"BROKEN CHAIN..." A REVIEW OF "FARE THEE WELL" BY JOEL SELVIN WITH PAMELA TURLEY

HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT PHIL LESH? I MEAN, HOW YOU REALLY FEEL ABOUT PHIL Lesh, the total man, is the key to your tolerance for Fare Thee Well: The Final Chapter of The Grateful Dead's Long, Strange Trip by Joel Selvin with Pamela Turley. Whatever position you hold on the man will be confronted across these 250 pages.

I RESISTED READING THIS UNAUTHORIZED CHRONICLE OF THE LAST DAYS OF THE Grateful Dead as we knew them for more than a year. With the permanent absence of Jerry Garcia I just couldn't will myself to have much interest in the official band without his presence even as it celebated its 50th anniversary in 2015. I did not begrudge the surviving members of one of my favorite bands--Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann--to continue on under the same name, to preserve their legacy while extending it and even to make a living "pimping" it. They're entitled, I reasoned. Garica's considerable shadow in life and even in death has overshadowed and unfairly lessened their accomplishments. Nor did I think any less of fans who wanted to join in the celebration and commemoration. I just couldn't be one of them. 

Garcia was too indispensable. Most of my favorite Dead songs he sung and wrote the music. He's one of my favorite guitar players. His image pops up first in my mind when I think of the Grateful Dead. Hell, before I was a fan, he was the only member of the band I had even heard of. 

I loved the idea of the original Dead members existing as repertory leaders of their song catalog both together and separately in various endeavors.Once again they had a right to do so. I have never been deaf to their contributions. When I hear one of my favorite tunes I'm not ignoring their artistry; I want all of them celebrated to the highest extent. I'm always amazed by Weir's guitar playing and singing. Mickey Hart's early embrace of world music drumming styles is not recognized enough outside of Deadhead circles. Billy K. is the most slept-on drummer of all time, and the same is true of Phil on bass, who should be mentioned in the same category as Jaco Pastorious and Alphonson Johnson.

The post-Dead career I have followed the closest has been Phil Lesh & Friends, the ever-changing roster of stellar musicians who have supported him over the decades on barnstorming tours and gigs. A close second was Phil and Bobby's  joint short-lived supergroup, Furthur. If I favored Furthur it was because of the inclusion of Bobby, superior to Phil as a vocalist in every way, and of the songs he brought to the set lists.

No one polarized Deadheads more than Donna Jean Godchaux during her tenure with the band. For many a cat yowling in a back alley somewhere was more preferable a backing singer. For some others a female voice added a little Southern lace to the sound. 

"Let Phil Sing!" had been a popular audience chant among Deadheads from the 1970s on. If the Beatles had continued to tour after 1967(?) maybe their fans would have yelled for Ringo Starr to sing a song. Deadheads wanted to hear at least one song from Phil a concert. No one could have believed that Lesh was some powerhouse vocalist, nor that he was an interesting "character" singer the way say Tom Waits is, or Captain Beefheart was. Lesh wasn't a novelty, but his workingman's voice probably more mirrored their own than Garica's or Weir's, more consummate talents.

Your opinion of Phil being the lead or co-lead singer in a band is likely to influence your opinion of Phil Lesh & Friends. It isn't arguable that his voice worsened with age during his solo career. He's become the "Donna Jean" of Deadheads since the death of Garcia. Either/or.

All this exposition is the crucial backdrop to Fare Thee Well. Selvin posits Lesh(and his wife Jill) as the central figures in the saga of the band following the death of Jerry Garcia. The general public might have suspected the more high profile Weir, but Selvin quickly and defltly corrects the assumption. For neophytes unknowledgeable of the band's history, more current or distant past, this is likely to be an eye-raising revelation. 

Fare Thee Well eschews an overall history of the band to tightly focus upon only the last 20 years after Garcia's death and their final hurrah as a surviving unit. This is a rewarding decision, although it benefits to have a general knowledge of  the Garcia era. Basic histories are available everywhere, from bookstores to Amazon to Wikipedia.

The narrative is taut as a drum skin, chronicling the survivors in free fall from Garcia's death, financial crisis, substance abuse, an unexpected and life and bandchanging Phil Lesh illness, the changing landscape of America, American music and technology as well as their own aging process. (Bob Weir, the youngest member of the lot, is 72). What could be "Behind the Music" fodder is handled with deft sensibility, acute observations and a knowing yet not jaundiced eye. Deadhead or not, the authors have a sense of fair play balanced with reporting accuracy. 

