The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in Palo Alto, Ca… Read Full Bio ↴The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in Palo Alto, California. The band is known for its eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, country, jazz, bluegrass, blues, gospel, and psychedelic rock; for live performances of lengthy instrumental jams; and for its devoted fan base, known as "Deadheads." "Their music," writes Lenny Kaye, "touches on ground that most other groups don't even know exists." These various influences were distilled into a diverse and psychedelic whole that made the Grateful Dead "the pioneering Godfathers of the jam band world". The band was ranked 57th by Rolling Stone magazine in its The Greatest Artists of All Time issue. The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994 and a recording of their May 8, 1977 performance at Cornell University's Barton Hall was added to the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress in 2012. The Grateful Dead have sold more than 35 million albums worldwide.
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.
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.
Black Peter
Grateful Dead Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
All of my friends come to see me last night
I was laying in my bed and dying
Annie Beauneu from Saint Angel
Say "the weather down here so fine"
Just then the wind
Came squalling through the door
But who can
The weather command?
Just want to have
A little peace to die
And a friend or two
I love at hand
Fever roll up to a hundred and five
Roll on up
Gonna roll back down
One more day
I find myself alive
Tomorrow
Maybe go
Beneath the ground
See here how everything
Lead up to this day
And it's just like
Any other day
That's ever been
Sun goin up
And then the
Sun it goin down
Shine through my window and
My friends they come around
Come around
Come around
The people may know but
People don't care
That a man could be
As poor as me
Take a look at poor Peter
He's lying in pain
Now let's go run
And see
Run and see
Run and see
Run, run, and see
Hey, hey, run and see
I was laying in my bed and dying
Annie Beauneu from Saint Angel
Say "the weather down here so fine"
Just then the wind
Came squalling through the door
But who can
Just want to have
A little peace to die
And a friend or two
I love at hand
Fever roll up to a hundred and five
Roll on up
Gonna roll back down
One more day
I find myself alive
Tomorrow
Maybe go
Beneath the ground
See here how everything
Lead up to this day
And it's just like
Any other day
That's ever been
Sun goin up
And then the
Sun it goin down
Shine through my window and
My friends they come around
Come around
Come around
The people may know but
People don't care
That a man could be
As poor as me
Take a look at poor Peter
He's lying in pain
Now let's go run
And see
Run and see
Run and see
Run, run, and see
Hey, hey, run and see
The lyrics of the Grateful Dead's song Black Peter describe the voice of a man who is lying in bed and dying, while his friends visit him one last time. One of his friends from Saint Angel tells him that the weather is beautiful, but suddenly the wind blasts in through the door. The man hopes for a peaceful death with his loved ones by his side, but he is consumed by fever and realizes that he might not make it through the night. He reflects on his life and how it led up to this moment, and the passing of the day reminds him of the inevitable cycle of life and death. The song ends with the voice calling his friends to come and see him, acknowledging his humble state and expressing his desire for their company in his last moments.
Line by Line Meaning
All of my friends come to see me last night
My friends came to see me last night before I passed away
I was laying in my bed and dying
I was on my deathbed before my friends came to visit me
Annie Beauneu from Saint Angel
Annie Beauneu, a resident of Saint Angel, was among the visitors
Say 'the weather down here so fine'
Annie remarked on the pleasant weather in my hometown
Just then the wind
Suddenly, a gust of wind
Came squalling through the door
Blew through the open doorway with a loud noise
But who can
However, no one can
The weather command?
Control the weather, can they?
Just want to have
All I want is
A little peace to die
Some peace to pass away in
And a friend or two
And a few friends by my side
I love at hand
Whom I care for deeply
Fever roll up to a hundred and five
My fever rose to 105 degrees
Roll on up
Kept getting higher
Gonna roll back down
But then it subsided
One more day
I lived for another day
I find myself alive
I'm still conscious and breathing
Tomorrow
But tomorrow
Maybe go
I might
Beneath the ground
Pass away and be buried
See here how everything
Notice how everything
Lead up to this day
Leads up to the present moment
And it's just like
In fact, it's similar to
Any other day
Any ordinary day
That's ever been
That has ever occurred
Sun goin up
The sun rising
And then the
Followed by the
Sun it goin down
Sun setting
Shine through my window and
The sunshine streaming through my window
My friends they come around
My friends visit me
Come around
Come by to see me
The people may know but
Others may be aware but
People don't care
They don't seem to care
That a man could be
About the fact that a man might be
As poor as me
As impoverished as I am
Take a look at poor Peter
Consider the case of poor Peter
He's lying in pain
He's suffering from an ailment
Now let's go run
We should go for a run now
And see
And observe what's happening
Run and see
Let's go for a run and see
Hey, hey, run and see
Hurry up, let's go for a run and see
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: JEROME J. GARCIA, ROBERT C. HUNTER
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
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Rockin Bluzcats
"Black Peter"
Words by Robert Hunter; music by Jerry Garcia
Copyright Ice Nine Publishing; used by permission.
