Get Ready for Grateful Dead Skateboards

Wine, snowboards also among new merchandising deals
By Matt Cantor,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 11, 2011 3:12 PM CDT
Get Ready for Grateful Dead Skateboards
Members of the Grateful Dead pose in a 1985 photo in Marin County, Calif.   (AP Photo)

The Dead are looking for new ways to live on, and they’ve settled on skateboards. In a new business deal, remaining members of the Grateful Dead have agreed to put their logos on a range of new items, including Wines That Rock, Dregs skateboards, and Burton snowboards. But they’re not just selling out: They agreed to the merchandising plan under the supervision of a record exec who’s a big Deadhead himself, the Los Angeles Times reports.

And it’s about more than the money, says the senior VPof Grateful Dead Properties at Rhino Records, who won over the band when he sang one of their rarities for them. “The band wants to turn on that 18- to 25-year-old audience.” Adds band member Mickey Hart: “What we've generated—this energy, this music—is never supposed to end with the last note.” And they’ve been choosy about the merchandise, having ruled out sanitary napkins, caskets, and rolling papers, for instance. “I go to sleep at night and know our legacy is not being plundered by some evil corporation,” says Hart. (More Grateful Dead stories.)

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