Laurence Shurtliff also spelled Lawrence Shurtliff and a.k.a., Ram Rod, was President of Grateful Dead Productions, Inc., from 1976, the year that the Grateful Dead

Grateful Dead

The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock, and for live performances of long...

 incorporated, until the death of guitarist Jerry Garcia

Jerry Garcia

Jerome John "Jerry" Garcia was an American musician best known for his lead guitar work, singing and songwriting with the band the Grateful Dead...

 in 1995. He also was the Grateful Dead's "head roadie" and equipment manager during and prior to those years, and began his first role with the band as tour truck driver in 1967.
In 1972, Shurtliff co-produced Jerry Garcia's Warner Bros. Records

Warner Bros. Records

Warner Bros. Records Inc. is an American record label. It was the foundation label of the present-day Warner Music Group, and now operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of that corporation. It maintains a close relationship with its former parent, Warner Bros. Pictures, although the two companies...

 solo album, entitled simply Garcia

Garcia (album)

Garcia is Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia's first solo album, released in 1972.Warner Bros. Records offered the Grateful Dead the opportunity to cut their own solo records, and Garcia was released during the same time as Bob Weir's Ace and Mickey Hart's Rolling Thunder...

, along with Bob Matthews, Betty Cantor and Bill Kreutzmann

Bill Kreutzmann

Bill Kreutzmann is an American drummer who played with the rock band the Grateful Dead for their entire thirty-year career...

.

Shurtliff received his nickname "Ram Rod" from Neal Cassady

Neal Cassady

Neal Leon Cassady was a major figure of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the psychedelic movement of the 1960s. He served as the model for the character Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road....

 of the Merry Pranksters

Merry Pranksters

The Merry Pranksters were a group of people who formed around American author Ken Kesey in 1964 and sometimes lived communally at his homes in California and Oregon...

, while traveling through Mexico with author Ken Kesey

Ken Kesey

Kenneth Elton "Ken" Kesey was an American author, best known for his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , and as a counter-cultural figure who considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s. "I was too young to be a beatnik, and too old to be a...

. "I am Ramon Rodriguez Rodriguez, the famous Mexican guide," he had boasted, and after he successfully "ramrodded" seven adults into a Volkswagen Bug, Cassady bestowed the nickname upon him.

An auction of Shurtliff's collection of Grateful Dead memorabilia by Bonhams & Butterfields Auctioneers in San Francisco on May 8, 2007, netted more than $1.1 million. The collection included a cream-colored Travis Bean

Travis Bean

Clifford Travis Bean was an American luthier and machinist from California.In 1974, he partnered with Marc McElwee and Gary Kramer to start Travis Bean Guitars, which made high-end electric guitars and basses featuring machined aluminum necks. This was an unusual design, departing from more...

electric guitar owned by Garcia that sold for $312,000.