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.
Dark Star
Grateful Dead Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Reason tatters, the forces tear loose from the axis
Searchlight casting for faults in the clouds of delusion
Shall we go, you and I while we can
Through the transitive nightfall of diamonds?
Mirror shatters in formless reflections of matter
Glass hand dissolving in ice, petal flowers revolving
Shall we go, you and I while we can
Through the transitive nightfall of diamonds?
The lyrics to Grateful Dead's "Dark Star" seem to contemplate the fleeting nature of existence and the insignificance of human concerns. The song depicts a world in which stars and reason appear to be falling apart, and the only option is to escape into a "transitive nightfall of diamonds." The imagery reflects this theme, painting a picture of chaos and dissolution.
The "dark star" of the opening line suggests a celestial body that has lost its luster and fallen into ruin. The "tatters" of reason and the "forces" that are pulling loose from the "axis" evoke a world in which the forces that hold things together are coming undone. The "searchlight" and "faults in the clouds of delusion" suggest a desperate search for some kind of meaning or understanding amid the confusion.
The second stanza continues the theme of disintegration and loss. The "mirror shatters" and the "formless reflections of matter" suggest a world in which nothing is fixed or stable. The image of the "glass hand dissolving in ice" further emphasizes this idea of dissolution. The "lady in velvet" receding into the "nights of good-bye" conjures up an image of loss and finality.
Overall, "Dark Star" seems to suggest that the world is in a state of chaos and dissolution, and that the only escape is into some kind of transcendent, metaphysical realm. The "transitive nightfall of diamonds" represents the possibility of travel beyond the constraints of our physical world, and a release from the pain and confusion of earthly existence.
Line by Line Meaning
Dark star crashes, pouring its light into ashes
A star has collapsed and its light is now fading away into nothingness.
Reason tatters, the forces tear loose from the axis
Logic and reasoning are falling apart as everything seems to be spiraling out of control.
Searchlight casting for faults in the clouds of delusion
Looking for truth and clarity amidst the confusion and falsehoods.
Shall we go, you and I while we can
Let's take advantage of our time and experience this moment together before it's too late.
Through the transitive nightfall of diamonds?
Navigating through the fleeting moments of our lives, wondering what the ultimate meaning of it all may be.
Mirror shatters in formless reflections of matter
Our sense of self and identity is disrupted by the chaos and disorder of the world around us.
Glass hand dissolving in ice, petal flowers revolving
Fleeting and fragile beauty, easily destroyed and constantly evolving.
Lady in velvet recedes in the nights of good-bye
The image of a beautiful woman fades away, lost in the memories of what once was.
Shall we go, you and I while we can
Repeating the call to seize the moment and make the most of our time together while we still can.
Through the transitive nightfall of diamonds?
Repeating the question of the ultimate meaning of our experiences, exploring the mysteries of life and existence.
Lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: Jerome J. Garcia, Michael S. Hart, Robert C. Hunter, William Kreutzmann, Philip Lesh, Ronald Charles McKernan, Robert Hall Weir
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
@Passifloratripartira
Dark star crashes, pouring its light into ashes
Reason tatters, the forces tear loose from the axis
Searchlight casting for faults in the clouds of delusion
Shall we go, you and I while we can
Through the transitive nightfall of diamonds?
Mirror shatters in formless reflections of matter
Glass hand dissolving in ice, petal flowers revolving
Lady in velvet recedes in the nights of good-bye
Shall we go, you and I while we can
Through the transitive nightfall of diamonds?
@gregor6922
Dark star crashes
Pouring its light into ashes
Reason tatters
The forces tear loose from the axis
Searchlight casting
For faults in the clouds of delusion
Shall we go, you and I, while we can?
Through the transitive nightfall of diamonds
Mirror shatters
In formless reflections of matter
Glass hand dissolving
To ice petal flowers revolving
Lady in velvet
Recedes in the nights of goodbye
Shall we go, you and I, while we can
Through the transitive nightfall of diamonds?
Robert Hunter wrote the following ending to the lyrics. You can hear it being spoken at the end of the single version of "Dark Star" :
Spinning a set the stars through which the tattered tales of axis roll
About the waxen wind of never set to motion in the unbecoming
Round about the reason hardly matters nor the wise through which
The stars were set in spin
What can be said about "Dark Star"? The prototypical Grateful Dead song, providing the band with a vehicle for countless hours of improvisation.
Hunter states in a note in Box of Rain that "Dark Star" was the first song lyric he wrote with the band.
In Garcia, Charles Reich questions Garcia about "Dark Star.":
REICH: Well then if we wanted to talk about "Dark Star," uh, could you say anything about where it comes from?
