Dennis McNally at Bagdad Theater

Dennis McNally is the Grateful Dead's authorized biographer and longtime publicist. He toured with Jerry Garcia and the band from 1984-1995 and in 2002 McNally published the highly anticipated A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead (a New York Times best-seller). In 2016 McNally edited the interview compilation Jerry on Jerry: The Unpublished Jerry Garcia Interviews.  
McNally's debut book was Desolate Angel: Jack Kerouac the Beat Generation and America published in 1979. He was the first archivist for Bill Graham Presents in 1983 and an award-winning historian of the San Francisco counterculture and music scene. He is also the author of On Highway 61: Music Race and the Evolution of Cultural Freedom published in 2016.  
McNally's newest book The Last Great Dream: How Bohemians Became Hippies and Created the Sixties was published in May 2025. McNally chronicles the 1960s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco and its influence in other cities the community's devotion to an alternative culture that rejected war racism and consumerism and advocated peace and a new relationship to the planet in pursuit of transcendental consciousness. McNally describes how these values were expressed in music especially by the Grateful Dead and how this legendary band and their musical successors still influence the cultural and political landscape today.

You may also like the following events from McMenamins:

• This Saturday, 9th August, 02:00 pm, Olympic Club Summer BBQ in Centralia
• Next Friday, 15th August, 08:00 pm, McMenamins Tacoma History Ball in Tacoma
• Next Saturday, 16th August, 11:00 am, 29th Annual Lighthouse Brewfest in Lincoln City

Also check out other Entertainment events in Portland, Music events in Portland.