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 Wheel
Grateful Dead Lyrics
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You can't let go and you can't hold on,
You can't go back and you can't stand still,
If the thunder don't get you then the lightning will.
Won't you try just a little bit harder,
Couldn't you try just a little bit more?
Won't you try just a little bit harder,
Round, round robin run round, got to get back to where you belong,
Little bit harder, just a little bit more,
A little bit further than you gone before.
The wheel is turning and you can't slow down,
You can't let go and you can't hold on,
You can't go back and you can't stand still,
If the thunder don't get you then the lightning will.
Small wheel turn by the fire and rod,
Big wheel turn by the grace of God,
Every time that wheel turn 'round,
Bound to cover just a little more ground.
The wheel is turning and you can't slow down,
You can't let go and you can't hold on,
You can't go back and you can't stand still,
If the thunder don't get you then the lightning will.
Won't you try just a little bit harder,
Couldn't you try just a little bit more?
Won't you try just a little bit harder,
Couldn't you try just a little bit more?
The Grateful Dead's song "The Wheel" is a commentary on the cyclical nature of life – that everything is constantly moving and changing, and one cannot stop the inevitable "wheel" of life from turning. The lyrics suggest that even though one cannot control these changes, we should still strive to push ourselves and try just a little bit harder. This is shown through the repetition of the lyrics "Won't you try just a little bit harder, couldn't you try just a little bit more?" as well as the motif of the wheel turning constantly: "The wheel is turning and you can't slow down, You can't let go and you can't hold on, You can't go back and you can't stand still." The metaphorical use of thunder and lightning in the chorus suggest that if one does not adapt and change with the "wheel," they will be struck down and left behind.
The chorus of the song suggests that in order to truly appreciate life and progress on our journey, we need to keep pushing ourselves and experiencing new things. The use of the phrase "a little bit further than you gone before" implies that with every turn of the wheel, we are meant to strive for growth and expansion. The verse "Small wheel turn by the fire and rod, Big wheel turn by the grace of God" suggests that we have control over smaller elements of our lives, but ultimately the bigger changes and progressions come from outside of our control.
Overall, The Wheel is a commentary on accepting the changes of life and learning to adapt to the ever-turning "wheel." It encourages us to push ourselves and try harder in order to fully experience and appreciate our lives.
Line by Line Meaning
The wheel is turning and you can't slow down,
Change is inevitable, and you cannot escape it
You can't let go and you can't hold on,
You are powerless to control the direction of change
You can't go back and you can't stand still,
You cannot reverse or stop the forces of change
If the thunder don't get you then the lightning will.
There are consequences to your actions, and they can be unpredictable
Won't you try just a little bit harder,
You should strive to create a better outcome for yourself
Couldn't you try just a little bit more?
Your efforts have the potential to make a difference
Round, round robin run round, got to get back to where you belong,
Life is a circular journey, and you must find your place in it
Little bit harder, just a little bit more,
Your actions must extend beyond your comfort zone
A little bit further than you gone before.
You must push yourself to achieve progress
Small wheel turn by the fire and rod,
Small changes occur through human actions and influences
Big wheel turn by the grace of God,
Major changes occur through divine intervention or forces beyond human control
Every time that wheel turn 'round,
Each revolution brings new opportunities and challenges
Bound to cover just a little more ground.
You will inevitably make progress, even if it is small
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Written by: JEROME J. GARCIA, ROBERT C. HUNTER, WILLIAM KREUTZMANN
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
@amerolla
This is the only Dead song where I like the studio version better than any live version. Jerry's steel guitar is incredible!
@kevinwingler3370
yeah they never did it like this live.........ever
@DrMitchMedina
@@kevinwingler3370 That's because it's a studio song. Whatever you hear is being produced by Garcia and Kreutzmann, plus nobody. multi-tracked. The effect couldn't be replicated live.
@Chi2SC
Anthony Merolla He’s great on Teach Your Children also
@just_a_guy5977
The intro too.. gets me excited 🤓
@norezenable
Don't forget, Jerry also did steel guitar for Crosby Stills Nash and Young for Teach Your Children too.
I love steel guitar, big fan of Asleep at the Wheel, and one day I was listening to that song and was like, this steel guitar is amazing! Its frickin Jerry Garcia.
@samuelgodsey9172
The opening is one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard... Always gives me goosebumps
@greg1030
Same here, and always takes me around places like here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llano_Estacado#/media/File:Northwest_Escarpment_Llano_Estacado_2003.jpg
@robertknutson1487
Good morning when you hear bottle fairy when the wheel is being played. We all miss him
@bzasio1
Agree