The Grateful Dead was founded in the San Francisco Bay Area amid the rise of the counterculture of the 1960s. The founding members were Jerry Garcia (lead guitar, vocals), Bob Weir (rhythm guitar, vocals), Ron "Pigpen" McKernan (keyboards, harmonica, vocals), Phil Lesh (bass, vocals), and Bill Kreutzmann (drums). Members of the Grateful Dead had played together in various San Francisco bands, including Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions and the Warlocks. Lesh was the last member to join the Warlocks before they became the Grateful Dead; he replaced Dana Morgan Jr., who had played bass for a few gigs. Drummer Mickey Hart and non-performing lyricist Robert Hunter joined in 1967. With the exception of McKernan, who died in 1973, and Hart, who took time off from 1971 to 1974, the core of the band stayed together for its entire 30-year history. The other official members of the band are Tom Constanten (keyboards; 1968–1970), John Perry Barlow (nonperforming lyricist; 1971–1995), Keith Godchaux (keyboards; 1971–1979), Donna Godchaux (vocals; 1972–1979), Brent Mydland (keyboards, vocals; 1979–1990), and Vince Welnick (keyboards, vocals; 1990–1995). Bruce Hornsby (accordion, piano, vocals) was a touring member from 1990 to 1992, as well as a guest with the band on occasion before and after the tours.
The name "Grateful Dead" was chosen from a dictionary. According to Phil Lesh, "[Jerry Garcia] picked up an old Britannica World Language Dictionary ... [and] ... In that silvery elf-voice he said to me, 'Hey, man, how about the Grateful Dead?'" The definition there was "the soul of a dead person, or his angel, showing gratitude to someone who, as an act of charity, arranged their burial". According to Alan Trist, director of the Grateful Dead's music publisher company Ice Nine, Garcia found the name in the Funk & Wagnalls Folklore Dictionary, when his finger landed on that phrase while playing a game of Fictionary. In the Garcia biography, Captain Trips, author Sandy Troy states that the band was smoking the psychedelic DMT at the time. The term "grateful dead" appears in folktales of a variety of cultures.
Live performances
The Grateful Dead toured constantly throughout their career, playing more than 2,300 concerts. They promoted a sense of community among their fans, who became known as "Deadheads", many of whom followed their tours for months or years on end. Around concert venues, an impromptu communal marketplace known as 'Shakedown Street' was created by Deadheads to serve as centers of activity where fans could buy and sell anything from grilled cheese sandwiches to home-made t-shirts and recordings of Grateful Dead concerts.
In their early career, the band also dedicated their time and talents to their community, the Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco, making available free food, lodging, music, and health care to all. It has been said that the band performed "more free concerts than any band in the history of music".
With the exception of 1975, when the band was on hiatus and played only four concerts together, the Grateful Dead performed many concerts every year, from their formation in April 1965, until July 9, 1995. Initially all their shows were in California, principally in the San Francisco Bay Area and in or near Los Angeles. They also performed, in 1965 and 1966, with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, as the house band for the Acid Tests. They toured nationally starting in June 1967 (their first foray to New York), with a few detours to Canada, Europe and three nights at the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt in 1978. They appeared at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, the Woodstock Festival in 1969 and the Festival Express train tour across Canada in 1970. They were scheduled to appear as the final act at the infamous Altamont Free Concert on December 6, 1969 after the Rolling Stones but withdrew after security concerns. "That's the way things went at Altamont—so badly that the Grateful Dead, prime organizers and movers of the festival, didn't even get to play", staff at Rolling Stone magazine wrote in a detailed narrative on the event.
Their first UK performance was at the Hollywood Music Festival in 1970. Their largest concert audience came in 1973 when they played, along with the Allman Brothers Band and the Band, before an estimated 600,000 people at the Summer Jam at Watkins Glen. They played to an estimated total of 25 million people, more than any other band, with audiences of up to 80,000 attending a single show. Many of these concerts were preserved in the band's tape vault, and several dozen have since been released on CD and as downloads. The Dead were known for the tremendous variation in their setlists from night to night—the list of songs documented to have been played by the band exceeds 500. The band has released four concert videos under the name View from the Vault.
In the 1990s, the Grateful Dead earned a total of $285 million in revenue from their concert tours, the second-highest during the 1990s, with the Rolling Stones earning the most. This figure is representative of tour revenue through 1995, as touring stopped after the death of Jerry Garcia. In a 1991 PBS documentary, segment host Buck Henry attended an August 1991 concert at Shoreline Amphitheatre and gleaned some information from some band members about the Grateful Dead phenomenon and its success. At the time, Jerry Garcia stated, "We didn't really invent the Grateful Dead, the crowd invented the Grateful Dead, you know what I mean? We were sort of standing in line, and uh, it's gone way past our expectations, way past, so it's, we've been going along with it to see what it's gonna do next." Furthermore, Mickey Hart stated, "This is one of the last places in America that you can really have this kind of fun, you know, considering the political climate and so forth." Hart also stated that "the transformative power of the Grateful Dead is really the essence of it; it's what it can do to your consciousness. We're more into transportation than we are into music, per se, I mean, the business of the Grateful Dead is transportation." One of the band's largest concerts took place just months before Garcia's death — at their outdoor show with Bob Dylan in Highgate, Vermont on June 15, 1995. The crowd was estimated to be over 90,000; overnight camping was allowed and about a third of the audience got in without having purchased a ticket.
Their numerous studio albums were generally collections of new songs that they had first played in concert. The band was also famous for its extended musical improvisations, having been described as having never played the same song the same way twice. Their concert sets often blended songs, one into the next, often for more than three songs at a time.
