American Beauty

American Beauty came out of the same Garcia and Hunter partnership as Workingman's Dead, and it is the only time the band went back into the studio so soon. Unlike the earlier album, it drew on the rest of the band: Lesh's Box of Rain and Weir's Sugar Magnolia, both with Hunter, and Operator, Pigpen's only songwriting credit on a Grateful Dead studio album. It was made after the band found that their manager, Lenny Hart, the father of Mickey Hart, had renewed their Warner Bros. contract without telling them and then left town with a large part of their money. Their usual sound crew was away on the Medicine Ball Caravan tour, so the studio engineer Stephen Barncard took over from Bob Matthews as producer.

Garcia played more pedal steel and less lead guitar than before. He met the mandolinist David Grisman at a baseball game in Fairfax, and Grisman recalled being asked if he wanted to play on the record. Howard Wales added keyboards to three songs and Ned Lagin played piano on Candyman. Lesh recalled Jefferson Airplane's Paul Kantner and Grace Slick, Santana, Crosby, Nash and Neil Young all working at Wally Heider's during the sessions. Kreutzmann said the singers learned about harmonizing from Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, though David Crosby disputed that credit.

The title refers both to the band's Americana leanings and to the rose on the cover, where the lettering can also be read as American Reality. Truckin' was the single, backed with Ripple, and reached 64 on the US singles chart. The album peaked at 30 on the Billboard 200, went Gold in 1974 and double Platinum in 2001. Pitchfork's 2020 review called it the band's fifth and greatest studio album and an ideal gateway drug for newcomers. Robert Christgau found it sweeter vocally and more direct instrumentally than Workingman's Dead. A 50th anniversary edition on 30 October 2020 added a concert recorded on 18 February 1971 at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, New York.