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; 1968โ1970), John Perry Barlow (nonperforming lyricist; 1971โ1995), Keith Godchaux (keyboards; 1971โ1979), Donna Godchaux (vocals; 1972โ1979), Brent Mydland (keyboards, vocals; 1979โ1990), and Vince Welnick (keyboards, vocals; 1990โ1995). 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 Altamontโso 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 nightโthe 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 โ 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.
Franklin's Tower
Grateful Dead Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Your eyes looked through your mother's face
Wildflower seed on the sand and stone
May the four winds blow you safely home
Roll away, the dew
Roll away, roll away the dew
Roll away, roll away the dew
I'll tell you where the four winds dwell
In Franklin's tower there hangs a bell
It can ring, turn night to day
It can ring like fire when you lose your way
Roll away, the dew
Roll away, roll away the dew
Roll away, roll away the dew
Roll away, roll away the dew
God save the child who rings that bell
I may have one good ring baby, you can't tell
One watch by night, one watch by day
If you get confused just listen to the music play
Some come to laugh their past away
Some come to make it just one more day
Whichever way your pleasure tends
If you plant ice you're gonna harvest wind
Roll away, the dew
Roll away, roll away the dew
Roll away, roll away the dew
Roll away, roll away the dew
I'll tell you where the four winds sleep
Like four lean hounds the lighthouse keep
Wildflower seed in the sand and wind
May the four winds blow you home again
Roll away, the dew
Roll away, roll away the dew
Roll away, roll away the dew
Roll away, roll away the dew
Franklin's Tower is a song by the Grateful Dead that seems to transport the listener into a different time and place with its poetic lyrics that utilize metaphor to paint the picture of the winds and the tower that harbors them. The first verse of the song is a kind of invocation that sets the tone for the rest of the song. The singer sings about forgotten space and eyes that looked through the mother's face, which could refer to reincarnation or the idea of life before birth. The second line, "Wildflower seed on the sand and stone," refers to something fragile and delicate that is planted in a place where it may not be able to grow - this can be interpreted as a metaphor for the human soul that travels through time and experiences, trying to find the right place to grow. The final line, "May the four winds blow you safely home," could mean several things - it could be a final destination, an end to this journey, or it could simply be a way of expressing the desire for protection on this journey.
In the chorus, the phrase "Roll away, the dew" is repeated over and over again. This refrain is open to interpretation, but it may be referring to the idea of rolling up the morning dew that appears on plants in the early morning. The metaphorical meaning behind this phrase could be that the morning dew represents the transient beauty of life - it is something that appears for a brief moment before evaporating into the air. The singer may be urging the listener to roll up that beauty and savor it before it disappears. The imagery of rolling away the dew is symbolic of the fleetingness of life.
The second verse of the song offers more concrete imagery. It speaks of "Franklin's tower," which is a bell tower that can turn night into day. This bell is described as having the power to ring like fire when you lose your way. The bell is a symbol of guidance and safety, and the singer states that "God save the child who rings that bell." The final line of the verse, "If you get confused just listen to the music play," seems to suggest that the only way to find your way home is to listen to the music, to be present in the moment and to remember the beauty that still exists in the world.
Overall, Franklin's Tower is a song that speaks to the human experience of trying to find one's way home, both literally and figuratively. It is filled with poetic language and metaphorical imagery that is open to interpretation. The chorus of the song may be the most memorable, as it is repeated several times, and its meaning is subject to many different interpretations. However, the power of the song lies in its ability to transport the listener to a different world, where the wind carries us home and the music is our only guide.
