speaking as a long time pro musician i can say that musical "heirarchy" within any group can be a difficult if not impossible thing to pin point. i've been on the bus since '71 so as an elder head and musician IMO all the members of the grateful dead are Equally Influential in the direction the music takes. there is no leader per se. the directions the music can take with this type of approach are endless, example; mickey and billy might lock a groove and the rest of the guys jump on it . . . or not, . . . bobby hits an interesting guitar riff and jerry takes it to the next level . . or not, . . . phil plays a counter melody in "playing" next thing you know we have morphed into who-knowa-what and so on. it takes fearless musicianship to pull this kind of stuff off. by that i mean, you have to be unafraid of the inevitable "train wrecks" that will happen (often in front of thousands of fans) in order to get to that transcendental level when the musian becomes one with the music.

you become the music and in those moments nothing else but the music exisits.

art is what we decorate our space with, music is what we decorate our time with. this is well known. the grateful dead are masters of both time and space.

a long time ago on tour we used to say that of any 5 shows, two would suck, two would be pretty good, and one would be indescribable beyond belief.

the indesribable quality of the music is only attainable when there is no leader, all the band members are equally influential.

sorry if this is rambling a bit, just my two cents, if you get confused . . .

listen to the music play.

power to the peaceful, see you in chicago.