The songs for Grateful Dead are true collaboration for the most part. And we just batter it back and forth and back and forth. And I give him some starter ideas, and he looks at those. We're getting some songs together for a new album. ROBERT HUNTER: Well, what's happening right now is Jerry's coming over to the house every day. Let me ask that age-old question of, which comes first?
GROSS: When you're writing a song with Garcia - and he's writing the music, you're writing the lyrics. My interview with Robert Hunter was recorded in 1988, seven years before the death of Jerry Garcia. The CIA's mind control program was the subject of an interview we did just a few weeks ago on FRESH AIR. Hunter's first experience with LSD and other psychedelics was when he was given them as part of a Stanford research project that he did not know was funded by the CIA, which was looking for a mind control drug. In the mid-'60s, the Grateful Dead were the house band for Ken Kesey's Acid Tests, parties in which people were tripping out on LSD, parties that helped bring acid into the counterculture. After Garcia formed the Grateful Dead in the mid-'60s, Hunter started writing most of the lyrics for Garcia's songs. GROSS: Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia met when they were teenagers and played folk music together. Lately it occurs to me what a long, strange trip it's been. Sometimes your cards ain't worth a dime if you don't lay them down. Like the do-dah man once told me, you've got to play your hand. If I live five years, I'm going to bust my back, yes I will. Doctor say better stop balling that jack. I been chipping them rocks from dawn until doom while my rider hide my bottle in the other room. I'll live five years if I take my time, balling that jack and drinking my wine. GRATEFUL DEAD: (Singing) I been balling a shiny, black, steel jackhammer, been chipping up rocks for the great highway. I ran into the devil, babe, he loaned me 20 bills. If I get home before daylight, I just might get some sleep tonight. A friend of the devil is a friend of mine. I was trailed by 20 hounds, didn't get to sleep that night till the morning came around. GRATEFUL DEAD: (Singing) I lit up from Reno. (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FRIEND OF THE DEVIL") Copperdome bodhi drip a silver kimono like a crazy quilt stargown through a dream night wind. GRATEFUL DEAD: (Singing) Look for a while at the China cat sunflower proud walking jingle in the midnight sun. (SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CHINA CAT SUNFLOWER") Don't you worry anymore because when life looks like easy street, there is danger at your door. GRATEFUL DEAD: (Singing) Well, the first days are the hardest days. Hunter wrote lyrics to songs Dead fans know by heart like these. We've dipped into our archives so we could play back my interview with him. Robert Hunter, who wrote lyrics for many Grateful Dead songs, died Monday. For the State of Iowa, U.S.This is FRESH AIR. When the rooster crows in the doorway, or the cat licks his fur, company is on the way. “In common with other rural regions much of the Iowa farm lore concerns the coming of company. Automatically, I searched for something to throw at her, saw the china sugar bowl I had given her for Easter, took the thing under my arm and went out, slamming the door.
“It all ended with the circuslike whump of a monstrous box on the ear with which I knocked down the traitress who rolled up in a ball where she had collapsed, her eyes glistening at me through her spread fingersall in all quite flattered, I think. Famous quotes containing the words china, cat and/or sunflower:
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