During my 2024 End of Year Book Tag I mentioned I’d like to review some Grateful Dead literature here on the blog, so here I am, making good on that . . . sorta.

As I sat down to read through David Dodd’s massive (512 pages) The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics I was shocked to see just how large The Dead’s repertoire really was. As best I could count, there are 184 songs in the table of contents which Dodd cites as “original lyrics written for the Grateful Dead”, or “traditional tunes and covers . . . {which} play a large part in giving context to the other songs.”

I’ve seen sources online which claim the Dead have played somewhere around 450 unique tunes in the course of 30 years. Given how long it’s taken me to learn passable versions of just 3 songs on the guitar, these numbers are definitely bending my mind.

In any case, all that this means is that I’ll be tackling the review in parts, and as I ponder what to write about for part 1 (roughly the first 100 or so pages of the book), it occurs to me that these posts will probably end up being less and less about the actual book itself — which is incredible in its detail and comprehensiveness — as time goes on, and more about the tunes annotated within.

My method for going through this gargantuan list is pretty simple. Listen to each song and read the lyrics as it plays, then go back and read the annotations. This is somewhat complicated by the fact that The Dead did not always stick to the same lyrics during performances and of course the song lengths can vary substantially from concert to concert. Mostly, I’ve tried to combat this by finding either the “album version” or (if possible) some kind of recording of the first known performance, both of which are usually listed in the annotations.

And since it just feels like the thing to do, I’ll preface the rest of this post with just a little history of my own journey with the Grateful Dead’s music, so we’re starting from the same point (I promise it will be brief . . . ish).

I first remember hearing the Grateful Dead while jamming with a friend I met in my UNIV100 class my first year of college. He burned a CD for me of his “greatest hits” which I enjoyed often, but didn’t really think much about throughout the rest of my college career. After I had graduated, another friend and I got to talking (likely at a party) about some other songs of theirs which I had never heard.

During that part of my career, I had to complete some fairly rote tasks during the early part of my day, and so I had long hours during which I was technically working, but mostly just abusing my free Spotify account. At my friend’s recommendation, I explored (what I thought was) a lot of the Dead’s catalog (other memorable listens during that time were anything Daft Punk or LCD Soundsystem). By the time that work ended up getting automated, I had moved on to a new job, and had a playlist of about 18 songs which I considered my “Dead Favorites”, and this set list sorta became my whole knowledge of the Grateful Dead for many years until I watched Amazon Prime’s documentary, Long Strange Trip, somewhere around when it came out in 2017.

I should also mention that I did manage to see Dead and Co. at Bonaroo in (I think) 2016 which was its own sort of crisis because up until that point, I had no idea that John Mayer played with them and while I have accepted this fact now, it was pretty hard to reconcile in the moment hahah.

All of this to say, up until I’d watched Long Strange Trip, I had enjoyed The Grateful Dead’s music, but knew virtually nothing about their history. Even after watching all six parts of the miniseries (at this point several times), it can still be a little hard to keep a timeline straight, and even who is in the band at any given moment seems fluid enough to cause some confusion (see John Mayer crisis from earlier hahah).

Wanting, but not knowing where to turn for an “official” history, The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics seemed as good a place as any to start my attempt to firm up the narrative. After 100 or so pages, results are mixed, but it has opened my eyes to just how many artists, writers, poets and musicians the Dead were in contact with even at just the start of their career (I’m somewhere in 1969; the books starts in 1965).

One figure who was mentioned in Long Strange Trip but had remained somewhat enigmatic to me over the course of my listening, was lyricist Robert Hunter. As it is an annotated book of lyrics, it only makes sense that he would play a part in the work. He’s written the forward for the 50th Anniversary Edition (2005) and I really enjoyed getting to hear from him about the band and his viewpoint on various events (he has a recently published “lost” manuscript (with a forward by John Mayer no less) which I’m excited to read called The Silver Snarling Trumpet). However, I love that he mostly remains out of the conversation when it comes to his lyrics, letting author David Dodd derive whatever allusions he can, and leaving interpretation of the lyrics up to the fans themselves.

