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.
Candyman
Grateful Dead Lyrics
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Open up your windows 'cause the Candyman's in town
Come on boys and gamble, roll those laughing bones
Seven come eleven, boys I'll take your money home
Look out, look out, the Candyman
Here he comes and he's gone again
Pretty lady ain't got no friend
I come in from Memphis where I, I learned to talk the jive
When I get back to Memphis, be one less man alive
Good morning Mr. Benson, I see you're doing well
If I had me a shotgun, I'd blow you straight to Hell
Look out, look out, the Candyman
Here he comes and he's gone again
Pretty lady ain't got no friend
Till the Candyman comes around again
Ooh, ooh, ooh
Ooh, ooh, ooh
Come on boys and wager, if you have got the mind
If you've got a dollar boys, lay it on the line
Hand me my old guitar, pass the whiskey 'round
Won't you tell everybody you meet that the Candyman's in town, 'own
Look out, look out, the Candyman
Here he comes and he's gone again
Pretty lady ain't got no friend
Till the Candyman comes around again
Look out, look out, the Candyman
Here he comes and he's gone again
Look out, look out, the Candyman
The Grateful Dead's song Candyman is an upbeat, playful track that embraces themes of gambling and wandering. The first stanza of the song invites women to open their windows and playfully warns the men that the Candyman, a gambler who always wins, is around. The chorus repeats the words "look out" several times as a way of continuing to emphasize this warning to listeners. The second stanza discusses the Candyman's travels from Memphis, where he learned to speak in a specialized language called the jive. He threatens an individual in the song, saying he would shoot them with a shotgun if he had one. The last stanza mentions gambling once again and includes a request for the musician's guitar and a round of whiskey. The Candyman is described as being in town, and listeners are encouraged to share this news with everyone they meet.
Overall, the song seems to be about living life to the fullest and enjoying every moment, even if it involves gambling and taking risks. The Candyman represents that spirit of adventure and risk-taking, which inspires others to engage in these activities as well.
Line by Line Meaning
Come all you pretty women with your hair a hanging down
Attention all attractive ladies with long hair, please pay attention and listen
Open up your windows 'cause the Candyman's in town
Please unlock your windows, because the Candyman is nearby
Come on boys and gamble, roll those laughing bones
Gentlemen, let's take a chance on this game of dice and see where the dice roll takes us
Seven come eleven, boys I'll take your money home
If the dice yield a sum of seven or eleven, I will win all your bet money and take it with me
Look out, look out, the Candyman
Please be careful and watch your backs, the Candyman is around
Here he comes and he's gone again
The Candyman arrives and leaves very quickly
Pretty lady ain't got no friend
Without the Candyman, a beautiful woman would have no company
Till the Candyman comes around again
But when the Candyman returns, she will have a companion once more
I come in from Memphis where I, I learned to talk the jive
I have just returned from Memphis, where I learned how to speak the local language and dialect
When I get back to Memphis, be one less man alive
When I eventually return to Memphis, I will cause one less man to be alive
Good morning Mr. Benson, I see you're doing well
Hello, Mr. Benson. It looks like you're doing fine
If I had me a shotgun, I'd blow you straight to Hell
However, if I possessed a shotgun, I would use it to kill you and send you directly to Hell
Come on boys and wager, if you have got the mind
Gentlemen, let's bet on something if you are interested
If you've got a dollar boys, lay it on the line
If you have a dollar, please place it as a bet in the game we are playing
Hand me my old guitar, pass the whiskey 'round
Pass me my trusty guitar, and let's have a drink of whiskey while we're at it
Won't you tell everybody you meet that the Candyman's in town, 'own
Please tell everyone you come across that the Candyman is in town
Lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: Jerome J. Garcia, Robert C. Hunter
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
@williamkerr3350
Garcia's pedal steel solo is totally timeless and ethereal, I still marvel at the simple beauty of it.
@ariplatt8192
Every note works. Think about it. Sigh
@shane508
agreed. the guitar solo takes this good chill song and puts it on another level.
@Ru55ianman
that pedal steel guitar solo makes makes life worth living
@musicmavenpublishing2265
And Jerry was the master at it. 😘❤⚡⚡⚡
@tomsawyer5736
Truer words never seen in print.
@erinkelleher714
Thank you I agree a decade later
@patodonnell5359
Incredibly pedal player!
@Halcyon156
when I was a kid and got turned on to the grateful dead I'd listen to that slide solo and enter a whole different realm of existence. absolute perfection.
@EnoVarma
One of the truly great guitar solos in the canon of rock music.