That's my favorite Grateful Dead song — "Brokedown Palace."
Goodbye to Robert Hunter.
Robert Hunter... died Monday night. He was 78. No cause of death was provided.... “He died peacefully at home in his bed, surrounded by love. His wife Maureen was by his side holding his hand. For his fans that have loved and supported him all these years, take comfort in knowing that his words are all around us, and in that way his is never truly gone. In this time of grief please celebrate him the way you all know how, by being together and listening to the music. Let there be songs to fill the air.”...Lots more at the link (to Rolling Stone).
Born Robert Burns in California in 1941, Hunter met Garcia in 1961 at a local production of the musical Damn Yankees, where they were introduced by Hunter’s ex-girlfriend, and Garcia’s then-girlfriend, Diane Huntsburger. The two didn’t immediately hit it off, their friendship took root a couple nights later when they saw each other at a local coffeehouse. Just one year apart in age (Garcia was 18 and Hunter 19 at the time they met), their bond was forged partly through the shared experience of losing a father — Garcia through death, Hunter through divorce.
While Hunter and Garcia played in a few bluegrass bands together, the former passed on an offer to join Garcia’s pre-Grateful Dead jug band to focus instead on writing. At Stanford, Hunter took part in an early LSD experiment (“I had a romping good time,” he recalled) and dabbled in Scientology, but eventually he began to struggle with speed and meth, prompting him to leave the Bay Area for New Mexico. There, Hunter began writing more songs — including future Dead classics “St. Stephen,” “China Cat Sunflower” and “Alligator — which he sent to Garcia, who encouraged him to return to San Francisco and join the Dead as their lyricist....
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They continue to leave us.
I didn't realize until now that he authored a good number of the Dead songs I like.
RIP.
I like the request. Will do.
Q: What does a Deadhead say when he stops smoking weed?
A: "This music *sucks*!"
Grateful Dead - Box Of Rain (Philadelphia, PA 7/7/89)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBFhHNlrM3o
I was never Deadhead or even a serious fan, but I still like hearing their music from time to time. The Europe '72 LP never gets old for me.
RIP.
I was at this concert, one of the best shows I have ever attended.
Going to leave this brokedown palace,
On my hand and knees, I will roll, roll, roll.
Make myself a bed in the waterside,
In my time, I will roll, roll roll.
The band was fine. Those nasty, filthy followers not so much
Sad news! RIP, Robert Hunter.
Agreed with donald. You never got the feeling that they hated mankind, or America, the way so many popular entertainers seem to do these days.
An earlier, simpler time, fading into memory. In our own lifetimes.
Or perhaps it always seems that way, when you start to get old.
Love his lyrics. To me, the other half of the Dead died
Dunno if AA posted this earlier or not: The coming death of just about every rock legend. This quote piqued my interest:
Rock music was always a popular art made and consumed by ordinary, imperfect people. The artists themselves were often self-taught, absorbing influences from anywhere and everywhere, blending styles in new ways, pushing against their limitations as musicians and singers, taking up and assimilating technological innovations as quickly as they appeared. Many aspired to art — in composition, record production, and performance — but to reach it they had to ascend up and out of the muck from which they started.
Can't remember where I was reading it, but someone else made the same point: in the late 1950's onwards, bands became actually bands who recorded their own music, played their own instruments -- lots of acts used studio musicians for all of their recordings -- and wrote their own songs.
Will miss that -- if true in general -- even if I don't like some of the bands/persons in question.
Here's a grate version of "Scarlet / Fire" jam...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luAqu8VX5wo
Performed at Cornell University May 8th, 1977.
https://youtu.be/j0wCPXpRoWQ
Ahhh... Cornell. Love the above, too.
The Dead are easy to make fun of but Hunter/Garcia wrote many great songs, primarily from 1970-1975. They were prolific in those days.
Very similar, I always thought "Black Muddy River" was the Hunter/Garcia song that best captured Jerry's last years.
HUNTER: The black muddy river is a dream that I've had maybe three or four times over my life, and it is one of the most chilling experiences that I've had. It's enough to turn you religious. I've burrowed under this incredible mansion, gone down into the cellars, and I find myself down at this black, lusterless, slow-flowing Stygian river. There are marble columns around, and cobwebs. It's vast and it's hopeless. It's death, it's death, with the absence of the soul. It's my horror vision, and when I come out of that dream I do anything I can to counter it.