As for the annotations themselves, I’m massively impressed by the thorough job Dodd has done on these lyrics. It is easy to tell that this was a labor of love for Dodd, and I am continually amazed at the careful way in which these annotations were completed. No reference is too small, no allusion too obvious.

Though it can be somewhat bizarre at points as one moment you’ll be reading a deep and insightful history of symbology related to roses, and the next page an actual recipe for a kind of cake. But weirdly, it kind of works. I’ve found I don’t really need a note for a lot of the more literary references (things like the Chesire cat which shows up in a lot of songs), but am thankful for the notes when it comes to things like “a Buck Dancer’s choice”, which is apparently a catch all for various types of dances from 1880’s.

Also, a revelation for me was that many places like Fennario (from The Dire Wolf) and St. Angel (from Black Peter) — neither of which are real places — make up a kind of mythical geography original to Grateful Dead songs (for this effect in reverse, see Classic Rock Connection, a post I wrote on allusions to Grateful Dead music in GRRM’s Game of Thrones). I’ve always thought that one of the Grateful Dead’s most unique and inspiring qualities was their ability to tell stories through their music. I’m even more excited to think that ability goes one level deeper into actual worldbuilding . . .

I’ll wrap up this long strange post with one more note about stories. This book is chock full of them. Whether it’s a few brief lines about guitarist Bob Weir throwing a water balloon at a cop, or accidental lyricist John Phillips who improvised the words to Me and My Uncle during a “tequila night” and had no recollection of the song until he started receiving royalty checks in the mail, the book is filled with a thousand little gems which form a kind of Grateful Dead anthology that builds to so much more than just a bunch of lyrics to a bunch of tunes.

One set of annotations, for Morning Dew by Bonnie Dobson (which The Dead covered often), gave the inspiration of the song as:

“. . . a gathering of friends, and toward the end of the evening a discussion had ensued about the possibilities and the outcome of a nuclear war . . . It took the form of a conversation between the last man and woman — postapocalypse — one trying to comfort the other while knowing there’s absolutely nothing left.” pg 33.

I know I had heard the Dead’s take on this song before, but I don’t know that the lyrics had sunk in.

Walk me out in the morning dew, my honey
Walk me out in the morning dew, today
Can’t walk you out in the morning dew, my honey
I can’t walk you out in the morning dew today

If you’re up for having a full mental breakdown, change the first words to something about going to the movies, or the even the grocery store, and you’ll realize that we’ve already lived a version of this song. After nearly 50 years, it could be just as easily about the lockdown during Covid as it is about a nuclear attack.

I want to save something to write about for the next part, and don’t want to end the post on a downer, so I’ll finish with the insight I took from this experience which goes back to the quality of The Dead’s storytelling which I mentioned above. People wonder what it is about The Dead’s music that has built such zealous fan base (which seems to be having a resurgence) which keeps renewing itself generation after generation, and all I can think of is that it’s the adaptability of their story telling. I had a kind of experience during Morning Dew, but most if not all of their songs tell stories in this way. Stories which we can imagine ourselves in, even if we’re years away from what they’re supposedly “about”.

Give The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics a read?

As a long time fan of their music, of course I’m going to say yes. And if you’re already a fan, I think it will be a great way to deepen that connection. For any who aren’t fans already, or unsure what they think, it could be a way to experience something different. I’ll admit there are quite a few Dead songs that are bordering on unlistenable, but the ones that are great become so much more so with this book in hand. Dodd does an incredible job detailing the allusions, references, stories and meanings behind these lyrics. And even though I’m just a hundred pages in, it has already been something of a transformative experience.

That’s all I have for you this week. Any Dead Heads reading this blog? What’s you’re favorite tune? Any personal stories you want to share about the music? Anyone NOT a fan of the Dead reading? Would love to hear your thoughts as well!

Post em in the comments! Until next time!