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.
Throwing Stones
Grateful Dead Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Dizzy with eternity
Paint it with a skin of sky, brush in some clouds and sea
Call it home for you and me
A peaceful place, or so it looks from space
A closer look reveals the human race
Full of hope, full of grace, is the human face
But afraid we may lay our home to waste
There's a fear down here we can't forget
Hasn't got a name just yet
Always awake, always around
Singing ashes, ashes, all fall down
Ashes, ashes, all fall down
Now watch as the ball revolves and the night-time falls
And again the hunt begins and again the blood wind calls
By and by, again, the morning sun will rise
But the darkness never goes from some men's eyes
(Well I know)
It strolls the sidewalk and it rolls the streets
Staking turf, dividing up meat
Nightmare spook, piece of heat
It's you and me, you and me
Click flash blade in ghetto night
Rudy's looking for a fight
Rat cat alley, roll them bones
Need that cash to feed that Jones
And the politicians throwing stones
Singing ashes, ashes, all fall down
Ashes, ashes, all fall down
Commissars and pinstripe bosses roll the dice
Anyway they fall, guess who gets to pay the price?
Money green, or proletarian gray
Selling guns instead of food today
So the kids they dance and shake their bones
And the politicians throwing stones
Singing ashes, ashes, all fall down
Ashes, ashes, all fall down
Heartless powers try to tell us what to think
If the spirit's sleeping then the flesh is ink
History's page will be neatly carved in stone
The future's here, we are it, we are on our own
On our own, on our own, we are on our own
If the game is lost, then we're all the same
No one left to place or take the blame
We will leave this place an empty stone
Or that shining ball of blue we call our home
So the kids, they dance, they shake their bones
And the politicians throwing stones
Singing ashes, ashes, all fall down
Ashes, ashes, all fall down
Shipping powders back and forth
Singing black goes south and white comes north
And the whole world full of petty wars
Singing I got mine and you got yours
While the current fashions set the pace
Lose your step, fall out of grace
The radical, he rant and rage
Singing someone got to turn the page
And the rich man in his summer home
Singing just leave well enough alone
But his pants are down, his cover's blown
And the politicians throwing stones
So the kids, they dance, they shake their bones
'Cause it's all too clear we're on our own
Singing ashes, ashes, all fall down
Ashes, ashes, all fall down
Picture a bright blue ball just spinning, spinning free
It's dizzying, the possibilities
Ashes, ashes, all fall down
(Ashes, ashes, all fall down)
Ashes, ashes, all fall down
(Ashes, ashes, all fall down)
Ashes, ashes, all fall down
(Ashes, ashes, all fall down)
Ashes, ashes, all fall down
(Ashes, ashes, all fall down)
The Grateful Dead's "Throwing Stones" paints a picture of a world teetering on the edge of destruction. The song starts by evoking the image of a bright blue ball spinning freely in space but notes that a closer look reveals the human race, filled with hope and grace but also with the fear of destroying our home. The song touches on themes of war, crime, and politics, lamenting the constant cycle of violence and conflict while also emphasizing the power of individual action and responsibility.
The song's chorus repeats the phrase "Ashes, ashes, all fall down," a reference to the children's nursery rhyme "Ring Around the Rosie" which is commonly believed to be about the Black Death. By using this phrase in the context of the song's heavy themes, the Grateful Dead suggests that the consequences of humanity’s actions could be equally devastating.