Still the portrait of Phil Lesh which emerges in these pages will be likely to shock most readers. Shattering the myths of band as a jovial brotherhood for good, and of Lesh himself as a tall, geeky and goofy doofus, the portrait emerging skewers shallow assumptions. Phil and Jill Lesh dominate this book, like some rock 'n' roll version of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Even if their roles fit a general archetype of classic rock band dynamics over a long period of time, what separates the Lesh 's story from the Beatles or the Rolling Stones is obviously Phil's life saving liver transplant. The respectful psychological approach Selvin takes is nuanced, reasonable and convincing, although it may change your perception of Lesh once and for all. (Jill Lesh is another story.)

The book ends with the finale of the 50th anniversary concert in Chicago, but not before describing almost detail-by-detail the Sisyphean struggle it took to pull it off at all. (Two words: the Lesh's.) If you are that curious this is a book for you. But even for a casual Deadhead, one more interested in the golden age of the band, this can be a brisk, engrossing chronicle. Just be prepared for a lot of Lesh. Maybe even more Lesh than in his own memoir.

"DOES LENGTH REALLY MATTER?"

THE WONDERS OF THE INTERNET IS THAT IT NEVER STOPS GIVING(OR TAKING away, braincells and moments of your life you will never, ever get back). Every day is an anniversary of this or that. Every day marks some milestone you either never knew of or had forgotten. If you remember the game Trivial Pursuit, that's part of what the Internet, or at least social media, really is. Whether A.I. or human beings the regurgitation of trivia never stops. Unless you unplug from the Matrix.

So your sub-Reddit group informs you that 11/1/19 marks the 40th anniversary of the longest "Scarlet Begonias">"Fire on the Mountain" the Grateful Dead ever performed. Which of course means that you have to scrap everything you were planning to do(and eventually post) in order to reacquaint yourself with this fact. You listen. And you listen again. And again.

What does it mean? What does it matter? Recording the length is a trivial pursuit. It's a piece of knowledge you're probably glad you know, but it's strictly factual. No emotion is imparted within  the statement. It's a hollow notation, in and of itself. Off hand I don't know how tall the Eiffel Tower is, or the pyramids of Giza. I can have the knowledge within seconds, just a few clicks of the keyboard. But the facts aren't guaranteed to connect to my feelings about their height. The facts can aid my sense of wonder, yet I can exist without them. Perhaps they can even impede my astonishment upon the scale of the Eiffel Tower or the Egyptian pyramids. When I day dream of visiting Egypt(like the Grateful Dead once did) it's not the dimensions of the pyramids which dazzle my mind, but the totality of them, the inscrutable mystery of them.

In other words I care more about aesthetics than schematics when it comes to art. I don't need to know how tall and wide a Rothko painting is. What's relevant to me is only my reaction to it.

Initially what I read seemed to exalt more in the length of  the 11/1/79 "Scarlet/Fire" than the quality, which irritated me. Fortunately this attention served a better cause: reminding me of how good--and unique--this version of "Scarlet">"Fire" is. Not that the "Scarlet" is pedestrian, but here it's more of a launch for what is to come.

It's the jam inbetwen the two songs which gives it the "chewy" or "gooey" textures heard here. Brent Mydland had just replaced Keith Godchaux in the lineup, the start of his #-year long run with the band until his overdose death in 1990. As Deadheads will know Godchaux, a marvelous pianist, had frequently resisted the band's demands that he add other electric and electronic textures to the sound. Whether a condition of his employment or his own musical bent, Mydland wasn't at all reluctant. His use of the synthesizer and the clavinet--an electronic keyboard greatly associated with Stevie Wonder and other funk & r & b artist of the Seventies--adds a more "urban" bubbling to the section than typical Dead songs.prior to '79. He's not soloing but supporting the groove, a buttress to Garcia's burbling liquid notes, peals and peals of them before he starts invoking the iconic, beloved envelope filtered effect he used for "Fire on the Mountain."

The "Fire" section clocking in at 14 minutes alone, for those of you interested in the "saber metrics" of such matters, features more epic soloing from Garcia over a percolating rather than scorching accompaniment. 1977 seemed to have some "Fire"'s which were precisely that. Versions with so much enthusiasm they seemed unhinged. This version does not mine the same lava-like flow of that year, yet it's not laid back. It swirls like a demented calypso, connecting Barbados and Marin County, torching "authenticity" for something more interesting.

