ROBERT HUNTER
Grateful Dead lyricist
(1941-2019)
ROBERT Hunter was already busy developing his writing skills by the time he signed up to a volunteer research project at Stanford University in 1962. His experience in the Cia-funded experiment, which involved taking LSD, psilocybin and mescaline and then reporting on the effects, allowed him a freer mode of expression. “The words jumped from the subconscious to the page,” he recalled later.
Holed up in New Mexico, Hunter began writing lyrics for a trio of songs – “China Cat Sunflower”, “St Stephen” and “Alligator” – and sending them to his friend Jerry Garcia up in San Francisco. He and Garcia had first met as teenagers in Palo Alto, bonded over music and even formed a short-lived folk duo, Bob and Jerry. When Garcia was under way with the Grateful Dead, he wrote back to Hunter, asking him to become their lyricist. His first significant contribution was “Dark Star”, borrowing from TS Eliot’s The Love Song Of J Alfred Prufrock for the chorus. The song became one of the Dead’s most enduring pieces, while the epic “Alligator” made its debut on 1968’s Anthem Of The Sun. The partnership took flight in earnest on the following year’s Aoxomoxoa, which was entirely devoted to Hunter-garcia collaborations.
Despite being a non-performing member, Hunter’s significance to the Dead was immense, his allusive lyrical visions accounting for much of the band’s mythology and mystique through songs such as “Uncle John’s Band”, “Ripple”, “Brokedown Palace” and “Scarlet Begonias”. Indeed, his famous line from “Truckin’” – “What a long, strange trip it’s been” – became shorthand for the Dead’s own narrative arc.
Hunter continued to write after the Dead folded in 1995, most substantially with Bob Dylan on 2009’s Together Through Life. His other credits include works by Elvis Costello, Little Feat, Jim Lauderdale, Los Lobos’ Cesar Rosas and Bruce Hornsby And The Noisemakers.