Joan Didion on The Grateful Dead

I went out one afternoon to where the Grateful Dead rehearse, behind Bob’s Floating Homes on the Sausalito waterfront. (CORRECTION: Don McKay’s Floating Homes.) It was late in the afternoon and there were 3 girls sitting around listening –– the kind of girls who travel with rock groups –– all pretty –– one with no makeup other than enormous thick eyelashes, a blond with dirty bare feet and a cotton shift, a golden girl; one a little girl in a sailor suit who danced by herself with her eyes closed while the boys rehearsed; the third a kind of baby fat soft-brown-haired girl in a blue duffel coat. I asked two of them if they worked with the group. “No, I just come out here a lot,” one said; the other said “No, I just sort of know them.” The boys were drinking Cokes out of cans, and there were some quarts of beer on top of the piano, and behind the piano one of the girls was making sandwiches from a loaf of French bread and cheese and a jar of mayonnaise. She offered me one. When I first came in the girls assumed I just wanted to listen and made a place for me.