Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann has a crazy story about LSD and playing for Playboy


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Whether or not you're a Deadhead, you'll want to check out Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann's madcap and highly entertaining story that he told on Conan about the time the Dead played a Hugh Hefner TV show on CBS, Playboy After Dark. As the band was setting up, Kreutzmann told Conan O'Brien, he started to hear crazy things from the TV crew, about cameras out of focus and mics not on. After looking around, "I had this strange suspicion," he said, and he finally figured out that famed LSD maker Owsley Stanley had dosed the 150-cup crew coffee pot. The entire crew was tripping on acid. "It wasn't illegal in 1967," Kreutzmann said when Conan suggested that must be some kind of crime.
Kreutzmann, who has a new memoir out, also discussed how Jerry Garcia came up with the name for The Grateful Dead, how everybody hated it, and geeked out on Dungeons & Dragons with Patton Oswald. Watch below. —Peter Weber
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A free daily digest of the biggest news stories of the day - and the best features from our website
Peter Weber is a senior editor at TheWeek.com, and has handled the editorial night shift since the website launched in 2008. A graduate of Northwestern University, Peter has worked at Facts on File and The New York Times Magazine. He speaks Spanish and Italian and plays bass and rhythm cello in an Austin rock band. Follow him on Twitter.
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