[GARCIA]: You gotta remember that you and I are talking about two different "Dark Stars." You're talking about the "Dark Star" which you have heard formalized on a record, and I'm talking about the "Dark Star" which I have heard in each performance as a completely improvised piece over a long period of time.
So I have a long continuum of "Dark Star" which range in character from each other to real different extremes. "Dark Star" has meant, while I'm playing it, almost as many things as I can sit here and imagine, so all I can do is talk about "Dark Star" as a playing experience.
REICH: Well, yeah, talk about it a little.
[GARCIA]: I can't. It talks about itself.
Nothing like a straight forward answer, lol, Garcia and Hunter were quite a pair
Dark Star was the first lyric that Robert Hunter wrote with the Dead.
He had previously sent a few lyrics to them from New Mexico and was then invited to join them.
Hunter describes the journey in the introduction to his collected lyrics Box Of Rain;
The trip took six weeks with a surreal layover in Denver.
By the time I hit Nevada I had a dime in my pocket which I put in a slot machine and parlayed into enough to make a phone cal the guys I was on my way.
I arrived in San Francisco with a case of walking pneumonia and the clothes on my back.
The next day I was writing Dark Star, feeling pretty much as the lyric suggests.
The initial lyrics were written at Rio Nido where the Dead were playing when Hunter joined them.
The single version of Dark Star was recorded in the studio during the recordings sessions for Anthem Of The Sun.
Robert Hunter speaks the words at the close of the song.
Dark Star was first performed, without lyrics, by the Grateful Dead in September 1967.
The first version with lyrics was in the December of that year.
The song was a major focus for improvisation and was played regularly through the 1960's and up to 1973.
After 1974 it only appeared on odd occasions in 1978, 1979, 1981 and 1984 before making a comeback in October 1989.
It was then played about 25 times through the 1990s the last performance being in March 1994.
@jerrynelson1929
Thanks for articulating that this is the gateway to Bitches Brew, Mahavishnu 1971-1973, Weather Report in particular. Agreed that this is the tightest, most effectively recorded Dark Star version I have the pleasure of hearing.
While the aforementioned Fusion works include incredibly technical skill sets, the orchestral view of this Dark Star provides a tight, yet free listening adventure that is on a different plane than Orange Lady, Bitches Brew , Spanish Key, Pharaoh,s Dance, Meeting of the Spirits, Birds of Fire,Trilogy, The Unknown Soldier, Second Sunday in August, Crystal. Not a better plane, just a Different one,
I have become a Deadhead over the last 25-30 years because I really like the extended jams and free/ psychedelic work, such as Playing in the Band, Wharf Rat, The Other One, and the Eleven , St Stephen, Bird Song, China Cat/ I know you Rider, Uncle John’s Band ( can go on and on )…..
This specific recording of Dark Star just takes you AWAY , just like “ In a Silent Way. Both of these recordings were made within weeks of each other in 1969. My vinyl copies of each are in really good shape, which I can still listen on my Bose 901 speakers….had to replace my original Phillips turntable a couple of years ago ,and replaced my Kenwood amp a couple of times.
These albums and artists have provided a lifetime of pleasure, joy and both my parents and wife of 41 year’s demanding to “turn that down”
- but keep listening and even have convinced my wife to keep the station on the Grateful Dead channel on XM or a downloaded Grateful Dead disc in the car!
Some guys just don’t grow up 😃😊
@rodneyhatch56
I stole this record from a record store when I was thirteen years old. I am now 63. I still have this record 50 years later. It is part of my operating system.
@georgecorbett9832
Maybe u should take it back now and say “thank you”
@manga4715
By Blockbuster standards....you owe 145,000,000.12
@landlinesandpercolators8822
First I want to say I am sorry for the shoplifting I did. For the record though, LPs were not easy to steal. You can't put them under your shirt. Preferred method was have a bag from the store, slip the albums in, and if you wanted to really be thorough, fold and have an old receipt and a small stapler to staple it on with. Then walk out like you bought it.
@EzeICE
Right On brother!
@maryslusarchuk3810
I think sometimes we steal what we need. Even when we don't know it at the time, our subconscious does.
@Mrbeahz1
So I was 18 when I got this album. I waited till my 52 year old mom went to her room, then I put it on. 5 minutes in she comes out, and I immediately start with "I'll turn it down". She's all: "No! What is this? Who is this?" Long story short, I started the side over, and Mom and I listened to Dark Star, and we both loved it.
@Finnrock1
the " Mothers " know best!
@therasound
you are a lucky, lucky man my friend.....
@martintowse6812
Had a similar experience having turned someone else's mother, thirty years my senior onto 'Morning Dew' on Europe 72. Daughter walked in and assumed her mother was listening to BBC radio 4. Dark Star on this album confirmed my path to adulthood when I was fourteen, thanks elder brother. Jerry leading us out of chaos, as phenomenal today as then.