My wife’s out of town tonight, and I’m in a funny mood. So, inspired by another conversation in another diary, I’ve decided to have some fun.
I saw my first Grateful Dead show when I was just barely 15 years old. And I was enchanted. I wasn’t really attracted to the accouterments of being a deadhead. I was strictly into the music, and especially the lyrics. The lyrics of the Grateful Dead are so rich, and so poignant that they almost demand a theological exegesis.
So, I’ll give my interpretations of a few of their songs, beginning with Stella Blue:
they melt into a dream
A broken angel sings
from a guitar
In the end there’s just a song
comes crying like the wind
through all the broken dreams
and vanished years
Stella Blue
When all the cards are down
there’s nothing left to see
There’s just the pavement left
and broken dreams
In the end there’s still that song
comes crying like the wind
down every lonely street
that’s ever been
Stella Blue
I’ve stayed in every blue-light cheap hotel
Can’t win for trying
Dust off those rusty strings just
one more time
Gonna make em shine
It all rolls into one
and nothing comes for free
There’s nothing you can hold
for very long
And when you hear that song
come crying like the wind
it seems like all this life
was just a dream
Stella Blue
To begin with, T.S. Eliot referred to: “Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels…” in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”.
The ‘Stella’ was the name of a guitar used by Lead Belly and other blues pioneers. Stella also means ‘star’ in Latin.
But all of that is beside the point. Stella Blue is existential, and describes both the moment before death, where we look back on our lives, and the momentary occasions when we become somber and reflective, more generally.
Stella is ostensibly a women, and many Dead songs equate women with a song. But Stella is really more than a song. After you have lived your life and suffered all the disappointments that life has to offer, there will still be something ineffable left over, something that sings, something that made it all worth while.
And that something has “cr(ied) like the wind down every lonely street that’s ever been”.
With the wisdom of Soloman’s “you can’t take it with you” we are instructed “there is nothing that you can hold for very long”.
At the end, we will undoubtedly reflect that it seems like all our lives have been “just a dream”, and yet there is something that we will leave behind as a kind of marker, or indication that we were here. And whatever that is, we can call it “Stella Blue”.
great tune, thanks for the reminder, KUDOS
while I was off at iTunes downloading Dick’s Picks Vol. 3 (which is the version of “Eyes of the World” I decided on, but I had to buy the album to get it. Not that I mind having it). But of course, Stella Blue is not on it. You’re going to make me considerably poorer, if you don’t stop this.
I was never a Deadhead, but was at several of their concerts back in the 70’s. Something magical always seemed to happen at a Grateful Dead concert. One, at Manor Downs (a race track) I was lying on my back watching the small airplanes fly over. They were about 30 minutes into a jam (Dire Wolf?) and it looked like two of the planes were headed right for each other. At exactly the moment that Garcia and Weir hit the climatic, pure note, the planes veered away from each other. Well, maybe you had to be there.
And there was the Thanksgiving Day that they decided to stay over in Austin after a concert the night before and play all day at the Armadillo. For free.
One morning on the way to work, Uncle John’s Band was playing on the radio and I spent the day singing it in my head. At lunchtime, I heard of Garcia’s death.
But your right, the words to the songs resonate through my life.
In the dark days of the Vietnam war, and trying to figure out a new way to live without violence and hate, this one got me through a lot. It seems like time to listen to it again.
New Speedway Boogie as a war protest song?
Yes, it’s possible. But I have always seen the wisdom of that song as more univeral, and historical.
Jack.
For some of us, in the early days of the counterculture, before it was just a “lifestyle,” or just a style, period, we really were trying to figure out an alternative way to live. Peace and love weren’t just catchphrases, we were really trying to live them, and it wasn’t easy, given the materialistic, jingoistic, sexist, racist, homophobic, etc. world we grew up in.
These words in particular stood out for me at the time, when the song was new:
You can’t overlook the lack, jack, of any other highway to ride.
It’s got no signs or dividing lines and very few rules to guide. . . .
One way or another, one way or another,
One way or another, this darkness got to give.
Being against the war, and refusing to participate in it, working to stop it – especially for the vets who had participated in it, was an integral part of how we were trying to live. And we did feel that for our way, “It’s got no signs or dividing lines and very few rules to guide”
Anyway, my RoadRunner crapped out on me last night and I spent the evening making my syllabus for my summer school class while listening to the 1977 concert at the Sportatorium in Florida. It was a lovely way to get through a tiresome task, so thanks for the nudge that led me to find it.