And that is more important to me than timing the longest version of this pairing at around 35 minutes.

Of course someone will also tell you that the longest version of "Dark Star" clocks in at...oh, never mind.

WEIR(D) GUITARIST

BOB WEIR'S GUITAR PLAYING HAS BEEN OBSESSING ME LATELY. I HAVE NEVER BEEN alone in this fascination, of course. Not then nor now.

Making the rounds on the GD matrix is this fascinating document focusing upon the subject. Would you like to hear Weir's rhythm guitar work completely isolated from a live Grateful Dead performance? Well, thanks to modern technology and the hard  work of others(apparently the grand maester Charlie Miller) you certainly can.

I wouldn't want to prejudice anyone on my reaction to the clip--which was jarringly unexpected--so I will just provide the link:

As well as two more shorter but still revelatory clips:

I'll conclude with an audio clip from David Rawlings. I doubt he wrote "Guitar Man" about Jerry Garcia--he's always been more of a Neil Young man. But lately the song has begun to strike me as a cousin to "Candy Man," whether intentional or not. It could just be a figment of my imagination. But it certainly seems to draw from the same waters. Anyways the song now reminds me as much of Weir as Garcia. After all Garcia is hopefully playing in a great cosmic band and Weir, who recently turned 72, is still with us. Still on the road. Still the "guitar man."

"PIGPEN'S CELLULOID BLUES"

GRATEFUL DEAD
4/17/72
"TV FROM THE TIVOLI"
TIVOLI CONCERT HALL
COPENHAGEN, DENMARK

WHEN I FIRST BECAME A DEADHEAD AND STUMBLED UPON THIS FOOTAGE ON YOUTUBE MY EYES ONLY REGISTERED “THE FRONTLINE” OF GUITARISTS PLUS BILLY KREUTZMANN ON DRUMS. The only other Dead footage I had seen were edited snippets of the 1980 Radio City Music Hall shows which PBS stations furthered truncated during their pledge weekend enticement programming. You know: ten minutes of the music followed by thirty minutes of live on-camera begging for more money, then repeat, then repeat...Anyone who has ever watched enough PBS knows the drill. Children’s programming and the daily news shows are sacrosanct, but everything else is fair game.

In the pre-Internet age—hell, in the pre-AOL/Compuserve days, when the VCR ruled households, this was the only footage you were privy too….

But the last time I watched the Tivoli I couldn’t take my eyes off Pigpen. I couldn’t stop being moved by Pigpen, to the point of tears. I had forgotten about his sad plight, that he would be dead by 1973, a victim of hepatitis and alcohol abuse. 

I was shaky with the details without consulting a reference. I remembered that his last year or two with the Dead his concert appearance had been sporadic due to his dwindling health. That Europe ‘72 couldn’t even been his full last hurrah because he missed so many shows. 

When I first saw this footage years ago I wsn’t aware of any of that. When I last saw the footage I hadn’t immediately remembered. But when I did...it wasn’t quite like Proust dipping a madeleine into a cup of tea, not a full-fledged epiphany of illumination. I saw a man who thoroughly resembled Pigpen, but who couldn’t be Pigpen but of course was Pigpen. A voluminous coat failed to camouflage how thin he had become by then. Looking spent, even angry at times, playing an organ draped with a Grateful Dead flag, no happiness in those eyes. 

Those eyes. There’s a photo of Pigpen at a press conference the day after a 1967 Haight-Ashbury drug bust, which centered on possession of LSD. As any Deadhead knows then and now Pen did not trip with the boys or the Merry Pranksters or anyone else. He might have been dosed by them from time to time, but psychedelics was never his thing. Pen; unhappy about busted at home/band headquarters for something he did not do, glares on at the proceedings with murderous intentions. 

On celluloid he’s captured frowning, always unsmiling, not his normal effusive self with the audience. Looking up from the organ his dagger-our glances doesn’t seem to be directed at the band—he’s probably seeing through them. Maybe The Grim Reaper was dancing before him, and he was in no mood to be as magnanimous as a “Black Peter.”

