Jerry Garcia, the iconic frontman for the Grateful Dead, remains, nearly 30 years after his death, a revered figure, singular in his approach to life and art.

A multimillionaire by the time of his death, Mr. Garcia never lost his fundamental understanding of himself as a musician, which makes him among the most relatable, if misunderstood, figures of modern times. Much of the pull he continues to exert on the culture lies in the fact that his music and his life were an exploration of what it means to be free.

He was not political, per se. Though he came of age as the American counterculture bloomed — and though he and the Dead stood at the center of many of that period’s most memorable occasions — he did his best to shun politics as such. He disdained candidates, avoided campaigns.

“We would all like to live an uncluttered life,” Mr. Garcia said in 1967, “a simple life, a good life, and think about moving the whole human race ahead a step.”

Mr. Garcia lived among artists and built up a community around him that was, psychologically and in some ways practically, impervious to government power. The Haight-Ashbury district in San Francisco offered one early experiment in community organization; Dead shows in later years stood as a kind of traveling bubble of freewheeling creativity, dynamic hubs of music and art, blissfully insulated from the outside world. It was, to Mr. Garcia, a ride on the rails — a little dangerous but happily in motion and in contact with others.

“There’s a lot of us,” Mr. Garcia said, “moviemakers, musicians, painters, craftsmen of every sort, people doing all kinds of things. That’s what we do. That’s the way we live our lives.”