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.
I Know You Rider
Grateful Dead Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
I know you, rider, gonna miss me when I'm gone
I know you, rider, gonna miss me when I'm gone
Gonna miss your baby, from rolling in your arms
Laid down last night, Lord, I could not take my rest
Laid down last night, Lord, I could not take my rest
My mind was wandering like the wild geese in the west
The sun will shine in my back door someday
The sun will shine in my back door someday
March winds will blow all my troubles away
I wish I was a headlight, on a north bound train
I wish I was a headlight, on a north bound train
I'd shine my light through cool Colorado rain
I know you, rider, gonna miss me when I'm gone
I know you, rider, gonna miss me when I'm gone
Gonna miss your baby, from rolling in your arms
I know you, rider, gonna miss me when I'm gone
I know you, rider, gonna miss me when I'm gone
Gonna miss your baby, from rolling in your arms
I know you, rider, gonna miss me when I'm gone
Gonna miss your baby, from rolling in your arms
Laid down last night, Lord, I could not take my rest
Laid down last night, Lord, I could not take my rest
My mind was wandering like the wild geese in the west
The sun will shine in my back door someday
March winds will blow all my troubles away
I wish I was a headlight, on a north bound train
I wish I was a headlight, on a north bound train
I'd shine my light through cool Colorado rain
I know you, rider, gonna miss me when I'm gone
I know you, rider, gonna miss me when I'm gone
Gonna miss your baby, from rolling in your arms
I know you, rider, gonna miss me when I'm gone
I know you, rider, gonna miss me when I'm gone
Gonna miss your baby, from rolling in your arms
The Grateful Dead's song "I Know You Rider" is a classic traditional folk song that has been passed down through the generations with minor changes made here and there. The lyrics highlight the singer's awareness that the person they are addressing, the rider, will miss them when they are gone. The rider and the singer are likely lovers or close companions. The repetition of the phrase "gonna miss me when I'm gone" throughout the song emphasizes the loneliness and loss that will be felt by the rider without the singer's love.
The song's second verse dives into the singer's inability to rest or sleep due to their racing mind. The imagery of the "wild geese in the west" conveys the feelings of restlessness and yearning to roam. Yet, even with a wandering mind, the singer finds solace in the idea that the "sun will shine in [their] back door someday" and that the "March winds will blow all [their] troubles away." This verse may serve as a message of hope and perseverance through difficult times.
The final verse brings in the desire to be a "headlight on a north bound train," alluding to the freedom and adventure of traveling. The singer imagines shining their light through the "cool Colorado rain," creating a nostalgic and hopeful image of the future. The song ends with a repetition of the chorus, driving home the sense of loss and longing between the singer and the rider.
Line by Line Meaning
I know you, rider, gonna miss me when I'm gone
The singer acknowledges that the subject ('rider') will feel sorrow and longing when the singer is no longer around
Gonna miss your baby, from rolling in your arms
The subject of the song will miss the closeness and intimacy with the singer, represented here by the phrase 'rolling in your arms'
Laid down last night, Lord, I could not take my rest
The singer had trouble sleeping the previous night, possibly indicating some underlying stress or anxiety
My mind was wandering like the wild geese in the west
The artist's thoughts were scattered and unfocused, much like the flocks of geese migrating in the western sky
The sun will shine in my back door someday
The artist is optimistic about the future and believes that good things will come to them, even if it may take some time
March winds will blow all my troubles away
The singer believes that natural forces, such as the winds of March, have the power to remove or alleviate their problems
I wish I was a headlight, on a north bound train
The singer longs to be unbound and moving forward, represented here by the image of a train heading north with a bright headlight
I'd shine my light through cool Colorado rain
The artist's journey would take them through tough, but scenic terrain, represented here by the 'cool Colorado rain'
Lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: Michael Hart, Robert Hunter, Philip Lesh, DP, Jerome J. Garcia, Keith R. Richard Godchaux, William Kreutzmann, Ronald Charles Mckernan, Robert Hall Weir
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
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@tropicwave1
I Know You Rider (Live in Paris 1972 Remaster)
Grateful Dead
Album: Europe '72 (Live)
I know you, rider, gonna miss me when I'm gone
I know you, rider, gonna miss me when I'm gone
Gonna miss your baby, from rolling in your arms
Laid down last night, Lord, I could not take my rest
Laid down last night, Lord, I could not take my rest
My mind was wandering like the wild geese in the west
The sun will shine in my back door someday
The sun will shine in my back door someday
March winds will blow all my troubles away
I wish I was a headlight, on a north bound train
I wish I was a headlight, on a north bound train
I'd shine my light through cool Colorado rain
I know you, rider, gonna miss me when I'm gone
I know you, rider, gonna miss me when I'm gone
Gonna miss your baby, from rolling in your arms
I know you, rider, gonna miss me when I'm gone
I know you, rider, gonna miss me when I'm gone
Gonna miss your baby, from rolling in your arms
Written by Bill Kreutzmann, Bob Weir, Jerry Garcia, Michael Hart, Philip Lesh, Robert Hunter, Ronald Mckernan • Copyright © Universal Music Publishing Group
℗ 1972 Warner Records Inc.
@forrestgunt668
when i was little, my college-age parents always had the dead playing loud in our house. this album dropped on my 3rd birthday and was played thru my whole childhood. I saw them live for first time at Red Rock in Colorado July, 1982. I'm truly blessed that my folks shared their music with me. I didn't used to listen to them much myself as an adult, but now at age 48 I'm completely enthralled and hardly want to listen to anything else.
@itisamystery
Forrest Gunt I feel ya bro, my dad always played them on cassette while we rode around in his ‘89 Ford Ranger with no A/C in Texas summers. The songs spark many memories !
@joecharles7081
First time I've ever heard this song and love it, wish I'd known it years ago. I'm 58.
@darkjanggo
parents always played this when i was young, too. at 17, grateful dead is a staple in my music listening!
@MechanicalPigg
@@joecharles7081 really wow that's actually pretty crazy to think Im happy you got to hear it tho
@detonator2112
Absolutely fantastic! I've always been a casual Dead fan (since the 90's) but only lately I've discovered how much amazing material they actually have.
@tylerfortney1628
A friend of mine died today. He was the biggest fan of the dead I’ve ever met I’ve known him for ten years r.i.p. homie
@epluribusunum1460
I am sorry for your loss. I didn’t know him, but I am thinking of him as I listen to the Dead today.
It’s just a box of rain, I don’t know who put it there.
Believe it if you need it, or leave it if you dare.
It’s just a box of rain, or a ribbon for your hair,
such a long, long time to be gone, and a short time to be there.
You were lucky to have known your friend.
@izacclogue1276
I miss you . I'll get up and fly away greatfull dead , listen we are greatfull dead
@michaelnienaber8263
Sorry for your loss man.