There’s much to like about this clipped concert for Danish television(only the first two sets were recorded and then condensed even further to accommodate television restrictions on time): the band’s good humor(and I’m not referring to the silly vaudeville masks broken out for “Big Railroad Blues”); raucous versions of “Truckin’,” “Ramble on Rose,” and “Big Railroad Blues” which all nearly derail but are snapped back like rubber bands; a subdued but groovy “China Cat Sunflower” > “I Know You Rider” which is easily eclipsed by the audio renditions of the medley all over Europe, but is valuable for the visuals alone. 

Yet Pigpen’s turns steals the show. His occasional turns stepping forward and leading the band in the blues are highlights--and I hope not just for the contextual reasons previously outlined. Pigpen was never a conventionally great blues singer like Bobby "Blue" Bland or Big Joe Turner, nor a great harpist a la Little Walter. He wasn't a blackface minstrel. He was a great enthusiast of the form, which was the greatest contribution he made to the band. After his death Weir and Garcia always acknowledged this, that his evangelical love of it was contagious and that he taught them how to play and feel it.
"It Hurts Me Too" is the summit of this. Summoning all his energy to step forward and, as they say in Black churches, "testify." He does so in an understated way, which still breaks your heart, and that's before his harmonica solo. And matching him is Garcia's exquisite slide work, both accompaniment and solo, which further elevates this selection as one of the finest moments ever of the Pigpen-era of the Grateful Dead. It should give you the shivers.
The blues are many things--read Albert Murray and Robert Palmer if you don't believe me. Sometimes the only defiance we have to the inevitability of death. Nietzsche's quote about staring into the abyss is just another form of the blues. That night in Copenhagen Pigpen stared into the abyss. And did not blink nor surrender. Maybe he was "Black Peter" after all. Rest in peace Rod "Pigpen" McKernan.

THE BLUE DEVILS MEET FRIENDS OF THE DEVIL. PART II

CAMERON INDOOR STADIUM
DUKE UNIVERSITY
DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA
4/12/78

SET TWO

Two	Bertha [7:35] > Good Lovin' [6:43] ; It Must Have Been The Roses [7:19]; Estimated Prophet [11:58] > Eyes Of The World [12:11] > Drums [20:17] > Truckin' [8:58] > Wharf Rat [10:34] > Around And Around [8:16]
Encore	U.S. Blues [5:33]

What do they say about second acts? After completing one of the uncharacteristically best first sets I have ever heard, what was next for these "Warlocks" on their 1978 East Coast swing before heading really East--to Egypt?

Almost more of the same. The typical gap between sets dulled the fumes from the first hour, not that all was lost. Yes, the intensity does not completely carry over as the show expands for nearly 2 hours more. So what might have been an EPIC outing on 4/12/78 becomes "merlely" a VERY GOOD show.

The unexpected characteristics displayed in the first set(mainly Garcia's giddiness, which became infectious for his bandmates) is not absent, only reduced in scope. Hia guitar work throughout is to be noted("Bertha" and "Good Lovin'" are fine examples) and his dual execution of "Wharf Rat" should be cited as one of the finest reinditions I have ever heard of this Grateful Dead classic:

There's much more to discover with this incredibly underrated(and maybe undiscovered) gem. Happy adventures await you.

THE BLUE DEVILS MEET FRIENDS OF THE DEVIL, PT. 1

CAMERON INDOOR STADIUM
DUKE UNIVERSITY
DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA
4/12/78

 SET ONE

One	Jack Straw [5:47] ; Dire Wolf [4:02] ; Beat It On Down The Line [3:19]; Peggy-O [8:05] ; Mama Tried [2:31] > Mexicali Blues [3:47] ; Funiculi Funicula [0:49] ; Row Jimmy [10:25] ; New Minglewood Blues [5:12] ; Loser [8:25] ; Lazy Lightnin' [3:55] > Supplication [5:29]

INTRO

OF THE GRATEFUL DEAD VIDEO FOOTAGE I have stumbled upon or sought out, this is by far my favorite. (So far.) It’s a treasure, a must-see for any Deadhead.

It is also so mindboggingly great that not only is it worth devouring in one setting, but also so intensely enjoyable that you the viewer might need a break between the one and the two. Which is how I will handle it.