Tapes
Like several other bands during this time, the Grateful Dead allowed their fans to record their shows. For many years the tapers set up their microphones wherever they could, and the eventual forest of microphones became a problem for the sound crew. Eventually, this was solved by having a dedicated taping section located behind the soundboard, which required a special "tapers" ticket. The band allowed sharing of their shows, as long as no profits were made on the sale of the tapes.
Of the approximately 2,350 shows the Grateful Dead played, almost 2,200 were taped, and most of these are available online. The band began collecting and cataloging tapes early on and Dick Latvala was their keeper. "Dick's Picks" is named after Latvala. After his death in 1999, David Lemieux gradually took the post. Concert set lists from a subset of 1,590 Grateful Dead shows were used to perform a comparative analysis between how songs were played in concert and how they are listened online by Last.fm members. In their book Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn From the Most Iconic Band in History, David Meerman Scott and Brian Halligan identify the taper section as a crucial contributor to increasing the Grateful Dead's fan base.
After the death of Garcia in 1995, former members of the band, along with other musicians, toured as the Other Ones in 1998, 2000, and 2002, and the Dead in 2003, 2004, and 2009. In 2015, the four surviving core members marked the band's 50th anniversary in a series of concerts that were billed as their last performances together. There have also been several spin-offs featuring one or more core members, such as Dead & Company, Furthur, the Rhythm Devils, Phil Lesh and Friends, RatDog, and Billy & the Kids.
Friend of the Devil
Grateful Dead Lyrics
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I was trailed by twenty hounds
Didn't get to sleep that night
Till the morning came around
Set out running but I'll take my time
A friend of the devil is a friend of mine
If I get home before daylight
Just might get some sleep tonight
Ran into the devil, babe
He loaned me twenty bills
I spent the night in Utah
In a cave up in the hills
Set out running but I take my time
A friend of the devil is a friend of mine
If I get home before daylight
Just might get some sleep tonight
I ran down to the levee
But the devil caught me there
He took my twenty dollar bill
And it vanished in the air
I set out running but I take my time
A friend of the devil is a friend of mine
If I get home before daylight
Just might get some sleep tonight
Got two reasons why I cry
Away each lonely night
The first one's named sweet Anne Marie
And she's my heart's delight
Second one is prison, baby
The sheriff's on my trail
And if he catches up with me
I'll spend my life in jail
Got a wife in Chino, babe
And one in Cherokee
First one says she's got my child
But it don't look like me
Set out running but I take my time
A friend of the devil is a friend of mine
If I get home before daylight
Just might get some sleep tonight
Got two reasons why I cry
Away each lonely night
The first one's named sweet Anne Marie
And she's my heart's delight
Second one is prison, baby
The sheriff's on my trail
And if he catches up with me
I'll spend my life in jail
Got a wife in Chino, babe
And one in Cherokee
The first one says she's got my child
But it don't look like me
I set out running but I took my time
A friend of the devil is a friend of mine
If I get home before daylight
Just might get some sleep tonight
The Grateful Dead's "Friend of the Devil" tells a story of a man who is wanted by the law but finds himself in a dangerous alliance with the devil. The singer is on the run from authorities and seeks refuge from the devil. The song's first verse describes his escape from Reno, Nevada, in the middle of the night with twenty hounds hot on his trail. The second verse narrates his encounter with the devil and borrowing twenty bills, and spending the night in Utah in a cave. The third verse describes his journey to the levee, where the devil takes his money and disappears into thin air.
The final stanza covers the reasons for the singer's plight-- his two lovers and law enforcement on his tail. The primary reason for his sadness is Sweet Anne Marie, who is his heart's delight. However, he also has a second reason for his tears, the sheriff, who is hunting him down. The singer's life is complicated further by the fact that he has a wife in Chino and another one in Cherokee, one of whom claims to have his child.
Line by Line Meaning
I lit up from Reno
I left Reno in a hurry
I was trailed by twenty hounds
I was being chased by many people
Didn't get to sleep that night
I couldn't fall asleep
Till the morning came around
Until the next day started
Set out running but I'll take my time
I'm in a rush, but I won't be reckless
A friend of the devil is a friend of mine
I'm willing to associate with anyone, even those who are considered bad
If I get home before daylight
If I return home early in the morning
Just might get some sleep tonight
I might finally be able to rest
Ran into the devil, babe
I encountered someone evil
He loaned me twenty bills
He gave me some money
I spent the night in Utah
I stayed the night in Utah
In a cave up in the hills
In a cave located in the mountains
I ran down to the levee
I went down to the riverbank
But the devil caught me there
But I was caught by someone evil
He took my twenty dollar bill
He stole my money
And it vanished in the air
And it disappeared without a trace
Got two reasons why I cry
I have two things that make me sad
Away each lonely night
Every night when I'm alone
The first one's named sweet Anne Marie
The first reason is a girl named Anne Marie
And she's my heart's delight
And she brings happiness to my heart
Second one is prison, baby
The second reason is being in jail
The sheriff's on my trail
The police are after me
And if he catches up with me
And if I get caught
I'll spend my life in jail
I'll be in prison for the rest of my life
Got a wife in Chino, babe
I have a wife in Chino
And one in Cherokee
And another in Cherokee
First one says she's got my child
The first wife claims to have my child
But it don't look like me
But the child doesn't resemble me
Lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: Jerome J. Garcia, John C. Dawson, Robert C. Hunter
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind