was not the only thing that made the Acid Test Graduation unusual. Kesey had been arrested and was out on bail, after promising the judge that he would hold the event to urge young people to “go beyond LSD” — hence the name, the Acid Test Graduation. Kesey’s original plan was to hold it at Winterland, which would have made it the biggest Test he had ever promoted.

But LSD had just been outlawed, which marked a sea change from the heyday of the Tests. That was only part of why the Acid Test Graduation was different. When the Tests had begun in late 1965, the San Francisco music scene was just emerging; by the time Dead and Kesey appeared at the “Whatever It Is” festival at San Francisco State in early October, the scene was in full flower, and the Dead were playing the Fillmore and the Avalon regularly.

So when Kesey announced his grand plan to stage what most saw as a final Acid Test, rumors swirled. Some claimed that it would be powered by enough LSD to ensure a truly epic experience for all; the more conspiratorially minded believed that the real purpose was to swab the place with LSD so that the convention of California Democrats scheduled to meet the next day in the hall would have their own psychedelic awakening.

That was enough for promoter Bill Graham, who had agreed to let Kesey use Winterland, to pull the plug. The Pranksters gamely rebounded, and the Graduation moved to a South of Market warehouse on Harriet Street. Preparations for that were in full sway when writer Tom Wolfe appeared, beginning his research for what became his bestselling account, “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,” which covers these events in superb detail. But at the time, the idea of history was anathema to the reality of the Now, which was the essence of the psychedelic mindset and a central tenet of hippie philosophy.

No band better captured that in their music and musings than the Dead. Articulate and eloquent, the band captivated the reporters who had begun to take notice of the strange stirrings in the Haight. That attention was a boon for a young band but it could also make for an uncomfortable spotlight, and being linked to a public outrage like the one Graham feared could derail or even destroy a career.

The bigger point, however, was that by fall 1966, the Dead had forged their own path. They would forever point to the Acid Tests as formative, and remain close friends with Kesey for the rest of their lives, but the Graduation marked a turning point. When the Dead played their own show at California Hall, it was a paying gig — one that also claimed a cultural rite, Halloween, as their own.

The Dead played 11 more Halloween shows. San Franciscans remember the 1980 show at the Warfield, part of a legendary run, with fondness, and especially the 1991 Oakland Coliseum Arena show, the last Bay Area Halloween show, when Kesey gave a powerful eulogy for Graham, who had just died.

But the 1966 Halloween show remains an epochal moment in the Dead’s history. Instead of performing at the Acid Test Graduation, the Dead headlined their own celebration, a statement that marked their own graduation from the Acid Test.