Robert Hunter on how musicianship and songwriting are two different mind states:
“In flipping through the draft pages of this book, I was surprised at the number of early lyrics by Garcia and by Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, songs that got an airing or two but apparently rang no bells for them. Both writers show distinct lyric promise. Their skills would have developed in proportion to the effort they exerted in songwriting, though both were first and foremost musicians. Words tend to be a chore when your first love is the performing of music. Penning and chord-combing don't have the same charge. I know from personal experience that when I perform much, my writing dwindles. In my opinion, most bands could benefit from a lyricist able to devote full time to the task. Musicianship and lyric acuity seldom dwell in the same body-different brain configurations, I figure. There are, of course, profound exceptions to this rule.”
Robert Hunter on how lyrical interpretation warps a song’s power:
“You can swallow a song like "UJB" whole for what it evokes in you, mystery and all—or you can track down the resources I selected while stumbling through the dark of composition, toward some kind of light, and achieve a gnostic synthesis of the song that may forever change the way you hear it. It may deepen the experience, or just explain it away. As with the language of love, the meaning of a song often lies less in what is said than in how it's said, the scan of the rhythm relative to counterweight of color and image. And mystery has a color all its own. But there's something other than those retrievable devices that's necessary: a uniqueness of overall character-that the song be that song, borrowings and all, and not any other. Not a copy of anything. A representative example of a genre that doesn't even exist, if it comes to that! A China Cat Sunflower. Avoidance of popular genres does not make for a commercially successful music; there's no formula for the cultural froth to fix on, but it does invite a long-term following. With only one hit in thirty years, I'm not even sure the Grateful Dead belong in the pop music section of the record store. But it definitely found its domain in the tape machines of an army of bootleggers.”
On lyrics balancing the specific and the general:
“A lyric that places its situation too restrictively in a particular time and place may fail in this regard but, on the other hand, might just redouble in such associative power to the ears of those from the same time and place. Usually New York City in the not-too-distant past. Mostly it's the trusty love song, specifically new love and love disappointed, that takes you there. When the parallels get a little too exact, it's just uncanny, and there's not much more to say about that. It's a bit more difficult to find subjects other than romantic love that partake of the particular and the universal at the same time, which is what a song must do to make any difference in the life of the listener. By report, I've done this with a few songs, such as "Ripple" and "Box of Rain" (neither love songs in the conventional sense), but I can't tell how it's done, only how it feels: like I've just spoken clearly to myself and survived the experience. Exalted. Satisfied.”
On allusion:
“An apt allusion can act like a magnet among the iron filings of a verse, making them all coalesce and decisively point north.”
On songs outliving the writer:
“There are songs of such enduring stature that they have become part of the common mind, from "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" to "Happy Birthday to You," from "Stardust" to "Auld Lang Syne," from "Subterranean Homesick Blues" to "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction." They seem like natural forces (as indeed they are)—unequivocal as the moon and perennial as grass—but in each case, oddly enough, somebody wrote the piece, wrote it or made it up, and passed it along, always around a fire-somebody whose name has come down through the ages along with his song, somebody like King David or Cab Calloway, or, more commonly, somebody forgotten. I like to acknowledge some of these works (it's called allusion), borrowing a bit of their pizzazz or charm, certain of their authority if not my own.”
On the power of the bands’ name:
“The Grateful Dead was, is, the master metaphor for our group situation. And yes, the shoes have run away with the feet at times. The evocative power of that strange, not at all comical name is considerable, for grace and ill. I know that my own input into the scene, my words, were heavily conditioned by that powerful name. It called sheaves of spirits down on us all. It expressed a deep and mystic hope about the nature of eternity. Our shows were ceremonies and our people, celebrants, in the most archaic sense of the term. There was no place else on God's green earth that I, for one, fitted. Now that it is gone, there is no place else I fit so exactly as to shape.”
On metaphor:
“The juxtaposition of one metaphor to another yields relation; a juxtaposition of relations, a situation. A juxtaposition of situations provides narrative.”
On the modes of a song:
“Ontology is an examination of causative factors, of intent. What was the impulse that seemed to require certain images to be duly expressed? Love, carnal or spiritual? Irony? Sentiment? Contempt? Patriotism? Existential devaluation? Self-advertisement? Revenge? Paranoia? Romance? Annoyance? Deconstruction? Revolution? Peer status? Exuberance? Broken-heartedness? Grief? Indomitability? Salvation? Sales? Sacrilege? Inanity? Responsibility or the lack of? Need of another song for the album?? Discontent? Protest? Inspiration from another song? Disaster, personal or worldwide? There are prime models for each of these impulses in the literature of song, in the musical mean in which we swim.
It seems like lyricists never want to reveal the meaning behind their songs. Robert Hunter says a song is a naked, amorphous living creature. Its meaning evolves, and is unique to each person. The book of annotated lyrics I have is about scatology, which objectively describes the external references and allusions. I appreciate this, but it would also be neat to know a range of interpretations from those who have a ton of context. I think there’s a way to differentiate and label analysis/interpretation, and if done right, it would help the curious break into their own idiosyncratic interpretation.
“Well, yes, I know exactly what every line of my work was meant to mean, its sources or lack of them, and what it's trying to prove—if not the subconscious motivations all artists keep hidden from themselves, the tinder to ignite their dreams. So why don't I say it al for once and for good, and fatten this book up a bit? I'll say it again: The songs themselves say everything I personally want to say about them. The melodies of the unstrung harp are meant to be felt, not heard.”
What does it mean to “internalize” a song? Is it about memorizing the lyrics, or the insight it triggered in music theory, or the memory of the place when you first heard it, or the person who recommended it, or your perceived ideal/ethic/meaning/message behind it, or the liner notes on its writing/recording, or all of the above put together?
