‘In 1970, she moved to San Francisco, where many younger people were flocking to restart. As first, she was skeptical of her friends’ ravings about the Dead.
“That ragged sound?” Ms. Godchaux-MacKay recalled in a 2007 interview with The Baltimore Sun. “I didn’t think they could play. I figured, ‘These guys must be good-looking.’ So I checked the back of one of their album covers and went, ‘Nope, that’s not it.’”
But soon after arriving, she caught a performance by the Dead at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco.
“To them, music was an adventure, like something spiritual,” she told The Sun. “I’d never heard anything like that. I thought, This is what I want to do.”
She was married to a jazz pianist, Keith Godchaux, who found out that Jerry Garcia, the band’s frontman, was playing at a nightclub. The couple approached Mr. Garcia, who gave them his phone number.
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The Grateful Dead performing on “Saturday Night Live” in 1978. From left, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Ms. Godchaux-MacKay and Jerry Garcia.Credit…Fred Hermansky/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank
“I can’t believe the chutzpah we had,” Ms. Godchaux-MacKay told The Sun. “I didn’t know people did that to him all the time. But Jerry just always had his antennas up.”
Within days, they were in the band, forging a relationship that would last the rest of the decade. Ms. Godchaux-MacKay helped shape several of the Dead’s most famous songs, including “Eyes of the World” and “Playing in the Band”…’ (Sopan Deb via The New York Times)
Donna and Keith were in what I consider the greatest configuration of the Dead. Her style was controversial and divisive for Deadheads of the era, with some cringing when she would cut loose and others feeling she goaded the mix to new heights.
