Grateful Dead Psycle Sam Raglan T. Our favorite Grateful Dead character is back in our rotation! Here's Taylor's backstory on this design:I created this image in 2005 working with a scan of the original film cell from the Grateful Dead Movie. (If you zoom in on the art here, you’ll see the original copyright of 2005.) The animation that Gary Guitterez created for the movie’s opening sequence was limited by 1977 technology, so it was missing a lot of detail. It was, nonetheless, pretty freaking epic.In 2004, Grateful Dead Productions remastered and rereleased the movie on DVD. I attended the premiere at the Fillmore in San Francisco, where I was captivated by this character. At that point I had been a Grateful Dead licensee for about a half a year, and I was only making apparel for kids and women. I thought this would make a great boy’s shirt, so I reached out to Tom Stack who was VP of GDP at the time. He went out of his way to procure scans of the film for me (thanks, Tom!), and this has been one of my favorite characters ever since. He is also the reason I ended up adding men’s shirts to my Grateful Dead license way back when. Inevitably, Deadhead of all ages wanted him.After seeing the updated version of Psycle Sam’s wild ride at Dead & Company’s Sphere residency last summer, I knew I needed to bring this guy back. There’s not much that epitomizes the Grateful Dead spirit like Uncle Sam on a motorcycle! Officially licensed by Grateful Dead.
