How did a college kid named Peter Shapiro turn a no-budget music documentary into an empire? It has a lot to do with Jerry Garcia and Co.
Since the Grateful Dead's three-decade journey came to a sudden, sad end following Jerry Garcia's death in the summer of 1995, their hippie-wizard reputation has undergone an unexpected renovation. The Dead, much to the surviving members' surprise, have become, of all things, business role models. One young hippie intuited this lesson—that the Dead's grassroots business model might have lessons to teach in an age of increasing cultural fragmentation—earlier than most. Peter Shapiro got his mind blown when he saw the Dead as a college student in the early 1990s and decided to make a movie about the traveling circus of fans that followed the group from show to show. Not long after, he took over ownership of Wetlands, a storied hippie-leaning rock club in New York's Tribeca neighborhood that hosted everyone from Pearl Jam and Phish to the Roots and the Dave Matthews Band, before it closed in the wake of September 11th.
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