NOTES FROM THE FIRST SET

• The charming crudity of the presentation. Shot in black-and-white and with three cameras presumably by the students, the cinematography is less than expert but “acceptable” upon a pro-am spectrum. More than occasionally it goes out of focus and is marred by other visual blemishes. The camera angles are not particularly mapped out, especially the shots from behind. The lenses appear to be fixed so there are no varieties of the usual shots seen in a concert film. A lack of a wide lens means that all seven members of the band can’t be seen in any given shot, usually only the “front line” of Bob Weir, Donna Jean Godchaux, Jerry Garcia and Keith Godchaux. Occasionally Phil Lesh and Bill Kreutzmann are seen in the background,but poor Mickey Hart is completely absent, not even a cameo shot!

• “Garcia, unhinged”: If you are a Deadhead of a certain age and were lucky to see Garcia during his glory years maybe this footage doesn’t amaze you or my observations about him. But for those of us who never saw him in concert, or witnessed the sad figure who marked his long decline, the bloated, immobile, sullen statue wracked by addiction, poor health and boredom with the band and his own iconic status, this footage is a revelation. Not only does he look a figure of health,as thin as he ever was, but he’s thoroughly engaged and charming. You don’t doubt he’s having fun that night; his smiling is as luminescent as flares. In fact its brighter than the abysmal lighting being employed here. (A running gag from the audience is a demand for the lights to be turned out so they can see better.) Watching him, mouth agape, I couldn't help thinking that the band's iconic "Dancing Bear" logo may have once symbolized Owsley "Bear" Stanley, but how quickly it came to mark Garcia as the holder of the sigil. The Happy, Dancing Bear was Garcia that night.

• Despite all the aesthetic/technical flaws one matter the cinematographer absolutely excelled at was recording the stunning guitar work of Garcia/Weir in lucid clarity. This is one of the reasons why the Duke show is an essential. Especially for guitarists.  Not to sound blasphemous but Weir is by far more of the revelation. Despite his missing fretting fingers( a malady he shared with Django Reinhardt), Garcia, though a virtuoso, was never an eccentric visual figure as a musician. Aside from the little flamenco flourishes he added to some of his solos, he remained rooted as a statue. He didnt’ run around the stage like an Eddie Van Halen or an Angus Young. Nor was he a visual spectacle on the order of Jimi Hendrix or Stevie Ray Vaughan. He rarely ventured further away from his microphone; he concentrated upon his passages...Weir on the other hand was not only more theatrical but idiosyncratic, even mysterious. The endless flourishes with his right strumming hand don’t have any other precedents in popular guitar playing—Hendrix and other lead guitarists visibly showed off with their fretting hands, especially after executing a hammer-on or pull-off much to their satisfaction. But Weir is a rhythm guitarist—one of the greatest of all time. So maybe those hypnotic hand motions have been a way to call attention to his occupational gifts, so be it. For nearly all of the 20th century the guitar has been a phallic instrument, a means for mostly young men to draw attention to themselves. But as someone who has been obsessed with the guitar and guitarists for nearly forty years add my voice to the consensus of writers and fans who have been baffled by Weir’s implausible style. How the hell does he play “that way” and generate his trademark angular, slicing, razor-crisp sound? Even all the fascinating close-ups of Weir’s right hand on display during the first set can’t dispel this mystery. Try to imitate him and you’re likely to remain absolutely baffled. The fingerings for his chords and inversions aren’t esoteric with a basic familiarity with the guitar neck. Yet trying to match it up with the right handed jabs he lands upon the strings in order to emulate his sound will leave most players and hobbyists baffled. And even more appreciative of Weir.

