“Barnes writes well… There is enough well-documented research to persuade fans and newbies alike… This is one circus that has lessons to impart.”
—Boston Globe
“Quite possibly the first love letter to a band-cum-business book, Barnes’s energetic series of lessons for business success tout the Grateful Dead as unconventional business mavens.”
—Publishers Weekly
“The author is much more than a Grateful Dead obsessed fan and the band knew how to make money—lots of it… Barnes is a natural at storytelling, offering solid examples of the Dead’s business philosophy told through entertaining and telling anecdotes from band members and their crew.”
“It is Barry Barnes’s not-too-outrageous conceit that the Grateful Dead have something to say about running a business. Jerry Garcia was no mogul (a fact for which his fans will rejoice). Yet perhaps in these life lessons the executive will learn to loosen his tie, widen his gaze, and rescue his bottom line by not, for a change, obsessing over it. I have read many business manuals. This is one of the few I will remember.”
—Roger Lowenstein, New York Times bestselling author of The End of Wall Street
“Barnes deconstructs one of the most fascinating rock bands of our time and uncovers some very powerful and unexpected lessons in innovation, marketing, and entrepreneurship. If you want your business to go on a long, strange trip—in the best possible way—this is the book for you.”
—Mitch Joel, president of Twist Image and bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation
“ ‘Decentralized decision-making,’ ‘virtual community,’ ‘socially conscious business model’—none of these phrases would normally be associated with a successful rock band. Yet Dr. Barnes draws brilliant parallels between Jerry and ‘the boys’ and those corporations that have risen to the top of the U.S. food chain.”
—Marshall Goldsmith, New York Times bestselling author of Mojo and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
“The Dead’s extreme fondness for idiosyncrasy earned them a reputation as business naifs. But irony of ironies, by persevering with policies rejected by their ‘smarter’ brethren, they ended up as a stunning business success story. The best part was that they succeeded because of, not despite, those decisions. EVERYTHING I KNOW tells you how they did it.”
—Dennis McNally, Grateful Dead biographer and author of A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead
“In a culture that has come to regard humanity as a customer base and nothing else, we who followed and did business with the Grateful Dead have done our best to behave as a community, with friendship and mutual comfort as default objectives and values. Barry Barnes knows this and explains it warmly, concisely, and convincingly.”
—David Gans, musician, radio producer, music producer, author, Deadhead
“Barnes fuses his decades of deep thought, detailed research, and passionate immersion… This is the book for executives, managers, and anyone who wants to really understand the power of the Dead’s fascinating, enduring, and iconic example as an artistic and commercial enterprise.”
—Nicholas Meriwether, Grateful Dead archivist, University of California, Santa Cruz