Grateful Dead Trivia
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97 free Grateful Dead trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
46 free Grateful Dead trivia questions with answers. Grateful Dead trivia for Deadheads and the curious. The quiz starts in Palo Alto in 1965 with the Warlocks and Ken Kesey's Acid Tests, follows the band through Owsley Stanley's Wall of Sound, the folk-country turn of Workingman's Dead and American Beauty, the pyramids in 1978, Cornell '77 and the surprise Top 40 hit 'Touch of Grey', and ends with Fare Thee Well, Dead & Company at Sphere and the record for most Top 40 albums. Along the way it asks about the members (Garcia's missing finger, Pigpen's whiskey, Phil Lesh's six-string bass, Bob Weir's birth name), the iconography (dancing bears, Steal Your Face), the tapers, and guests from Branford Marsalis to Bruce Hornsby. Easy questions come first; the harder ones will separate the casual listener from someone who knows the setlists. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the band, its members, albums and songs, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 97 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Grateful Dead grew out of a jug band based in which California city?
Palo Alto
Palo Alto: Garcia, Weir and friends played the town's folk clubs as a jug band in 1964 and plugged in the next year; the group only moved up to San Francisco in 1966.
Q 02What was the band's original name before they became the Grateful Dead?
The Warlocks
They began as the Warlocks in May 1965 and dropped the name late that year after learning another group had already recorded as the Warlocks.
Q 03Where did Jerry Garcia find the name 'Grateful Dead'?
In a dictionary
In a dictionary: Garcia was leafing through one at Phil Lesh's house when the phrase 'grateful dead' jumped out; the entry describes a folktale motif of a soul repaying whoever arranged its burial.
Q 04The first show under the name Grateful Dead, in December 1965, was at one of whose Acid Tests?
Ken Kesey's
Ken Kesey's: the novelist and his Merry Pranksters threw the all-night LSD parties while the drug was still legal, with the Dead as house band; Tom Wolfe chronicled them in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.
Q 05What are Grateful Dead fans called?
Deadheads
The name was made official by a notice inside the 1971 Skull and Roses album asking 'Dead Heads' to write in.
Q 06Which founding Grateful Dead member played keyboards and harmonica and died in 1973?
Ron 'Pigpen' McKernan
Ron 'Pigpen' McKernan, the band's blues-loving first frontman, shunned the psychedelics his bandmates took in favour of whiskey and wine; he died in March 1973, aged 27.
Q 07Who was the Grateful Dead's non-performing lyricist from 1967, and Garcia's main writing partner?
Robert Hunter
Robert Hunter first played folk gigs with Garcia as the duo Bob & Jerry, then left the stage to write the words for songs such as 'Ripple' and 'Uncle John's Band'; the Rock Hall inducted him with the band.
Q 08Which instrument did Phil Lesh play in the Grateful Dead?
Bass guitar
Bass guitar: Lesh was a classically trained trumpeter who had never touched a bass when Garcia recruited him, and he went on to develop a melodic, counterpoint-driven style.
Q 09The Grateful Dead's only Top 40 single was which 1987 song?
Touch of Grey
'Touch of Grey' reached No. 9 in 1987, 17 years after the band first made the Hot 100; the hit and its MTV video brought the Dead a new, younger generation of fans.
Q 10What did the MTV video for the Dead's only Top 40 hit famously feature?
Skeleton puppets of the group
Skeleton puppets of the group mime the song before the real band takes over; the clip was shot in front of a live crowd after a 1987 concert at Laguna Seca.
Q 11Which 1987 album contained the Grateful Dead's only Top 40 hit?
In the Dark
In the Dark was the band's first studio album since 1980; made after Garcia's recovery from a 1986 diabetic coma, it finally gave the Dead a Top 10 album and single.
Q 12Which two 1970 Grateful Dead albums turned toward folk and country songwriting?
Workingman's Dead / American Beauty
Workingman's Dead / American Beauty: the pair traded long psychedelic jams for short acoustic songs built on vocal harmonies, a return to the folk and jug-band roots the players had started from.
Q 13Which American Beauty song was released as a single, backed with 'Ripple'?
Truckin'
Q 21At which 1973 festival did the Dead play to their biggest crowd, an estimated 600,000?
Watkins Glen Summer Jam
Watkins Glen Summer Jam: an estimated 600,000 people came to the New York racetrack, and so many arrived a day early that the Dead's soundcheck turned into a two-set concert.