All of my friends come to see me last night
I was laying in my bed and dying
Annie Beauneu from Saint Angel
say "the weather down here so fine"
Just then the wind
came squalling through the door
but who can
the weather command?
Just want to have
a little peace to die
and a friend or two
I love at hand
Fever roll up to a hundred and five
Roll on up
gonna roll back down
One more day
I find myself alive
tomorrow
maybe go
beneath the ground
See here how everything
lead up to this day
and it's just like
any other day
that's ever been
Sun goin up
and then the
sun it goin down
Shine through my window and
my friends they come around
come around
come around
People may know but
the people don't care
that a man could be
as poor as me...
"Take a look at poor Peter
he's lyin in pain
now let's go run
and see"
Run and see
hey, hey,
run and see
Stan Miller
All of my friends come to see me last night
I was laying in my bed and dying
Annie Beauneu from Saint Angel
Say "the weather down here so fine"
Just then the wind
Came squalling through the door
But who can The weather command?
Just want to have
A little peace to die
And a friend or two I love at hand
Fever roll up to a hundred and five
Roll on up
Gonna roll back down
One more day I find myself alive
Tomorrow
Maybe go
Beneath the ground
See here how everything
Lead up to this day
And it's just like
Any other day
That's ever been
Sun goin' up
And then the
Sun it goin' down
Shine through my window and
My friends they come around
Come around
Come around
The people may know but
People don't care
That a man could be
As poor as me
Take a look at poor Peter
He's lying in pain
Now let's go run
And see
Run and see
Run and see
Run, run, and see
Hey, hey, run and see
Barbara Ann
I liked this comment by B. Michatavage at http://songmeanings.com/songs/view/47725/
He wrote:
One of Jerry's personal favorites...this song spoke to his mournful soul; he loved a sad ballad. The song is about a man at the end of his days just wanting to have a "friend or two" to be with him when he passes on.
My comments: I found this a very deep observation about life:
See here how everything
Lead up to this day
And it's just like
Any other day
That's ever been
Sun goin up
And then the
Sun it goin down
Yes, the sun goes up and down no matter what content our lives hold and no matter what great impact we may think we'll have on the world, and as Jerry was, we can be taken from this world we know by surprise. Just like any other day that's ever been.
....and my friends they come around.
Elizabeth Scott
My dad had a vicious stroke a little over a year ago- I've never found such an accurate song for him. He's currently in the ICU 😔 cmon Black Peter... Your daughter needs you home ❤
Emmett Hoffman
Sending love ❤️
coffeehugger
So sorry to read this.
Jude Steven
instaBlaster.
Max Ragno
Right now my brother (aged 24) is in ICU brain dead after a heroin induced stroke. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. I’m sorry you went through this.
A Rare and Different Tune
@Max Ragno sending love to your family from your Dead Family
Dave Sigmon
This riveting track is facing the end of the line. Never has Jerry Garcia's voice sounded more emotive than on this cut. It's a cry from the heart and one of the most chill-inducing songs I've heard in all my many years. The spooky melody and Pigpen's organ accentuates this.
CLASSY GARY
This song is actually a truly mind blowing composition not the least of which that the notes, melody, chords and structure/modulations and lyrics are completely syncretic with every aspect of all the parts in relation to each other… this is real magical alchemy going on here as it represents that all is cyclical and is connected @ each level of existence. This is a musical representation of the cosmos, life, death and rebirth . This is real psychedelia happening . Hunter/Garcia plugged into the universe and it’s mysterious secrets here . 🤯
Ian McDonald
That's very insightful.
Ghozt Wolve
Indeed, yes. Not only fever cycling up and down, each day becoming like one foot in front of the other. But also dear Annie not knowing what else to do but talk about the weather like it's a routine day -- then the wind blows and we are reminded that nobody can command the WEATHER (not just the wind) = we never know if it's really going to be a routine day.