• Donna Jean Godchaux remains the most polarizing member of the Grateful Dead. By the length of the Golden Gate Bridge, too. One camp, the more passionate and vociferous of the two, wishes any trace of her upon any live recording could digitally be removed so that they could listen without perpetually wincing. An alley cat in heat is a more preferable racket for this lot. The other group will admit to some of Donna Jean’s “pitch” problems as well as affectations for yowling and screaming, which can not be denied across recorded sources by 1978. The double symbolism of Donna Jean triumphs any auditory displeasure for this group more geared to Utopianism. I’ll call this band of Deadheads “progressive.” This second group delighted in a dual representational consideration of Donna Jean. First, they were happy to see a woman, any woman, be a full time member of the band. It didn’t have to be a “feminist” victory and yet it was, a valuable symbol in a decade when Feminism had joined the mainstream in American thought and action. Many could delight in their favorite band having a female member. (Cynics deride her as being there only as a “packaged deal,” only gaining entrance because of her more unassailable husband.) And she was representational, as many women in the audience and community could fantasize it was them up their singing “It Must Have Been the Roses” or “Goinig Down the Road Feeling Bad.” Well, she's in very good form during the first set. While not indispensable, she's an ally in service to the music.
• That preamble is sincere but also to allow me an indulgence. Jean-Luc Godard once famously said Cinema is about boys looking at girls. No amount of P.C. dictatorial edicts will ever change that. (Straight)boys will always like to look at girls. Get over it, snowflakes and Mary Janes. Donna Jean had about two dance moves in her repertoire and boy did she know how to use them. In a limited hippie chick sort of way. I've always thought the young DJG was just that, a pin-up for the ultimate hippie or post-hippie chick. Watching her dance around in a bare white dress is probably more than my decadent heart can tolerate for very long. I feel as foolish about her as Herod did for Salome.
• TO BE CONTINUED

"LYRICS THAT NEVER STUCK IN GARCIA'S THROAT": A REQUIEM FOR ROBERT HUNTER

OPENING

David Saddler - originally posted to Flickr as Promontory Rider

THERE IS ONLY ONE STORY LINE THIS WEEK FOR ANY DEADHEAD: THE DEATH OF 

Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter.The announcement Monday night cast a pall over the entire week. Not since the death of Jerry Garcia did it truly feel like the proverbial end of an era. This loss was as incalculable. 

Which is not to slight the recent death of John Perry Barlow, who was one of my favorite figures associated with The Dead. A true "Cosmic Cowboy" and Renaissance Man, Barlow's lyrical association with his lifelong friend Bob Weir was not as numerically prolific as the Garcia/Hunter pairing. Barlow/Weir songs were a deserved staple of a Grateful Dead show("Weather Report," "Mexicali Blues," "Lost Sailor">"Saint of Circumstance," etc), but the duo didn't seem to achieve the same community status with which Garcia/Hunter had become revered. 

Barlow didn't draw from the same erudite well as Hunter's which may also explain this lack of  critical intensity. Hunter, a poet, was deeply and widely read. He could evoke the work of Rilke as well as use layers upon layers of symbolism. He could cite astronomy as well as astrology. The vernacular could be Elizabethan or "down home American." It isn't any coincidence that Hunter and Bob Dylan began collaborating on lyrics beginning in 1988 with the song"Silvio," a relationship which continued for decades until Hunter's death. Who else but Dylan had been mining the same subterranean terrains and for nearly as long?

ESSENTIAL READING

The finest exposition on Robert Hunter's lyrical style and concerns as well as the nature and history of his groundbreaking collaborations with Garica was written by Hunter himself, which serves as the foreward to David Dodd's The Complete Anotated Grateful Dead Lyrics. More than a dozen pages it is a lengthy but illuminating preamble to an invaluable volume. Wordy, thoughtful and ultimately elegant and resourceful, this primary recollection is something more than just a behind-the-scenes of how Song X was written. It's a stunning remembrance, warts and all.

THE "DILEMMA"

The easiest thing for any Dead blogger or social media user  it to simply proceed with a list of your favorite Hunter lyrics. What better way to honor his memory--and craft? Such a decision is both practical yet impersonal. Yet how else should you proceed? Few of us can give some personal testimony of interactions with the man. Truthfully for many of us he existed less as a human being and more as a "Storyteller." Garcia's partner. A more rock 'n' roll counter to the similar duo of Elton John and Bernie Taupin.

I acknowledge Robert Hunter as a human being. I express condolences to his friends and family. And I posthumously thank him for his work and for what it has meant to me. There is no more to be said on that front.

A PLAYLIST

Subjective. Restrictive. Not definitive.

I'll limit myself to 14 songs. Originally I was aiming for 10. Ten is a reasonable number. A holy one, in fact. But I didn't have the will power.

Jerry Garcia didn't seem to hand out very compliments to anyone, just wasn't his style. Even Robert Hunter, who knew him longer and better than most, could be made insecure by this facet of his character. Even though their collaborations were long and prolific, he reveals in the preface to David Dodd's book, Garcia's silence--as well as the band collectively--was unnerving. Everyone has a need for reassurance.

But one day in 1987 Garcia called Hunter and told him, "Your lyrics never once stuck in my throat." Hunter's response, at least to us readers, is understated, if you don't read between the lines.

