Grateful Dead, who’ll receive the Kennedy Center Honors on Sunday, have a long history of philanthropy, and in a new interview with Billboard they talk about their motivation for giving back to the public.
“We’re part of a community, and so the better the community is doing, the better we’re doing,” Bobby Weir says of their mission to help, noting that the late Jerry Garcia “always used to say, ‘You get some, you give some back.’ It just makes sense.”
“We help people and give them stuff. It’s just a good way to live life,” Bill Kreutzmann adds. “I wish that more people in the world lived life that way, instead of wars and bombings.”
The members of The Dead will also be celebrated for their philanthropy by the Recording Academy in February as the MusiCares Person of the Year.
“It all follows in that tradition of teaching the industry what it should know about,” Mickey Hart says. “That’s that Grateful Dead kind of style, where we just did it because we knew it was the right thing to do.”
He adds, “If we wanted to do this the rest of our lives was the idea, we have to do these things, because people support us — and we reciprocate.”
The band members also reiterated to Billboard their previous revelation that prior to Phil Lesh‘s October death they were making plans to reunite for their 60th anniversary in 2025, noting Lesh was excited about the possibility.
“(Phil) had a dream that he was going to get to play with us three one more time,” Kreutzmann notes. “And that didn’t happen — but that’s how it goes.”
The Kennedy Center Honors will air on CBS Dec. 22.
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