A collective breath is taken after the first and only verse, until Kreutzmann’s kick drum cajoles the rest of the Dead, including Pigpen behind the organ, to percolate a melody, pause for a brief freak-out, and wrap up the song with sunburst triumph. The exuberance of the band listening to itself in this half-hour house of mirrors can be heard as Garcia’s Alligator Stratocaster quickly descends from the song’s head, Lesh offering bubbly harmonic counterpoint accents of cymbals and short drum rolls make Weir’s offbeat rhythmic attacks more potent and clear space for Keith Godchaux to pound out leads on his piano. Introduced to listeners via a short and far-out 7" in early 1968 and the standard side-long take of Live/Dead in 1969, the April 8th, 1972 version is not a “Dark Star” of gaping existential canyons jagged with feedback. Elongated fast ’n’ furious blues jams and Wild West saloon swagger were dosed with jazzier, subtler improvisations, the Dead’s musical shorthand cribbed from the simultaneous soloing of Dixieland music. In April of 1972, the Dead commenced a major European tour, almost two months long and a definitive musical turning point. The band’s definitive psychedelic jam epic, with wondrous versions in nearly every era it appeared. After all, a central theme for the song is the sharing of strength and resilience: “Believe it if you need it/If you don’t just pass it on.Written by: Grateful Dead and Robert Hunter
Lesh was routinely greeted with rapturous applause for his one and only lead vocal spot.Īfter years of dealing with alcohol abuse and vocal chord damage, ‘Box of Rain’ was once again able to lift the burdens that Lesh had carried, just as he originally intended it to do for his father decades before. The exception was ‘Box of Rain’, which was reintegrated into the band’s setlists in their last decade. As the band continued to tour, Lesh rarely stepped up to a microphone apart from occasional backing contributions to ‘Truckin’. Not long after the release of ‘Box of Rain’, Lesh began ceding more and more vocal work to his bandmates, especially once Donna Jean Godchaux joined the group. The track has a pronounced country feel, likely due to the shifted arrangement and heartfelt vocal performance from Lesh. Dave Torbert replaced Lesh on bass while the composer played acoustic guitar, and David Nelson performs the electric guitar lines usually played by Garcia. Garcia obliged by playing the piano instead of his standard lead guitar lines, and the band brought in two additional musicians from Dead offshoot The New Riders of the Purple Sage to contribute. When it came time to record ‘Box of Rain’, Lesh made a separate request to his bandmates: he didn’t want it to sound like a Grateful Dead song. Hunter also populated the lyrics with multiple references to natural wonders and the enchanting qualities of the environment, a recurring theme throughout album tracks like ‘Ripple’, ‘Attics of my Life’, and ‘Sugar Magnolia’. The central “box of rain” ostensibly refers to the Earth, but like all of Hunter’s lyrics, it remains open for the listener to incorporate their own thoughts and interpretations. Lesh had a single request for the lyrical content: something he could sing to his father, who was dying of cancer while the band were recording American Beauty.Īs such, Hunter created words based on easing burdens and celebrating the world around you. Stephen’, this would be the first direct collaboration between the duo. Although the two shared credit with Garcia on ‘Cumberland Blues’ and ‘St. Since he was the in-house lyric writer, Hunter was the one Lesh approached with his new tune. When Weir made substantial changes to ‘One More Saturday Night,’ Hunter had had enough and asked John Perry Barlow, Weir’s friend from boarding school, to officially take over as Weir’s lyricist. Weir’s and Hunter’s relationship was volatile, due to the former’s penchant for changing and flubbing the latter’s carefully composed lyrics. Already friendly with the members, Hunter could adapt specific phrases and vocal styles to each members strengths, composing the jaunty ‘Operator’ for Ron ‘Pigpen’ McKernan and indulging Weir’s cowboy rock and roll persona on ‘Sugar Magnolia’ and ‘Truckin’.
His contributions were so prominent that he was listed as an official member in the album’s credits. The insider status that Hunter already had made him an invaluable asset to the Dead camp, and his major stand as the group’s sole lyricist was on American Beauty.
0 kommentar(er)
