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.
Cocaine
Grateful Dead Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Don't need no airplane to get off the ground there's more than one way to fly
Have a little taste, Baby, don't hesitate, every hit don't have to be a song
Gonna take you to the cosmos, Baby, and boogie with you all night long
Riding out on a rail, feels so fine
Talking 'bout that cocaine express, mainline, got a good head of steam
Never lived down on the Bayou, but I been busted in New Orleans, New Orleans
I can roll all night with you, Baby got a land? I'm just in from Marin
Here comes the doo-dah dealer on his Hog three wheeler, 250 pounds of sin
He's made your car the main attraction. you wanna beef up his action
But he will cut you, before he would cut you in, the only place to win
Riding out on a rail, feels so fine
Talking 'bout that cocaine express, mainline, taking a midnight cruise
Never lived up in the Northlands, but I been snowblind out in Sandford Dew
Snowblind in Sanford Dew, that's enough for you, snowblind
The Grateful Dead’s song “Cocaine” is a psychedelic jam about the highs and lows of drug use. The lyrics are poetic and cryptic, but ultimately seem to be a reflection on the joy and danger of using cocaine. The tune starts with a suggestion to take a little “snip” and “play a little riff." The playful tone seems to encourage experimentation with the drug, alluding to the idea that you don’t need a plane to fly when you have cocaine. Yet, the song hints at the darker aspects of using the drug, such as being busted in New Orleans and getting “snowblind out in Sanford Dew."
The lyrics also hint at the consequences of dealing with drug dealers, particularly the doo-dah dealer on his Hog three-wheeler who weighs in at “250 pounds of sin”. While the dealer provides a path to the high, he is also someone to be wary of as he's willing to cut you off, and even cut you in. Despite the risks, the song seems to exalt the experience of riding on the “cocaine express mainline," going “truckin' till the break of day” and taking a “midnight cruise”. The song’s imagery paints a picture of a wild ride that may lead to euphoria or may just lead to trouble.
Overall, “Cocaine” touches on a range of emotions and situations that can come with cocaine use. The lyrics suggest an urge for exploration, while also acknowledging the dangers inherent in such experimentation. It also serves as a commentary on the intense relationships that can form between drug users and dealers that come with risks and rewards.
Line by Line Meaning
Take a snip of this then play a little riff, don't be afraid to try
Try a little cocaine and let the high inspire your creativity in your music
Don't need no airplane to get off the ground there's more than one way to fly
Cocaine can give you a high similar to that of flying without actually boarding a plane
Have a little taste, Baby, don't hesitate, every hit don't have to be a song
Don't be afraid to try cocaine and enjoy the high, not every hit has to be for writing music
Gonna take you to the cosmos, Baby, and boogie with you all night long
Cocaine can give you an out-of-this-world high, and we'll dance all night long
Riding out on a rail, feels so fine
Being high on cocaine feels great
Talking 'bout that cocaine express, mainline, got a good head of steam
We're talking about the intense high of snorting cocaine
Never lived down on the Bayou, but I been busted in New Orleans, New Orleans
I've never lived in southern Louisiana but I've been arrested for drugs in New Orleans
I can roll all night with you, Baby got a land? I'm just in from Marin
I can stay up all night doing cocaine with you, do you have a place to do it? I just got here from Marin
Can't get it off, but I can get it on and we'll be truckin' 'till the break of day
I can't stop using cocaine, but we'll keep doing it until dawn
Here comes the doo-dah dealer on his Hog three wheeler, 250 pounds of sin
The drug dealer is arriving on his Harley Davidson three-wheeler, representing the sin and temptation of using drugs
He's made your car the main attraction. you wanna beef up his action
The dealer has made your car popular because you're using it to buy drugs, and you want to increase drug activity
But he will cut you, before he would cut you in, the only place to win
The dealer will hurt you before giving you a share of his profits, making it difficult to profit from drug dealing
Riding out on a rail, feels so fine
Being high on cocaine feels great
Talking 'bout that cocaine express, mainline, taking a midnight cruise
We're continuing to talk about the high of snorting cocaine, and taking a joy ride at midnight
Never lived up in the Northlands, but I been snowblind out in Sandford Dew
I've never lived in the northern region, but I've been strung out on cocaine in Sandford Dew
Snowblind in Sanford Dew, that's enough for you, snowblind
Being addicted to cocaine in Sandford Dew is enough, it's not worth it to continue using and lose control
Contributed by Cole I. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
@robreynolds1287
Driving that train, high on cocaine
Casey Jones you better, watch your speed
Trouble ahead, trouble behind
And you know that notion just crossed my mind
This old engine
Makes it on time
Leaves Central Station
About a quarter to nine
Hits river junction
At seventeen to
At a quarter to ten
You know it's traveling again
Driving that train, high on cocaine
Casey Jones you better watch your speed
Trouble ahead, trouble behind
And you know that notion just crossed my mind
Trouble ahead
A lady in red
Take my advice
You'd be better off dead
Switch-man sleeping
Train hundred and two
Is on the wrong track
And headed for you
Driving that train, high on cocaine
Casey Jones you better, watch your speed
Trouble ahead, trouble behind
And you know that notion just crossed my mind
Trouble with you is
The trouble with me
Got two good eyes
But we still don't see
Come 'round the bend
You know it's the end
The fireman screams and
The engine just gleams
Driving that train, high on cocaine
Casey Jones you better, watch your speed
Trouble ahead, trouble behind
And you know that notion just crossed my mind
Driving that train, high on cocaine
Casey Jones you better, watch your speed
Trouble ahead, trouble behind
And you know that notion just crossed my mind
And you know that notion
Just crossed my mind
@melanienelson1148
Watching the "Long Strange Trip" documentary and just had to listen to this. I'm so.....well, grateful...that I got to see the Dead live a couple times. Good times.
@Adam-xd9ws
Thank you for posting this, getting me through some hard times.
@Nick-sb9re
To be honest I know how you feel
@kingbushwickthe33rd
"Trouble With You Is The Trouble With Me. Got Two Good Eyes But Still Don't See.".
@LSommer
And you know that notion JUST crossed my mind. 😊😊😊
@athenagouna9215
Well
@athenagouna9215
I still love you
@deirdranasti9500
Awesome Group. Listening in February 2021!!🎵🎸💜✌️
@billperron2
Jerry's bro! Here's one driving that train https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtC31t5hmI0
@matthewtrickett6281
April 2022