As the 20th anniversary of Jerry Garcia’s 1995 death approaches, Deadheads the world over will will mark his passing the best way they know how: with plenty of live music. That season of remembrance will kick off on Thursday with a tribute concert in Columbia, Md.

As TIME’s Richard Corliss observed in a lengthy obituary for Garcia, such fanfare would not have been a given if the Grateful Dead had been judged by the typical metrics of industry success. The band had only one Top 10 single in their long run, Touch of Grey, and their sprawling jams weren’t exactly commercial-friendly. But the Dead, of course, had something no other band did. In that 1995 tribute article, the Merry Prankster Ken Kesey tried to explain what it was that made Garcia singular:

I can’t remember anything like it… Not Elvis, not John Lennon. The Beatles were great, but they were a studio band. And Elvis was great, but he was a good ole boy, not a revolutionary. Jerry has been a revolutionary, a warrior, as long as I’ve known him. He battled for the American soul, out there on the edge of a dangerous frontier–battling the forces of the Grinch, the forces of darkness. It was a typical old flower-child battle for the forces of good and mercy and gentleness and mischief. You can’t work that frontier without getting into some danger now and then. The dire wolf finally got him.

So, 20 years later, it shouldn’t be surprising that Garcia is still earning tributes. After all, as Corliss wrote for TIME, “Garcia was the soul, the sound–by common consent, the head Dead.”

Read the full obituary here: The Trip Ends

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Write to Lily Rothman at lily.rothman@time.com.