SILBERMAN: And yet, in "Black Muddy River" you're not saying flee the banks of this dark place. You're saying walk along the banks, and sing a song of your own making.
HUNTER: Right. And what's on the other side of it is . . . whatever it is. It's a bit of whistling in the dark. I'll face whatever it is, because I wouldn't have any choice, would I? So, you might as well go for it.
Black Muddy River
When the last rose of summer pricks my finger
And the hot sun chills me to the bone
When I can't hear the song for the singer
And I can't tell my pillow from a stone
I will walk alone by the black muddy river
And sing me a song of my own
I will walk alone by the black muddy river
And sing me a song of my own
When the last bolt of sunshine hits the mountain
And the stars start to splatter in the sky
When the moon splits the southwest horizon
With the scream of an eagle on the fly
I will walk alone by the black muddy river
And listen to the ripples as they moan
I will walk alone by the black muddy river
And sing me a song of my own
Black muddy river
Roll on forever
I don't care how deep or wide
If you got another side
Roll muddy river
Roll muddy river
Black muddy river roll
When it seems like the night will last forever
And there's nothing left to do but count the years
When the strings of my heart start to sever
And stones fall from my eyes instead of tears
I will walk alone by the black muddy river
And dream me a dream of my own
I will walk alone by the black muddy river
And sing me a song of my own
And sing me a song of my own
Be grateful that their music lives.
That is the good thing about music. If it is good, it never dies. And while it lives, it comforts.
His and Jerry's and the Dead's music is going to live for a long time and grow more popular as the years go by.
There are 300 Grateful Dead cover bands around the world, according to gratefuldeadtributebands.com, and they are introducing the music to new generations of listeners.
Name another band, besides the Beatles, that is so beloved.
"Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world."
Deplorable Deadheads, who knew?
If you like the original you'll like this beautiful cover by Shinyribs (aka Kevin Russell), with some help from some friends from the Band of Heathens. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AOpIbFK1Aw
Saw the Dead 5 or 6 times during my teens. They were simply amazing on two of those nights, and just good on the others. Good memories. Hunter's songs are classic, no doubt. But I'll really shed a tear when Phil Lesh dies. He was the musical glue that held it all together.
Sad. At least the music and his unique lyrics will go on.
Dire Wolf.
@stephen cooper: You're ongoing obsession with putting down the Dead -- carried over from last week's "Ripple" post -- is what's sad.
I mean, you deleted your "selfish and trite" original comment, but a as a comments subscriber, I get to see your special meanness.
RIP Robert Hunter, a great American song lyricist. Brokedown Palace is a great song from a classic album full of great songs : American Beauty. For me that album is the apogee of the Dead as a band. It gives you an idea of how much talent Jerry Garcia had, talent which was ultimately squandered as he descended into addiction.
Here is a delightful cover of a classic Hunter/Garcia number from AB, perhaps less well known than the excellent Sugar Magnolia,Box of Rain, & Friend of the Devil.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHo1fNnXFVU
RIP
RIP
Hunter and Weir wrote my favorite Dead tune; Jack Straw.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAv71VbdkBc
They're iconic, but I just never took to them--some of friends were Deadheads but too many of their songs sound like this one to me--meandery, wavery.
Popular music developed in the 20th century as a feedback loop with the technologies of recording and broadcast; mass produced instruments and mass music-education (which I wish I had availed myself of seriously) contributed to the explosion and constant turnover and mutation of new genres and forms to attract newly-flush young Americans, but the underpinning was working-class and particularly African-American--music to let loose to
because you were so constrained in everything else.
Sir Peter Hall argues in Cities in Civilization that blues, jazz, country, soul, funk, and rock all reflect their origins among the folks on the bottom, and unusually, not only did the forms percolate up and out, but also the attitudes-- no moon in June croon. That couldn't have happened without the technologies.
Blues bands come from all over the world to compete here. All over the world. That's clout.
Narr
Sorry for you fans!
chickelit - God loves you and I am not mean.
I used to cut high school and watch the Dead play for free in Golden Gate Park. I wasn’t a hippie, but the hippie days were sure fun.
Come on along or go alone
He's come to take his children home
Rocked my soul, thank you.
All I remember from the ‘70s is that once somebody started playing a Grateful Dead album, the party was over.
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