Jerry Garcia, the guitarist and de facto leader of the Grateful Dead, was born in San Francisco on 1 August 1942, and this article marks the anniversary by tracing his path from a musical upbringing to becoming an unwilling icon of 1960s counterculture. A virtuoso multi-instrumentalist known for extended improvisation, Garcia fronted a band that helped define the psychedelic era and laid the groundwork for jam-band music, even though he personally resisted being cast as a countercultural figurehead.

Garcia's father was a jazz musician who died when Jerry was young, while his mother played piano; a family love of singing shaped him early on. After swapping an accordion for an electric guitar as a teenager, a brief Army stint and a serious 1961 car crash pushed him to commit fully to music, leading to key friendships with future collaborators Robert Hunter, Phil Lesh and Bob Weir. By 1965, after discovering LSD and adding bassist Lesh and drummer Bill Kreutzmann, the group settled on the name Grateful Dead and toured almost continuously until Garcia's death in 1995, building a devoted "Deadhead" following along the way.