Fans help former Grateful Dead member pay for cancer treatment

<i>Larry Marano/Shutterstock via CNN Newsource</i><br/>Tom Constanten at the Dead Live 69 in concert in Fort Lauderdale

By CNN Newsource

Published December 18, 2025 11:19 AM

By Lisa Respers France, CNN

(CNN) — Tom Constanten wasn’t a part of the Grateful Dead for very long, but fans still value his time with the iconic group.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Deadheads have rallied around the 81-year-old and are raising money to help pay for the radiation treatments he is undergoing to treat lung cancer.

“Each round knocks me out for days, though so far that’s the one symptom,” he told the newspaper about his treatment. “It’s pretty intense.”

Constanten was the band’s keyboardist in its early days, playing with the Dead for 14 months in 1968 and 1969.

A GoFundMe set up for him has nearly reached its goal of $70,000.

He’s not the only one in the Grateful Dead’s entourage who fans are flocking to help.

A GoFundMe set up for Candace Brightman, who served as the Grateful Dead’s lighting director from 1972 to 1995, has surpassed its goal of $75,000 as she battles financial and medical problems, including failing eyesight. Fans have also chipped in for Betty Cantor-Jackson, a producer and sound recordist for the band, roadie Kidd Candelario and the Dead’s former onstage monitor engineer, Harry Popick.

The Grateful Dead is one of the world’s most famous rock bands. It was founded in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1965 and was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

Sometimes traveling the world to see the band, Deadheads have developed their own subculture and community.

“We’re surrounded by a culture that feels like we’ve been living in a house together all these years,” David Gans, a musician who hosts the syndicated radio show “The Grateful Dead Hour” and co-authored the book “Playing in the Band: An Oral and Visual Portrait of the Grateful Dead,” told the publication. “We see it as a family and communal social scene. But the actual structures are different. What is the obligation?”

Medical debt is an increasing concern for many Americans and has been part of a national conversation that has ramped up as some brace for rising costs with the expiration of tax credits for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that have helped many afford health insurance.

On Wednesday House Republicans narrowly passed their own version of a health care bill which didn’t include ACA subsidies.