An article traces the origins of the Grateful Dead's genre-blending style to the influences Bob Weir and Jerry Garcia bonded over before the band existed, most notably 1950s jug band music and the harmony-driven rock of the Everly Brothers. Weir has said the pair deliberately modelled themselves on the Everly Brothers, whose gentler, harmony-rich take on rock had fallen out of fashion after the duo's acrimonious split, and that he and Garcia hoped to revive that style. This helps explain why the Grateful Dead's sound became so hard to pin down, as it grew from a deliberate fusion of older, fading traditions rather than a single genre template.

Weir and Garcia first connected over jug music at Dana Morgan's Music Store, going on to form Mother McCree's Upton Jug Champions before evolving into the Grateful Dead. Weir has recalled that he and Garcia "patterned ourselves after The Everly Brothers," noting their similar vocal range let them trade high and low parts much like the Everly Brothers' close harmonies. Publicist Dennis McNally has said the band's identity was always hard to define, a trait the article attributes partly to these disparate early influences rather than solely to their improvisation or drug use.