Stew Sallo: Tales of the Deadhead Cyclist

“The main thing about the book is the set of life lessons and principles that it teaches, derived out of the lyrics of Grateful Dead songs,” Stew Sallo says of his new self-help book/memoir/musical guide, The Deadhead Cyclist. The work presents 52 entries—keyed to each week of the year—in which he uses a Grateful Dead live show as a pedagogic tool, reflecting on the songs while sharing his personal experiences and discoveries.

Sallo, who attended his first Grateful Dead show at Winterland Ballroom on Oct. 19, 1974, while still a college student, transferred from UCLA to UC Santa Cruz as he availed himself of a more open lifestyle. After graduation, he remained in the area for over a decade, overseeing two publications, while founding an advertising and design agency. From there, he moved to Boulder, Colo., and launched the Boulder Weekly, which recently celebrated its 30th anniversary.

Throughout the years, he maintained a passion for the Grateful Dead coupled with an active lifestyle that the 68-year-old pursues to this day. While on a long-distance bicycle ride during a baseball tournament, he experienced an epiphany that yielded The Deadhead Cyclist.

“I’m not sure if people are enjoying the book because of the life lessons or if they’re enjoying the book because it gives them some guidance if they want to listen to 52 of the best Grateful Dead concerts ever performed, juried by someone who’s had a lot of experience listening to the Grateful Dead,” he observes. “I’ve gotten feedback in both areas.”

Before we talk about the book itself, what’s your general process of selecting a show before you go on a ride?

I usually go to “Today in Grateful Dead History” and I review the concerts that correspond to that date. There are only four days in the year where they didn’t play any show at all, so it’s easy to do that. There are also times when I rely on the Relisten.net app and website. I refer to it on my blog [deadheadcyclist. com], where there are live links embedded in the posts. I send people to what I consider to be the best version, which is usually a soundboard version because that’s what I like.

If I can’t find something I really want to listen to, I’ll think about the songs I want to hear and go through setlists. I’ve often wondered, “Am I ever going to get tired of listening to the Grateful Dead?” The answer is no, although there are certain songs that don’t always energize me for cycling in the way that I hope they will. Even at age 68, I’m pretty athletic and I do some intense rides, so it helps to be fueled by something other than caffeine. I like to say that I am fueled by the Grateful Dead.

Sometimes, I’ll rely on my favorite shows, like anything from the Spring ‘77 tour. There’s also a variety of New Year’s shows that I really like. The ‘76/‘77 show from the Cow Palace is one of my favorites. The closing of Winterland ‘78/‘79 is another one. So I will sometimes fall back on a show that I’ve been to or one that I know is particularly good.

Your book is structured over the course of a year with 52 chapters—one per week featuring a corresponding show. Did that approach come to you from the start?

No, at one point I envisioned writing a whole different book. The working title was Forever 59. This was around the time I was about to turn 60, when I realized that I was living a life that flies in the face of my actual age. I was doing over 200 rides a year. I was playing over 100 games of baseball a year. I was semi-retired from my job, but I still had my fingers and toes in the Boulder Weekly.

I was deeply involved in my passions. I was very fit for someone about to turn 60 years of age, and I was breaking all of the rules about the kind of life someone should be living at that age. They tell you that what you should be doing is accepting that you’re aging. They tell you that your decline is inevitable and that you’re not going to be able to do the things you’ve always loved doing.

That wasn’t my experience because I was eating impeccably, I was keeping myself in shape and I had a very youthful attitude. I wanted to document all that to help other people think about it. So I sat down and I started writing random chapters about diet, exercise and things of that nature. But there was nothing cohesive about the relationship between one chapter and another.

I was really getting frustrated because I knew there was something I wanted to convey, but I wasn’t feeling confident that I was conveying it in the way that I wanted. Then in March of 2017, I was in Las Vegas for a baseball tournament, and after the games, I would always go on a mountain bike ride in this little town outside of Las Vegas called Blue Diamond. I was riding my bike and listening to the March 13, 1985 show from the Berkeley Community Theater, which I attended. Then, all of a sudden, from above or from somewhere, the words “Deadhead Cyclist” came to me. They just arrived.

I’ll refer to the lyrics in the song “Crazy Fingers”: “Who can stop what must arrive now?/ Something new is waiting to be born.” Goosebumps kind of formed on the back of my neck when I heard those words, “Deadhead Cyclist,” because I knew that was the answer to what I was trying to do. That was the container of how I could present these ideas in a way that made sense in terms of putting a book together.

