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.
Clementine
Grateful Dead Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Lyrics: Robert Hunter
Music: Phil Lesh
Played a few times by the Grateful Dead in 1968--and not to be confused with the traditional "Oh My Darling Clementine". The lyric is not in Robert Hunter's book "Box Of Rain", but he has confirmed he wrote it.
The full Hunter lyrics, as given to Phil Lesh (and first reproduced in David Dodd's book "The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics") are:
Chopped olive sandwiches, roses and wine
Cold ripe persimmons, my sweet Clementine
There's a chill in the meadow, of bottomless time
I go on, I go on, I cannot fill my cup
There's a hole in the bottom, the spring has dried up
I run through the forests of linear time
Chop through the branches and cut through the vines
I'll be back in a moment, though it may take me years
In the lava rock canyons corroded with fears
Of corruptible bodies and grief beyond tears
I'll go on till I hear the sweet voices behind
That I've left for the comfort of cold Clementine
The only versions with lyrics that circulate are 20 Jan, 23 Jan and 2 Feb 1968 (on "So Many Roads") and 26 Jan 1969 (other versions circulate as jams only). Thanks to Brad Dilli, Melanie Ryan, Jeff Lester, Andrew Sonnabend and Ihor Slabicky for their help with the lyrics.
This is the 2 Feb 1968 version:
Chopped olive sandwiches, roses and wine
Red ripe persimmons, my sweet Clementine (note 1)
I go on, I go on, I can't fill my cup
There's a hole in the bottom, the well has dried up
I run through the forest, I cut past the vine
Head through the thickets of linear time
(A field full) of voices, sweet voices behind (note 2)
I've left for the comfort of cold Clementine
Notes
(1) the 20 Jan 1968 version is "Cold ripe persimmons"
(2) the 23 Jan 1968 version is "... never was mine"
The 20 Jan 1968 version is essentially the same as the 2 Feb one, but with the first verse only. The 23 Jan 1968 version has Jerry singing the first verse, then repeating the first two lines of the first verse, followed by the third and fourth lines of the second verse.
The 26 Jan 1969 version is a more complete one:
Chopped olive sandwiches, roses and wine
Cold ripe persimmons, my sweet Clementine
There's a chill in the meadow of bottomless time
I go on, I go on, I can't fill my cup
There's a hole in the bottom, the spring has dried up
Just a thought for the moment, it never was mine
Just like a (fat through) and cut past the vines
I run through the forests of linear time
I go on, I go on, I can't fill my cup
I go on, I go on, though it might take me years
In the lava rock canyons all corroded with fears
Corruptible bodies and grief beyond tears
I go on till I hear the sweet voices behind
That I've left for the comfort of cold Clementine
Music: Phil Lesh
Played a few times by the Grateful Dead in 1968--and not to be confused with the traditional "Oh My Darling Clementine". The lyric is not in Robert Hunter's book "Box Of Rain", but he has confirmed he wrote it.
The full Hunter lyrics, as given to Phil Lesh (and first reproduced in David Dodd's book "The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics") are:
Chopped olive sandwiches, roses and wine
There's a chill in the meadow, of bottomless time
I go on, I go on, I cannot fill my cup
There's a hole in the bottom, the spring has dried up
I run through the forests of linear time
Chop through the branches and cut through the vines
I'll be back in a moment, though it may take me years
In the lava rock canyons corroded with fears
Of corruptible bodies and grief beyond tears
I'll go on till I hear the sweet voices behind
That I've left for the comfort of cold Clementine
The only versions with lyrics that circulate are 20 Jan, 23 Jan and 2 Feb 1968 (on "So Many Roads") and 26 Jan 1969 (other versions circulate as jams only). Thanks to Brad Dilli, Melanie Ryan, Jeff Lester, Andrew Sonnabend and Ihor Slabicky for their help with the lyrics.
This is the 2 Feb 1968 version:
Chopped olive sandwiches, roses and wine
Red ripe persimmons, my sweet Clementine (note 1)
I go on, I go on, I can't fill my cup
There's a hole in the bottom, the well has dried up
I run through the forest, I cut past the vine
Head through the thickets of linear time
(A field full) of voices, sweet voices behind (note 2)
I've left for the comfort of cold Clementine
Notes
(1) the 20 Jan 1968 version is "Cold ripe persimmons"
(2) the 23 Jan 1968 version is "... never was mine"
The 20 Jan 1968 version is essentially the same as the 2 Feb one, but with the first verse only. The 23 Jan 1968 version has Jerry singing the first verse, then repeating the first two lines of the first verse, followed by the third and fourth lines of the second verse.
The 26 Jan 1969 version is a more complete one:
Chopped olive sandwiches, roses and wine
Cold ripe persimmons, my sweet Clementine
There's a chill in the meadow of bottomless time
I go on, I go on, I can't fill my cup
There's a hole in the bottom, the spring has dried up
Just a thought for the moment, it never was mine
Just like a (fat through) and cut past the vines
I run through the forests of linear time
I go on, I go on, I can't fill my cup
I go on, I go on, though it might take me years
In the lava rock canyons all corroded with fears
Corruptible bodies and grief beyond tears
I go on till I hear the sweet voices behind
That I've left for the comfort of cold Clementine
The Grateful Dead’s song Clementine, written by Robert Hunter and music composed by bass player Phil Lesh, was played a handful of times by the band in 1968. The lyrics for the song are not included in Hunter’s book “Box of Rain”, but he has confirmed that he did indeed write it. The song should not be confused with the traditional “Oh My Darling Clementine”. The lyrics describe a search for something or someone that is unattainable, focusing on a longing for Clementine, who is described as being as cold as the comfort she provides. Throughout the song, there is a sense of melancholy and yearning, as the singer laments his empty cup and the hole in the bottom meaning that his well has run dry. He also reflects throughout the lyrics on the forest, time, and other emotions.
The lyrics of the song evoke a sense of mystery with dream-like symbols such as the chopped olive sandwiches, roses and wine, and cold ripe persimmons. The singer is searching for something that seemingly can never be found, and the song builds to a haunting climax when the singer describes the comfort Clementine provides as cold. The sense of desperation in his search for a sense of comfort as he faces the abyss of bottomless time, and the final lines hint at a sense of grief beyond tears.
Line by Line Meaning
Chopped olive sandwiches, roses and wine
The extravagant materials that describe the setting of the lyric.
Cold ripe persimmons, my sweet Clementine
The singer is lamenting over the loss of someone dear named Clementine.
There's a chill in the meadow, of bottomless time
The lyrical setting draws the singer to recall past memories of the lost Clementine.
I go on, I go on, I cannot fill my cup
The artist's mind is consumed by the loss and despair, making it nearly impossible for them to move on.
There's a hole in the bottom, the spring has dried up
Some vital element, which might have helped the artist to move on from the grief, seems to be missing.
I run through the forests of linear time
In search of answers, the singer runs through various dimensions of past and present.
Chop through the branches and cut through the vines
The singer continues running through the forest, moving past all obstructions that come their way.
I'll be back in a moment, though it may take me years
The artist assures that they will return to their loved ones, even if it takes a long time.
In the lava rock canyons corroded with fears
The artist has traveled to places of great danger and despair on their journey to recover from their grief.
Of corruptible bodies and grief beyond tears
The artist has seen unimaginable loss and pain in their journey.
I'll go on till I hear the sweet voices behind
The singer will continue their journey, motivated by the hope to reunite with their loved ones.
That I've left for the comfort of cold Clementine
In the artist's journey, they have left behind their loved ones, including Clementine, in search of answers and healing.
Contributed by Jake B. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
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