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.
Hell in a Bucket
Grateful Dead Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
And I showed him a picture of you
I said, "Pal get to know her, you'll like her
Seemed like the least I could do.
'Cause when he's chargin' his chopper
Up and down your carpeted halls
You will think I am dressed up quite proper
Never mind how I stumble and fall.
You imagine me sipping champagne from your boot
For taste of your elegant pride
I may be going to hell in a bucket, babe
But at least I'm enjoying the ride, at least I'll enjoy the ride.
'Cause you're a sweet little softcore pretender
Somehow, babe, it got as hot as it gets
With her black leather and gold spike suspenders
And your chain, your black whip and pets.
Well we know you're the reincarnation
Of the infamous Catherine the Great
And we know how you love the ovation
And the scene that it seems to create.
You imagine me sipping champagne from your boot
For taste of your elegant pride
I may be going to hell in a bucket, babe
But at least I'm enjoying the ride, at least I'll enjoy the ride.
You analyze me, tend to despise me
You laugh when I stumble and fall
There may come a say when I'll dance on your grave
Unable to dance I'll still crawl across it
Unable to dance I'll still crawl
Unable to dance I'll still crawl
Unable to dance I'll crawl.
You must really consider the circus
It just might be your kind of zoo
I can't think of a place that's more perfect
For a person as perfect as you.
And it's not like I'm leaving you lonely
'Cause I wouldn't know where to begin
Well I know you wake up here only
When the snakes come marching in.
You imagine me sipping champagne from your boot
For taste of your elegant pride
I may be going to hell in a bucket, babe
But at least I'm enjoying the ride, at least I'll enjoy the ride.
Ride, ride, ride
Ride, ride, ride
Ride, ride, ride
At least I'll enjoy the ride.
At least I'll enjoy the ride.
At least I'll enjoy the ride.
The Grateful Deadโs โHell in a Bucketโ is a metaphorical ode to the rock and roll lifestyle. The singer recounts his experience drinking and hanging out with a biker. He shows the biker a picture of a woman and says that everyone who enters her house will think he is dressed properly (referring to his rockstar attire) even though he stumbles and falls on occasion. The woman is then described as a "sweet little softcore pretender" wearing black leather, gold spike suspenders, chains and handling a black whip. The lyrics also reference her as the reincarnation of Catherine the Great, the Empress of Russia in the late 1700s who is known for her power, intelligence, and scandalous affairs.
The singer of the song acknowledges that he is headed towards chaos, symbolized by hell. But, he adds that at least he will enjoy the ride. The lyrics talk about the woman having an obsession with snakes and how the singer doesn't know how to leave her alone. The singer urges her to join the circus because it's the perfect place for an exhibitionist like her.
It is not entirely clear who the song is about, and the Grateful Dead have never confirmed the inspiration. It is speculated that the song is likely about a difficult relationship that Jerry Garcia, the lead guitarist, had at the time. Regardless of who inspired the lyrics, it's a song about embracing an exhilarating life, even if it ultimately leads to trouble.
Line by Line Meaning
Well I was drinkin' last night with a biker
I spent the previous night drinking with a motorcyclist.
And I showed him a picture of you
I showed the biker a photo of you.
I said, "Pal get to know her, you'll like her
Seemed like the least I could do."
I told the biker to get to know you, since you seemed like a person he would like- it was the least I could do.
'Cause when he's chargin' his chopper
Up and down your carpeted halls
You will think I am dressed up quite proper
Never mind how I stumble and fall.
When he is riding his motorcycle through the carpeted hallways of your home, you will think I am well put together despite any stumbling I may do.
You imagine me sipping champagne from your boot
For taste of your elegant pride
I may be going to hell in a bucket, babe
But at least I'm enjoying the ride, at least I'll enjoy the ride.
You may envision me acting in a subservient manner to indulge your sense of superiority, but I am pleased with the direction of my wild experiences, even though they could be leading me to a negative end.
'Cause you're a sweet little softcore pretender
Somehow, babe, it got as hot as it gets
With her black leather and gold spike suspenders
And your chain, your black whip, and pets.
You pretend you're innocent, but you are involved in wild, out-of-control scenes with leather, chains, whips, and pets.
Well we know you're the reincarnation
Of the infamous Catherine the Great
And we know how you love the ovation
And the scene that it seems to create.
We consider you to be the reborn Catherine the Great, and you are fond of the public support it brings and the drama it inspires.
You analyze me, tend to despise me
You laugh when I stumble and fall
There may come a say when I'll dance on your grave
Unable to dance I'll still crawl across it
Unable to dance I'll still crawl
Unable to dance I'll still crawl.