Line by Line Meaning
Picture a bright blue ball just spinning, spinning free
Imagine the Earth, a bright blue sphere, spinning freely in space
Dizzy with eternity
The vastness of the universe is overwhelming
Paint it with a skin of sky, brush in some clouds and sea
Add a blue sky, clouds, and ocean to complete the image of the Earth
Call it home for you and me
Recognize the Earth as our home and the only planet with life as we know it
A peaceful place, or so it looks from space
The Earth appears tranquil and serene from a distance
A closer look reveals the human race
Upon closer examination, humans dominate the Earth
Full of hope, full of grace, is the human face
Humanity is capable of great good and possesses kindness and beauty
But afraid we may lay our home to waste
Humans have a fear that they may destroy the Earth and all life on it
There's a fear down here we can't forget
People are uneasy and apprehensive about the future
Hasn't got a name just yet
The fear is unnamed, but its effects are clear
Always awake, always around
The fear is a constant presence in our lives
Singing ashes, ashes, all fall down
A reminder of the nursery rhyme, warning of the potential for destruction and collapse
Now watch as the ball revolves and the night-time falls
The image shifts to nighttime on Earth
And again the hunt begins and again the blood wind calls
The night is associated with hunting and violence
By and by, again, the morning sun will rise
The sun will rise again, bringing another day
But the darkness never goes from some men's eyes
Some people remain full of darkness and violence, regardless of the time of day
It strolls the sidewalk and it rolls the streets
Evil and violence are present in everyday life
Staking turf, dividing up meat
Motivated by greed and a sense of entitlement, some people will resort to violence for resources
Nightmare spook, piece of heat
The presence of violence and danger can make life feel like a nightmare
It's you and me, you and me
We are all affected by the violence and danger present in society
Click flash blade in ghetto night
Knife violence is common in impoverished neighborhoods
Rudy's looking for a fight
People become aggressive in order to survive
Rat cat alley, roll them bones
Playing games of chance provides an escape from reality
Need that cash to feed that Jones
Money is necessary to survive, and people may resort to violence in order to obtain it
And the politicians throwing stones
The politicians are engaging in petty arguments and blame games instead of addressing the real issues
Commissars and pinstripe bosses roll the dice
People in positions of power and wealth exploit the system and gamble with the lives of citizens
Anyway they fall, guess who gets to pay the price?
Those who suffer the consequences of these power games are average citizens
Money green or proletarian gray
People are divided by wealth and social status
Selling guns instead of food today
The priorities of society are misaligned
So the kids they dance and shake their bones
Despite the chaos and uncertainty, life goes on
And the politicians throwing stones
Politics is driven by blame games and short-term solutions
Heartless powers try to tell us what to think
The people in power control information and manipulate the masses
If the spirit's sleeping then the flesh is ink
If people are unaware and unconcerned about social issues, then they are more easily controlled
History's page will be neatly carved in stone
The record of humanity's actions and decisions will be preserved for all time
The future's here, we are it, we are on our own
We are responsible for shaping the future of humanity
If the game is lost, then we're all the same
If we fail to address social issues, then we will all suffer the consequences
No one left to place or take the blame
If society collapses, there will be no one left to hold accountable
We will leave this place an empty stone
If we fail to protect the Earth, it will become a barren wasteland
Or that shining ball of blue we call our home
But if we take care of the Earth, it will remain a vibrant planet
Shipping powders back and forth
Drug trafficking is a global issue
Singing black goes south and white comes north
Racism and prejudice persist throughout society
And the whole world full of petty wars
Small-scale conflicts are constantly taking place throughout the world
Singing I got mine and you got yours
People are focused on their own self-interest to the detriment of others
While the current fashions set the pace
Society is influenced by trends and fads
Lose your step, fall out of grace
If someone fails to keep up with the latest trends, they may be ostracized
The radical, he rant and rage
Those who speak out against injustices are often dismissed as extreme or irrational
Singing someone got to turn the page
Despite the challenges society faces, someone must step up to create change
And the rich man in his summer home
The wealthy are often insulated from the problems of society
Singing just leave well enough alone
The wealthy are resistant to change and reluctant to confront societal problems
But his pants are down, his cover's blown
The truth about the wealthy and their role in society is being exposed
And the politicians throwing stones
The politicians continue to engage in blame games and political maneuvering
So the kids, they dance, they shake their bones
Despite the chaos and uncertainty, life goes on
'Cause it's all too clear we're on our own
The people must take responsibility for the future of humanity
Singing ashes, ashes, all fall down
The nursery rhyme serves as a warning that societal collapse is possible if people do not work together to address these issues
Lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: John Barlow, Robert Hall Weir
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
John S
Funny how this song still holds it's meaning 30+ years later
The cu732
one day later
Alien gang
@GratefulDead23 your welcome
GratefulDead23
@Alien gang thank you
Alien gang
@GratefulDead23 yo you a real DH
Susan Donoghue
make that 33 years....sigh..
T.R. Park
unfortunately this song has become timeless and all too relevant
Harry Burgan
Perfectly put.
Odin's Son
The song most relevant to the times we're living in.
Valerie D'Angelo
"It hasn't got a name just yet". Now we do... 10/17/20 🌊🌊🌊