Beloved '60s Rock Icon Suddenly 'Slipped Away' 39 Years Ago Today and Changed Music Forever

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Beloved '60s Rock Icon Suddenly 'Slipped Away' 39 Years Ago Today and Changed Music Forever originally appeared on Parade.
Of all the rock bands in the world, it's safe to say that the Grateful Dead's fans are known for being perhaps the most devoted in music history — with the band's late lead guitarist and singer, Jerry Garcia, inspiring the most love of all the members in listeners around the world. So when Garcia lapsed into a diabetic coma on July 10, 1986, fans were absolutely devastated. And while he woke up five days later, the aftermath of Garcia's coma would change the course of the Grateful Dead's future.
As The Los Angeles Times reported that week, Garcia "was hospitalized after slipping into a diabetic coma" as a result of an infection caused by an abscessed tooth. According to The Wrap, his blood sugar was the second highest the doctors at Marin General Hospital in California had ever seen, and his kidneys had shut down.
"His heart stopped,' his wife at the time, Carolyn Adams (Mountain Girl), said later. 'He died. The hospital didn't want anyone to know this, but he died. They had to resuscitate him.'
Adams was told her husband might be brain-damaged if he survived. Miraculously, Garcia came out of his coma five days later, but he had a long road of recovery ahead which involved learning how to play guitar again (in addition to walking and other basic skills).
In an interview recovered by Grateful Ramblings and published by Rock and Roll Garage in 2021, Garcia reflected on the "very weird" experience of being in a coma.
"My main experience was one of furious activity and tremendous struggle in a sort of futuristic, space-ship vehicle with insectoid presences," he recalled. "After I came out of my coma, I had this image of myself as these little hunks of protoplasm that were stuck together kind of like stamps with perforations between them that you could snap off.'
After waking up, Garcia explained, 'I was pretty scrambled. It was as though in my whole library of information, all the books had fallen off the shelves and all the pages had fallen out of the books. I would speak to people and know what I meant to say, but different words would come out. So I had to learn everything over again. I had to learn how to walk, play the guitar, everything."
Only five months later, the Grateful Dead were back on the road again. Garcia's renewed health helped to inspire their 1987 comeback record, In the Dark, which became their best-selling studio album.
'Garcia's return was greeted as a veritable Second Coming by his fans,' Garcia's biographer, Blair Jackson, wrote.
Sadly, Garcia would continue to struggle with his health in the years to come. In an attempt to deal with his ongoing addictions, Garcia checked into Betty Ford Clinic in July 1995, then Serenity Knolls, a Bay Area holistic health retreat, two weeks later. He died in his room there on August 9, 1995, after suffering a heart attack. He was 53 years old.Beloved '60s Rock Icon Suddenly 'Slipped Away' 39 Years Ago Today and Changed Music Forever first appeared on Parade on Jul 10, 2025
This story was originally reported by Parade on Jul 10, 2025, where it first appeared.
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