Sixties counter-culture band has joined Oprah Winfrey, Caroline Kennedy, Ted Kennedy, Robert DeNiro and others who have broken their own rules to offer a rare public endorsement for a presidential candidate……Barack Obama!

Like the others, members of the Grateful Dead said Democratic hopeful Barack Obama fosters the type of political hope that America hasn’t seen since the Kennedys in the 1960s. The group’s three surviving members reunited on Monday for the first time in four years to back the Illinois senator in his run for the party’s nomination.

Barack Obama / Robert Kennedy Connection

"Every few generations a guy like this comes along," drummer Mickey Hart told a news conference a day before California’s primary. "It seems like desperate times and we’re desperate people."   

Barack Obama wants to bring America together, and he has started with the Grateful Dead. The feuding members of the fabled Sixties psychedelic rock group dissolved their business operations several years ago. But last night at the Warfield Theater before a sold out election eve crowd, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh and Mickey Hart were singing “Come Together” on behalf of the Obama campaign in San Francisco.

Before the show, the three living Dead faced the press in a curtained-off nook of the Warfield basement; they had just finished a ninety-minute afternoon soundcheck that would serve as the show’s sole rehearsal. “I think that we all knew Obama was the guy for us, but we hadn’t talked about it because we’d all been doing our own thing,” said bassist Phil Lesh. Mickey Hart admitted that band members hadn’t seen each other in “years and years.” But “we knew instinctively, intuitively that we were all together on this,” said Bob Weir. “We came together and we’re doing it.”

Here is the Press Conference Video

Lesh was behind the sold out “Deadheads For Obama ‘08&Prime rally at the Warfield Theater. His eighteen-year-old son Brian has been working as an Obama volunteer and Lesh described seeing Obama speak at a rally last fall in Brooklyn as “one of the most electrifying experiences in my life.” The Obama campaign contacted him about putting together a get-out-the-vote concert.
“The first thing I thought of was to talk to these two guys and say ‘Hey, are you with me on this?’ ” said Lesh. “Not only am I with you on this,” said Hart, “I was just about to call you up for the very same reason.” Obama, who has never attended a Dead concert filmed a special video message for the Deadheads at last night’s concert. 

There is more PLUS the Grateful Dead concert video:

Some 2,400 fans came out to Grateful Dead’s concert in San Francisco, which was dubbed "Deadheads for Obama ‘08." Singer-guitarist Bob Weir, 60, said the band had never before performed on behalf of a presidential candidate, although they have often embraced liberal social causes.      

"The last time hope was in the air, it was ended by a bullet," Weir said, referring to Robert Kennedy, who was assassinated on the night he won the California Democratic primary in 1968. "We’ve been reluctant to do political events all along." Bassist Phil Lesh, 67, said he met Obama, who last year told him he has some Grateful Dead songs on his iPod.