There’s a lookout point on this ride where I always stop because my dad taught me to stop and smell the roses. So I stopped at this lookout spot, got my iPhone out and I dialed up GoDaddy to see if deadheadcyclist.com was available. Sure enough, it was, and I knew at that moment that I was destined to become the Deadhead Cyclist and that I was going to be writing a book called The Deadhead Cyclist.

How did the form of the book crystallize?

As the owner/publisher of a weekly news magazine/media organization, I’m used to a weekly deadline. So I decided that the best way for me to write this book was to commit to a weekly post, and at the end of the year, I would have 52 posts. The challenge was that I started writing in April, but I wanted to present the book in chronological order—a virtual trip around the sun starting in January. So I had to rewrite some things in order for the book to begin in January.

Then the idea of “This Week in Grateful Dead History” came up. Since I wanted to take a lyric each week and riff off of that lyric, it made sense to me that if I made a pick of the week, it would add something of interest or authority to the book and create a context that people might find interesting.

Your narrative touches on many aspects of your life. At one point, you describe a moment where you realize that the Boulder Weekly holds deeper meaning to you in terms of its social and cultural value than you had originally anticipated.

Initially, I thought this was going to be the business opportunity of a lifetime. When I originally contacted the chambers of commerce in various communities where I might want to relocate, I learned that Boulder didn’t have a weekly newspaper. That didn’t make sense to me because Boulder is exactly the kind of town where there would be a weekly newspaper. It’s a college town and an educated place. So it was as if the same voice that later told me I had to write a book called The Deadhead Cyclist said to me, “You’ve got to move to Boulder, Colorado, and start the Boulder Weekly.”

I remember saying to somebody that I was going to do this for 10 years and that’s all I could do because it’s a very stressful job. Well, I said I would do it for 10 years, and now, 30 years have gone by. [Laughs.]

I was always enamored with the publishing process and holding a print product in my hands. But shortly after starting the Boulder Weekly, I became enamored with doing something that really mattered and making a difference in the world.

It continues to do that, with increasing underdog status. Maybe there will be a rebound of true journalism, but right now we’re dealing with some serious problems in the world of journalism with information and misinformation. We’re seeing the devastating results in so many different ways.

In the book, you emphasize that you were drawn to the music of the Grateful Dead before you saw them live in October of 1974. However, it took a little while for you to achieve that appreciation.

There’s a chapter in which I compare the Grateful Dead and Quentin Tarantino as being acquired tastes. I refer to my own experience seeing the movie Pulp Fiction for the first time and the first time I listened to the album American Beauty. In both instances, I just didn’t get it. However, I gave each of them another chance, and I think this is the kind of thing that we all need to do more of. There’s so much tribalism going on right now, where people have made decisions about how they view the world in a “Don’t confuse me with the facts, my mind is made up” sort of way. I think we need to be more open-minded.

In the summer of ‘73, my best friend from high school, who had gone off to Berkeley, came back to Anaheim for the summer, and I came back to Anaheim from UCLA. So I was still steeped in the culture of Southern California and he became steeped in the culture of Northern California—or really central California, but we call it Northern California. I had listened to American Beauty, but I didn’t get it. At that time, I was into prog-rock stuff like Jethro Tull, Yes and Emerson, Lake and Palmer. So the country stylings of American Beauty just didn’t appeal to me initially, although now it’s the one album I would take with me if I was ever marooned on a desert island.

But then he came home and played the Skull and Roses album for me, the one that was supposed to be called Skull Fuck. The “Not Fade Away” into “Goin’ Down the Road” just threw me over the edge. I couldn’t believe the brilliance of it. Then I started listening to Europe ‘72, Workingman’s Dead and Wake of the Flood, which was the newest album. That’s when I really became enamored of the Grateful Dead and I couldn’t wait to go to my first Grateful Dead concert. I only went to one of those shows in October of ‘74, but if I’d known then what I know now, I would’ve gone to all five of those shows, especially the Oct. 18, 1974 show. There’s this absolutely phenomenal “Dark Star” into “Morning Dew” in the Oct. 18, 1974 show. I highly recommend it.

Another sentiment you share is that even though there are plenty of people who look back at college or high school as their peak years, your peak year was last year, which is something that happens regularly for you.

If people get anything from this book, I think it’s that life can be better if you develop an outstanding set of principles to live by and really commit yourself to that set of principles. You can do that with any passions that move you. It doesn’t have to be the Grateful Dead and cycling. It doesn’t have to be baseball. It could be gardening or weaving or community service, whatever your passions are. If you live your life within the context of your passions and stay true to your passions, out of those passions you will develop a beautiful set of life principles that are both universal and personal, to help you live the best life that you can. If you can live your life and your passions that way, you really can’t go wrong.