COMMENT & ANALYSIS: OBITUARY - Larry 'Ramrod' Shurtliff.

HE WAS the psychedelic cowboy and one-time Mormon who went on to be the conscience of the Grateful Dead.

Born in Montana, in 1945, Shurtliff was raised on a ranch in Oregon and went through a variety of incarnations, including a spell as the proprietor of a car supplies company, before embarking on a legendary road trip through Mexico with beat writer Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962).

It was on the trip he gained the nickname Ramrod. He had been one of Kesey's intrepid band of psychotropic-psychedelic adventurers - described in Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968).

Then, one day in 1967, Shurtliff pulled up outside the Grateful Dead's house in Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, on his Harley Davidson, knocked on the door and said: "Kesey sent me. I hear you need a good man."

He started work as the band's truck driver, moved into the attic of the house and remained with the band in a variety of roles until 2005.

Over the years he became first the Dead's roadie, then road manager and even co-produced guitarist Jerry Garcia's 1972 solo album.

He was indispensable, the man who could be relied upon to sort out all the problems as well as erecting the band's huge sound system at venues including the Pyramids, in Egypt, in 1967.

Dennis McNally, the Dead's biographer, described him as: "The last essential piece in the early Dead's evolution".

Eventually, when the band decided to put its financial affairs in order during the 1970s and established a corporation, Shurtliff was named its president. During his term, which lasted until 1995, following the death of Jerry Garcia, the Dead played more benefit concerts than any other group in history.

Garcia once described him as the band's "high water integrity marker".

Following Garcia's death, he was one of the few to be retained on the staff of the band.

He is survived by his second wife and two sons.

Larry 'Ramrod' Shurtliff, road manager'

born April 19, 1945, died May 17, 2006