715 Ashbury St (Photo by sf_daily_photo 2016)
In his autobiography, “Deal: My Three Decades of Drumming, Dreams, and Drugs With the Grateful Dead,” founding drummer Bill Kreutzmann looks back at his life with the band. In this excerpt, he remembers life at 710 Ashbury Street....Our place on Ashbury Street was the same boarding house where (band managers Rock) Scully and (Danny) Rifkin first set up the band’s office, while managing both the band and the house. It was no coincidence that when we needed to leave Camp Lagunitas for the real world, rooms there mysteriously began to open up until we took over the entire building. “We knew the management.” And that’s how 710 Ashbury became the Grateful Dead house.
There was another Victorian across the street, at 715 Ashbury Street that, while not nearly as famous, is still a part of the story. Sue Swanson and Ron Rakow, both eventual Grateful Dead employees, lived there. So did Alton Kelley and Stanley Mouse, the famous psychedelic poster artists who did several of our album covers and whose art remains a big part of our identity today — most notably the “Skull and Roses” image. Also of note: 715 became somewhat of a nest for Hells Angels. So you had the Grateful Dead on the one side of that street, and the Hells Angels on the other. Kinda a nice juxtaposition....(SFGate 6/23/15)
There was another Victorian across the street, at 715 Ashbury Street that, while not nearly as famous, is still a part of the story. Sue Swanson and Ron Rakow, both eventual Grateful Dead employees, lived there. So did Alton Kelley and Stanley Mouse, the famous psychedelic poster artists who did several of our album covers and whose art remains a big part of our identity today — most notably the “Skull and Roses” image. Also of note: 715 became somewhat of a nest for Hells Angels. So you had the Grateful Dead on the one side of that street, and the Hells Angels on the other. Kinda a nice juxtaposition....(SFGate 6/23/15)