Line by Line Meaning
In another time's forgotten space
In a different era, a place lost in time
Your eyes looked through your mother's face
You inherited a look from your mom
Wildflower seed on the sand and stone
The beauty of life persists in harsh and inhospitable environments
May the four winds blow you safely home
May life's challenges not harm you and may you find your way back home
Roll away, the dew
Roll away, roll away the dew
Roll away, roll away the dew
Roll away, roll away the dew
Let go of your worries, dance, and celebrate life
I'll tell you where the four winds dwell
In Franklin's tower there hangs a bell
The power to navigate life's obstacles comes from within, symbolized by the bell hanging in Franklin's Tower
It can ring, turn night to day
It can ring like fire when you lose your way
The bell can be a beacon of hope and guide you through dark times
God save the child who rings that bell
I may have one good ring baby, you can't tell
The bell can save the lost and provide guidance to those in need, even if it only rings once
One watch by night, one watch by day
If you get confused just listen to the music play
There is always support available, day and night, through the music
Some come to laugh their past away
Some come to make it just one more day
Whichever way your pleasure tends
If you plant ice you're gonna harvest wind
People seek solace in different ways, but it's important to plant positivity and not negativity in your life
I'll tell you where the four winds sleep
Like four lean hounds the lighthouse keep
Wildflower seed in the sand and wind
May the four winds blow you home again
The winds of destiny can be kind or harsh, like hounds guarding a lighthouse, but the beauty of life can still thrive in the harshest of environments
Lyrics ยฉ Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: JEROME J. GARCIA, ROBERT C. HUNTER, WILLIAM KREUTZMANN
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
Austin Centolella
Good Morning
MP Oy IC XC
March 28th, 2023
๐๐โฃ๏ธ๐๐
#BCTweetyLikeyMe
#DammitQuint
#TheJawsGro
#aecjdrumwalk
#dreamhome
#movieoftheweek
#WomensHistoryMonth
๐โค๏ธ๐๐๐ด๐+
Cosmic Jaws
Welcome Home
Grateful Dead
"From 1975's Blues For Allah album, Franklin's Tower had an interesting place in the Dead's repertoire. It was joined to Help On The Way and Slipknot from 1975-1977, 1983-1985, and 1989, 1995, and was otherwise a free agent, popping up in various places throughout the setlist, in both the first and second sets." - David Lemieux
Ronnie Capitanelli
~ And Letโs Not Forget The Unsung Hero Of B.F.A. โSTRONGER THAN DIRT or MILKโN THE TURKEY ๐๐ป
(Good Stuff Brother ๐)
Josh Steele
Looking forward to being at all shows in legalized states.
Josh Steele
๐ Deer Creek will always rock, and in Jerry Garcia's day as lead guitarist, would play three nights in a row. What's your favorite venue for live Grate dead as well as other varieties of the band such as further and with John Mayer doing a great job as lead guitars surprisingly after gravity put living the lifestyle John Mayer's done a great job I'm excited and interested to see what his future projects will be so I don't think he'll go back to just playing the ladies๐ gravity!? Lifetime of musical experience will be great for the ๐ถ he'll be able to come up with for us all!!!!!! No need to question the talented Mr. Mayer and the legacy he will always have time for future projects!?๐๐๐๐
Josh Steele
Tears of Joy for the supposed last tour. 50th anniversary is only for the name, The band's legacy will always have tribute band's, such as "Hyrider" a tribute band' for the "Grateful Dead" original โพ๏ธ sounds will always be safe to share "without a net" or "Back to the Future " travel plans. John Mayer has found "My" definition of a wonderful band's "Last Waltz." Still love a piece of the great original Jerry band covers such as "Playing in the band." However I'm eager to see the opportunity to evolve with new creative subconscious, elevated, thoughts that could be best told as well as seen through the experienced, original "Warlock's!"
Josh Steele
Music for the Grateful Family will never fade away!! Tangled up in the lifestyle of the traveling band. The show will always remain the same for "Phans' and family!
mark kirsch
Hunterโs lyrics are just magical. โMay the four winds roll you home again.โ
SkiBoss420
who is hunter?
TheProClam
@SkiBoss420 Robert Hunter, he wrote a ton of songs for the Dead. Absolutely amazing song writer.
Lucy Lennon
@SkiBoss420 Robert Hunter was Jerry Garcia's songwriting partner; like John Barlow and Bob Weir's songwriting partnership.