Q 22In 1978 the Grateful Dead played three nights at which world monument?
The Great Pyramid of Giza
The Great Pyramid of Giza: the Dead played at its foot for three nights in September 1978, shipped their gear to Egypt at their own expense, and gave the proceeds to the country's antiquities department and a local charity.
Q 23Which Grateful Dead concert recording was added to the National Recording Registry?
'Truckin'' was the album's single, with 'Ripple' on the B-side; one verse retells the band's own drug bust at a New Orleans hotel in January 1970.
Q 14What did the Grateful Dead's manager Lenny Hart do in 1970?
Skipped town with much of their money
Skipped town with much of their money: Lenny Hart, the father of drummer Mickey Hart, had been trusted to run the band's business; he was later caught and convicted of embezzlement.
Q 15What was the name of the enormous custom PA rig the Dead toured with in 1974?
The Wall of Sound
The Wall of Sound towered behind the band as hundreds of speakers, giving each instrument its own channel; hauling it cost so much that the Dead retired it within the year.
Q 16Owsley 'Bear' Stanley, the band's early soundman, was also famous for what?
Being one of the largest LSD suppliers
Being one of the largest LSD suppliers made Owsley rich enough to bankroll the young band while he built and ran their sound system.
Q 17Who was the only woman ever to be a full-time member of the Grateful Dead?
Donna Jean Godchaux
Donna Jean Godchaux, a Muscle Shoals session singer heard on Elvis Presley's 'Suspicious Minds', introduced her pianist husband Keith to Garcia in 1971; the Dead hired them both.
Q 18What is the name of the Grateful Dead's red, white and blue skull-and-lightning-bolt logo?
Steal Your Face
'Steal Your Face' began as a mark Owsley Stanley and artist Bob Thomas devised so the band's equipment could be picked out backstage; it later fronted the 1976 live album of that name.
Q 19What did the Grateful Dead famously permit that most bands forbade?
Fans taping their concerts
Fans taping their concerts built the Dead's following: traded tapes spread the music without radio hits, and the band eventually gave tapers their own section behind the soundboard.
Q 20Roughly how many concerts did the Grateful Dead play between 1965 and 1995?
2,300
2,300 is the usual round figure: the band toured almost every year for three decades and changed the set list nightly, which is why fans followed whole tours instead of catching one show.
Cornell University, 8 May 1977
Cornell University, 8 May 1977: the Barton Hall show was traded on fan tapes for decades before the Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry; an official release came only in 2017.
Q 24At which stadium did the Grateful Dead play their final concert, on 9 July 1995?
Soldier Field, Chicago
Soldier Field, Chicago hosted the last show on 9 July 1995; Garcia died exactly one month later, and the surviving members retired the Grateful Dead name.
Q 25Where did Jerry Garcia die in August 1995?
A rehab centre in Forest Knolls
A rehab centre in Forest Knolls: Garcia had checked himself into Serenity Knolls to fight his drug addiction and was found dead there of a heart attack on 9 August 1995, days after turning 53.
Q 26What happened to Jerry Garcia's right middle finger?
Most of it was cut off with an axe
Most of it was cut off with an axe when he was a small boy and his older brother Tiff was chopping wood at the family's mountain cabin; Garcia went on to play lead guitar regardless.
Q 27Which ice cream maker launched a Cherry Garcia flavour in 1987 in tribute to the Dead's guitarist?
Ben & Jerry's
Ben & Jerry's of Vermont launched Cherry Garcia in 1987 as a tribute to a musician who was still alive and touring, the year after he survived a diabetic coma.
Q 28Which pop-rock guitarist joined Weir, Hart and Kreutzmann to form Dead & Company in 2015?
John Mayer
John Mayer became a Deadhead after Pandora played him 'Althea' in 2011; Dead & Company debuted in October 2015 with Mayer on guitar beside Weir, Hart, Kreutzmann, Oteil Burbridge and Jeff Chimenti.
Q 29Dead & Company played a 30-show residency in 2024 at which Las Vegas venue?
Sphere
Sphere: the 'Dead Forever' residency opened in May 2024, less than a year after the band's farewell tour, and grew from 18 announced shows to 30 before returning in 2025.
Q 30Which pianist joined the Dead as a temporary member in 1990, alongside new keyboardist Vince Welnick?
Bruce Hornsby
Bruce Hornsby toured with the Dead from 1990 to 1992 while Vince Welnick settled in, sat in with them for years afterwards, and gave the speech inducting the band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.