And I forgot to give proper credit – New Speedway Boogie is a Garcia/Hunter song.
that is quite a show. 1977 was their best year IMO, and that was one of the better shows of their best year.
Go to the Grateful Dead page at Archive.org and you will find hundreds of complete shows in various formats available for free and legal downloading. Many of the same shows that are in Dick’s Picks are available.
The Dead not only allowed fans to tape the shows, they actually encouraged them.
You can get them for free. I have a deadhead nephew that has a lot of tapes that he made himself. But now that I’m middle aged and middle class, though I’m hardly rich, I actually like being able to spend the money to buy things like this, and contribute to the surviving Dead members. They’re doing some good things even though they probably don’t need the money to survive.
I spent so many years being “poor” (by American standards, I hasten to add), and I also spent some years writing for a living, so I like to be able to send some of my money to people who do creative work that enriches us all.
But that’s just a quirk of mine. I’m sure the Dead don’t mind people downloading for free, just like they didn’t mind people taping their concerts.
BTW, that concert at the Armadillo on Thanksgiving Day – a friend was working on the sound for that, and asked if he could record it. The Dead said no. My friend jokes that that was the the last time that they said no to taping a concert. He’s still sad that it wasn’t recorded – it was phenomenal.
How unexpected to be blogging about the Dead. I saw my first show at Alpine Valley, WI in 1985.
I will have to admit, though, I was into some of the accouterments!
I’ll offer up Box of Rain. It’s one of those songs that just seems so natural. It sounds simple, but the
arrangement is quite complex. Each verse is a little different than the last.
I once read an interview with Robert Hunter where he talked about how this
song came about. The music was written by their bass player, Phil Lesh, while his father was dying of cancer.
Phil wrote out the entire arrangement just as you hear it on American Beauty, including the exact
phrasing of each verse. But he didn’t have any lyrics. He handed it off to Hunter, who claims
"If ever a lyric ‘wrote itself,’ this did–as fast as the pen would pull." I’ve always been
intrigued with that idea that some art may sort of exist out there waiting for someone to come along and pluck it into
our reality.
I love the last two lines. "And it’s just a box of rain, or a ribbon for your hair"
Such a minute, tactile detail. There’s almost nothing that could be smaller or simpler.
Then he hits you with the last line "Such a long, long time to be gone and a short time to be there."
That line is larger than life. It encapsulates an entire world view: life is short. Enjoy, because it won’t last long.
Also, it’s probably just that the bloggers v. MSM conflict has been occupying an unnecessarily large portion of my brain.
But, seeing the lyrics to New Speedway Boogie, I wonder if it couldn’t be some sort of blogger’s theme song.
Hmmmm…
anyway, thanks for starting this thread. I haven’t listened to the Dead much in the last 10 years or so.
I’m going to have to dig through some boxes and see if I still have any bootlegs. I look forward to further GD Exegesisses!
Being a “Deadhead” has a similar kind of thing as being a “liberal”…it seems hard for people to admit being one. I’m both and proud of it…have been a long time. (Or as that great t-shirt I saw at a show one day said: “the few, the weird, the Deadheads”).
Anyway, thanks for this Booman…great to read Hunters lyrics, and how timeless and relevent these continue to be…personal, political and spiritual, all rolled into one…
How about “The Wheel”…
I’ll readily admit being a Deadhead. But that can be misleading. Ann Coulter is an enormous Deadhead, and look how she turned out.
I did all the Deadhead things, but I ultimately found the scene boring, while never losing my enthuisiasm for the music.
a Deadhead? No shit…I’m shocked. I have a good friend who is/has been long time into the Dead, yoga, etc., who is also politically hard right…can never figure out how a person can hold that kind of contradiction. Coulter…who woulda thunk it…
I do know what you mean…most people think of the Deadhead culture as being a lazy, good for nothin’, kind of thing. I’m a psychologist, and have always tried to be a good citizen, so have it important to be candid about my participation in the Dead world…kind of my humble attempt to counter balance the commonly held views.
The scene, for me, was my friends…who aren’t boring at all…but never have felt interested in being cool, and never wanted to meet anyone from the band/group…didn’t want to get too close and be disillusioned…
Stella Blue is a kind of blue cheese.
Not into the accoutrements of being a Deadhead? Well, you were into one of the accoutrements, weren’t you?
; )
How easily I forget that I cannot get away with any historical revisionism while my old friends are about.
pateacher and I saw many Dead shows together and none more strange than the goonie bird incident at RFK ’86, where Stella Blue made an appearance.