Without further ado here are ten essential Hunter lyrics in chronological order;

1."DARK STAR"(1967).--Only three verses and two choruses, but maybe the most "poetic" Hunter ever committed to record. Despite the cosmological pretext to the song there is a real bluesy ache to the existentialist question it postulates, which notches the end like a note feedbacking from a guitar amp.

2."BLACK PETER"(1969)--A haunting ballad about dying with grace and gratitude. Hunter was only 25 years old when he penned this, yet it shares the elegiac observations of Samuel Beckett when he was writing about dying old men.

3."FRIEND OF THE DEVIL"(1970)--One of the greatest "outlaw" songs of all time. It both romanticizes and deconstructs the romanticism of the Old West and the gunslinger. The chorus is a national treasure. One of the most covered Grateful Dead songs and all it takes is one listen to understand why.

4."CANDYMAN"(1970)--Both Hunter and Garcia were students of the blues, upon which this template is most certainly built. "Candy" was a Black Southern euphemism for both the fairer sex and cocaine, and the "candyman" a Black Southern euphemism for a Casanova rounder long before Hunter picked up a pen and Garcia a guitar. Reverend Gary Davis, who counted Bob Weir as one of his disciples, was celebrated for his "Candyman" (and "Cocaine Blues") folkloric version, which every aspiring white blues player studied in the 1960s. There's no "cultural appropriation" nonsense to the Dead version. If the Blues are truly an American tapestry and not just an African-American one then the form is open to all creative Americans to incorporate into their forms and mosaics. "Candyman" is proof of this--and it's a great pity that it was never discovered by the last wave of Black Delta musicians(of which Buddy Guy is the lone survivor). Imagine what Muddy Waters , B.B. King or John Lee Hooker could have done with this song!

5."BROKEDOWN PALACE"(1970)--The great American anthem of friendship. Before Garcia explicitly sang "I will survive" this song had already said it for him, with more humility, emotion and luminosity. A secular hymn Walt Whitman might have recognized.

6."WHARF RAT"(1971)--Hunter wrote often of "losers," the downtrodden among us, with great sympathy/empathy.And as with many of those songs, there is a visible sliver of transcendental aspiration which buttresses the human condition. This is the most powerful case study in the Grateful Dead songbook.

7."COMES A TIME"(1971)--Simply beautiful.

8."STELLA BLUE"(1974)--Normally I'm very ambivalent about rock stars writing songs about the road, their existential malaise, etc. But I'm a sucker for this well-constructed character study of such a type.

9."EYES OF THE WORLD"(1973)--A cheat. I probably love the song far more than I love the music. It's one of my Dead desert island essentials. I can forgive the hackneyed chorus because I love the music and performance so much.

10."SCARLET BEGONIAS"(1974)--Autobiographical or not, this is a riveting encounter of a fleeting unconsummated romantic encounter in London which always races my pulse. Thank God Hollywood never made a movie out of it.

11."IF I HAD THE WORLD TO GIVE"(1978)--To paraphrase George Harrison, isn't it a pity this was never used for a James Bond movie?

12."TERRAPIN STATION(SUITE)(1977)--In a more just world this epic which paces if not out rivals Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" would have been a FM radio smash just like it. Granted the studio version from the eponymous album is too stiff(whereas the numerous live versions soar like the wings of the phoenix--or dragons), yet lyrically it evokes the ancient world of European folk tales with an unmatched lucid clarity. Robert Plant and Jimmy Page were ardent readers of J.R.R. Tolkein. There's no "Middle Earth" to "Terrapin" that I detect, but it stretches as far back as the ancient Greeks and as forward as Rilke and T.S. Eliot. Hunter may be referencing himself as the "Storyteller." If so it's a richly deserved Hitchcockian cameo.

13."STANDING ON THE MOON"(1989)--Another Hunter/Garcia ballad which Garcia always sung beautifully.

14."SO MANY ROADS"(1992)--Layer upon layer of Americana folkoric references penned by one of her greatest Americian lyrical poets. Surely written about Garcia's failing constitution, never does it wallow in pity nor voyeuristic grotesqueness. Instead Hunter lit a candle of optimism no matter how faint for any wayward souls, a hope of transcendence no matter the bleakness of circumstances, elevating "So Many Roads" to an eloquent summation.