(Credits: Far Out / Alamy / David Gans)
Thu 9 April 2026 21:00, UK
It is difficult to think of two artists as more diametrically opposed than The Clash and the Grateful Dead. While one group burst open the door for acid-fueled hippiedom back in the 1960s, the other were the solvent-abusing punks rallying against the kind of ‘peace and love’ complacency that that age had pioneered. Still, that didn’t necessarily mean the two groups couldn’t get along with one another.
One of the underappreciated attributes of the US touring circuit is that a multitude of different groups can be playing the same city on the same night. In many cases, too, those artists end up booking the same hotels. That is exactly what occurred on one faithful night, most likely around 1984, when both The Clash and the Grateful Dead found themselves scheduled to play in the city of Philadelphia on the same night, albeit both groups had a very different stature at that point in time.
While the Dead, by the early 1980s, were playing almost exclusively to their cult ‘Deadhead’ following, with each show meticulously documented by an army of tripped-out hippies – meainwhile, The Clash were unknowingly in the twilight of their short tenure, having dismissed Mick Jones and Topper Headon years prior, and operating under an entirely new line-up which struggled to recapture the magic of their earlier days.
On that fateful day, The Clash were performing at the since-closed Spectrum arena in Philly, while the Dead were at the nearby Civic Centre, and despite their respective difficulties at the time, particularly with regard to The Clash, both groups seemed determined to make the most of their time in the city. “It was in the mid ’80s in Philadelphiam and Grateful Dead were playing in that town and so were The Clash that evening,” the Dead’s Bob Weir later recalled, delving into a tale of hotel room partying.
As it turned out, Joe Strummer’s outfit were in the same hotel as Weir and the gang: “We got about an hour into the festivities back at our hotel and there came a knock on the door, and there was an English gentleman and he said he was the road manager for The Clash,” Weir shared, “and wanted to know if the fellas could come up and join up our little festivity.”
Rather than taking the opportunity to party or drop acid with the harbingers of the LSD revolution, Strummer instead “cornered” Weir and quizzed him about his former bandmate, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, who had passed away over a decade prior. “It had been a long time since anybody had asked me about Pigpen,” Weir remembered. “So, I figured I’m probably gonna want to talk to this guy.”
For reasons that, according to Weir, were not entirely clear, this conversation soon turned into a drinking contest. “We kinda got to like each other,” he said. “So, we did the natural thing: I grabbed a bottle of, I think, vodka, and he grabbed a bottle of rum – like all good pirates do – and we tried to kill each other, slug for slug. That went on for an hour or so.”
Once the two songwriters were thoroughly squiffy, one of the party attendees made the bizarre suggestion, “I know, let’s play kill the rockstar.” So, as Weir explained, “Like any red-blooded young men, Joe and I escaped out the window and up the fire escape, up onto the roof and proceeded to have our conversation.”
In the musician’s memory, that conversation extended until 10am the next morning, when a “great big, enormous, gorilla of a man with a British accent came up over the rail onto the roof and just picked Joe up, wordlessly, and carried him away.”
There ends the tale of The Clash partying with the Grateful Dead, which seemingly ended just as mysteriously as it began. Whatever Strummer and Weir spoke about until the late morning remains a mystery, but it seems as though the punk icon’s adoration for Pigpen did enough to endear him towards the hippie legends.
