[2] As a senior studying psychology at San Francisco State University, Dick Latvala wrote a brief autobiography in 1965, apparently in preparation for his first time ingesting LSD.
[4] According to Steve Silberman, upon Latvala hearing the Grateful Dead in 1965 "it was the first music from white people he heard that approached the power of gospel.
Carol Latvala described Morehouse's philosophy and practices as "a combination of Sexual Freedom League material, [and] things they'd learned from witches, Scientology, and Buddhism.
Hawaii is where Latvala began to collect recordings of Grateful Dead concerts, often mailing other tapers marijuana in exchange for tapes.
Latvala would exchange long letters with tapers on the mainland and extend an invitation to visit Hawaii, to smoke pot and listen to the Grateful Dead at high volumes.
[8] Dick and Carol moved back to California in the early 1980s, and although divorced they remained friends and even next-door neighbors, both working for the Grateful Dead at their Front Street office in San Rafael.
While Carol worked in the Dead's ticket office, Dick initially performed menial tasks as well as managing the band's music archives.
"[13] Beyond his love of the Grateful Dead, Latvala enjoyed gospel music, the musician Henry Kaiser, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Lead Belly, and Robert Johnson.
In addition to amassing a large collection of live recordings, in the 1970s Latvala began maintaining personal notebooks filled with commentary about particular Grateful Dead shows.
[16] Until Dick's Picks, the Grateful Dead typically released live albums that were specially recorded on multitrack source tapes, then professionally mixed.
As journalist Steve Silberman recalls, Latvala "was used to people ignoring him or thinking of him as low status in the scene... but I actually thought of him as one of the secret buddhas that protected the music...
While refusing to speak to one friend for two years after learning that he re-circulated tapes, Latvala also "loves the Grateful Dead too much and wants the word of their music to travel into every ear and mind possible.
"[11] Jarnow even claims that Latvala gave taper and future Dark Star Orchestra guitarist Rob Eaton a "near-complete copy of the vault.