The authoritative source for the lyrics of Robert Hunter and John Perry Barlow and connected details. Lots of interpretive, historical, and contextual details.

Because these songs are special to many, myself included, the origins and stories behind their creation are interesting to me. John Barlow’s essay on the writing of Cassidy on page 224 is worth the cost of admission alone.

This book rocks! (Well, yeah, literally.)

Anybody who loves The Grateful Dead needs this book.

Anybody who loves poetry needs this book.

Anybody who's ever wondered what the hell Bob or Jerry is singing about needs this book.

This mighty tome (yes, I have always wanted to write "mighty tome") is full of lyrics, stories, explanations, poetry, and love.

Find out what song The Grateful Dead played live most often.

Learn about Neal Cassady's connection to Bob and the rest of the band.

Get the scoop on what piano player got it on with Janis Joplin.

All that's in here, plus a ton more.

You need this book!

Robert Hunter's forward could in itself be reason enough to own this book. Listening to someone describe the secrets of lyrical alchemy with such clarity is totally spellbinding. To talk about writing lyrics in a way that is at once parallel to the individual listener's own life in such a deeply personal manner, while providing that same experience to so many different people universally with the very same words and intonation, and with such clarity, is a master stroke. It's amazing when you read or hear another's words ring so true that you must convince yourself that somehow they're not your own.

Finally, a book that contains the actual words (as well as some explanation behind the intent) of the lyrics.
I love this book!~

love this book....not only because the lyrics of the dead are sometimes cryptic, but to see others thoughts on what symbolism was used and so on....

i cannot love this book anymore, and continue to refer to it and read it in bits and pieces...

The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics, annotations by David G. Dodd (1957-), foreword by Robert Hunter, 2005, 480 pages, Dewey 782.421660265, ISBN 9780743277471


The collected lyrics of Robert Hunter and John Barlow, lyrics to all original Grateful Dead songs, with selected traditional and cover songs. 1965-1994 and 1996-2004 by surviving members after Jerry Garcia's death in 1995.

Lyricists with mini-biographies in the book:
John Barlow (1947-2018) p. 424. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Pe...
Robert Hunter (1941-2019) p. 425. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_...
Peter Richard Zimels, AKA Peter Monk (1937-1992) p. 425.
Robert M. Petersen (1936-1987) pp. 425-426.
Gerrit Graham (1948-) p. 426. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrit_...

The annotations don't say what the songs /mean/. Instead they merely specify what particular lyrics refer to. In a song with a Cheshire cat, we get an annotation about Lewis Carroll pp. 3-5; with a vampire bat, we get an annotation about Bram Stoker p. 5. Cream Puff War's annotation is a recipe for cream puffs. pp. 16-17.


Lyricist Robert Hunter writes a 16-page foreword. He tells us:

It begins to appear that our output embodied the summation and close of a musical era, rather than heralding the bright new beginning devoutly wished for. p. xi.

Sometimes, the writer was just stretching for a rhyme, accepting something convenient with a deadline impending, no further significance intended. pp. xii-xiii.

We would have done better with a hit, three of which we had until the Federal Communications Commission banned them from the airwaves: "Truckin'" and "Casey Jones" for mentioning cocaine, and "Uncle John's Band" for "God damn! I declare / Have you seen the like?" Nixon will never know what a favor he did us. We needed another decade of hard-work-just-to-survive to temper our metal. Burnout was providentially deferred. p. xxiii.

The annotator is a librarian.

Lyrics to 461 Grateful Dead songs are on the band's website, dead.net/songs?page=0 through dead.net/songs?page=46
The songs' individual URLs are like this: dead.net/song/truckin and dead.net/song/uncle-johns-band

The lyrics on dead.net aren't always identical to those in this book. For example:

dead.net/song/ripple is missing the last verse and half of the last chorus, which the book does have. But the website gives, "Let it be known there is a fountain /
That was not made by the hands of man," where the book has, "... by the hands of men." pp. 126-127.

The book arose from the annotator's website, of which a version is available for download from archive.net: https://archive.org/details/TheComple...

Grateful Dead wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gratefu...

David Dodd has a website where the lyrics are discussed and fans contribute their own annotations. Band members also chime in. The annotations are varied in quality: some are very enlightening, while others are little more than conjectures borne of a puff of smoke. I look at it whenever I'm trying to learn one of their songs.

The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics by David G. Dodd (Free Press 2005) (782.42166). This is a fascinating work. Every word in every Grateful Dead song has been parsed and referenced - and that's a lot of work. This is a must have for every Deadhead's library. My rating: 7.5/10, finished 2/10/2010.

My favorite book of all time

if you are a deadhead, this is an awesome book. If you're not, this is still an awesome book. Robert Hunter wrote most of the Dead's lyrics over the years. This book does not attempt to glean the meaning of the songs out for the reader/fan. Rather, there is a lot of educational material here. Robert Hunter's references in his lyrics over the years comprise a vast history of music, culture, and well, history. I learned a lot reading through this book. I did not know all the songs listed, but that didn't stop me from reading the annotations. A very enjoyable read.