You are critical of me, often mocking me when I falter; nevertheless, there may come a day when I will be walking over your grave, whether or not I can physically dance because I am enjoying the life I have been given despite its difficulties.
You must really consider the circus
It just might be your kind of zoo
I can't think of a place that's more perfect
For a person as perfect as you.
A perfect entertainment venue for you would be a circus or a similar type of place because of its sense of spectacle and display that you would find appealing.
And it's not like I'm leaving you lonely
'Cause I wouldn't know where to begin
Well I know you wake up here only
When the snakes come marching in.
I'm not intentionally leaving you isolated or lonely, but I'm not sure how to help you more. And I know that you only seem to appear in my life at times associated with problems or negative events.
You imagine me sipping champagne from your boot
For taste of your elegant pride
I may be going to hell in a bucket, babe
But at least I'm enjoying the ride, at least I'll enjoy the ride.
Ride, ride, ride
Ride, ride, ride
Ride, ride, ride
At least I'll enjoy the ride.
At least I'll enjoy the ride.
At least I'll enjoy the ride.
You have a fantasy of seeing me with your expensive footwear in my mouth to flatter your vanity, but I have a positive attitude about the adventurous life I lead, even though it could lead to my ruination eventually.
Lyrics ยฉ Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: BRENT RICHARD MYDLAND, JOHN BARLOW, ROBERT HALL WEIR
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
Luz
Bueno, estaba bebiendo anoche con un motorista
Y le mostrรฉ una foto tuya
Le dije: ยซSi la conozco, la querrรกsยป
Parecรญa lo menos que podรญa hacer.
Porque cuando estรก cargando su helicรณptero
Arriba y abajo de sus pasillos alfombrados
No lo pensarรกs por el contrario bastante apropiado
No importa cรณmo tropiezo y me caigo.
Me imaginas bebiendo champaรฑa de tu bota
Para probar tu elegante orgullo
Puedo ir al infierno en un cubo, bebรฉ
Pero al menos estoy disfrutando el viaje, al menos disfrutarรฉ el viaje.
Aw eres un dulce y pequeรฑo pretendiente softcore
De alguna manera, el bebรฉ se puso duro, ya que se pone
Con sus tirantes de cuero negro con pinchos
Y tu silla y tu lรกtigo y tus mascotas
Bueno, sabemos que eres la reencarnaciรณn
De la voraz Catalina la Grande
Y sabemos cรณmo amas tus ovaciones
Para las escenas clasificadas Z que creas.
Me imaginas bebiendo champaรฑa de tu bota
Para probar tu elegante orgullo
Puedo ir al infierno en un cubo, bebรฉ
Pero al menos estoy disfrutando el viaje, al menos disfrutarรฉ el viaje.
Me analizas, tratas de despreciarme, te rรญes
Cuando tropiezo y me caigo
Puede que llegue un dรญa, bailarรฉ en tu tumba
Si no puedo bailar, me arrastrarรฉ por รฉl. No puedo bailar. Me arrastrarรฉ.
Incapaz de bailar, gatearรฉ.
Realmente debes considerar el circo
Tal vez sea tu tipo de zoolรณgico
No puedo pensar en un lugar que sea mรกs perfecto
Para una persona tan perfecta como tรบ.
Y no es como si te estuviera dejando solo
Porque no sabrรญa por dรณnde empezar
Bueno, sรฉ que solo pensarรกs en mรญ
Cuando las serpientes entran marchando
Me imaginas bebiendo champaรฑa de tu bota
Para el gusto de tu orgullo elegante
Puedo ir al infierno en un cubo, bebรฉ
Pero al menos estoy disfrutando el viaje, al menos estoy disfrutando el viaje.
Cabalgar, cabalgar, cabalgar
Cabalgar, cabalgar, cabalgar
Cabalgar, cabalgar, cabalgar
Al menos estoy disfrutando el viaje.
Al menos estoy disfrutando el viaje.
POR LO MENOS DISFRUTO EL PASEO.
Victor Malvarez
I am 61 years old, been a fan since the early 80's and this is the first time I've seen this video.
It's so 80's and yet so Dead....
BE GRATEFUL FOR THE DEAD!
Matthew Craig
Ive been a fan since the '80s as well, and just discovered there was a video for this song today. What a long strange trip it's been.
BuddhasEstimatedProphet
Once the Jerry tap is opened, for all intensive purposes, you're screwed ๐คฃ
Paolo Coletti
Miami Bob Weir
Bill
I'm right there with you. I found out about this video through Wikipedia.
Mark
best song they ever did, imo
Richard Cheese
It may be cheesy but they all look like they had a hell of a time making it
L&L่ช
At least they enjoyed the ride ๐
Alan
Right on !!!
TooLameToDie
Bob, Jerry and the boys never fail to put a huge smile on my face.