Built to last: The Dead are reclaiming their legacy.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

Byline: Howard Cohen

Plenty can be said about the Grateful Dead, but playing it safe is not really one of those things.

So when some of the surviving members banded together as The Other Ones after leader Jerry Garcia's death in 1995 it felt, well, safe. The group had vowed to retire the Grateful Dead name in honor of Garcia and, besides, if The Other Ones failed it wouldn't quite besmirch the goodwill earned by the iconic Dead name.

But now The Other Ones _ bassist Phil Lesh (recovered after a liver transplant) guitarist Bob Weir and drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann _ are The Dead and, pardon the pun, grateful. The guys still have that familial bond that has kept them in each other's lives, despite some business-related disagreements, since the four first turned up together on the second Grateful Dead album, "Anthem of the Sun," way back in 1968 during the Johnson administration.

The first leg of The Dead's tour, a jaunt Hart teasingly pronounces "this summer getaway" had guests Willie Nelson and Steve Winwood jamming. On the bill last week: original Dead lyricist Robert Hunter and old pal Bob Dylan, with whom The Dead performed in the late `80s. ("There's a certain resonance between his style and ours ... our roots are folk based," Hart says.)

He pauses to secure a cup of coffee from his wife _ no sugar _ and continues.

"It feels very natural, it's what it is: it's the Grateful Dead without Jerry," Hart says during a morning telephone interview from his Sonoma County home in Northern California. "We are ... reclaiming our legacy. The Dead is who it is. The Other Ones was transitional and it got us here, period. We weren't The Other Ones. After awhile, once Phil came back and started playing at the level of The Dead, it's Grateful Dead. Jerry would be the first one to say that. He always said he's not the whole Grateful Dead."