Grateful Dead Music Forum

Hunter almost NEVER explains his lyrics. He says that by telling the listener what he was talking about it infringes on the listener's own experience of the song (and I agree with him). I found this link on Dead.net (it actually goes back to the Annotated Lyrics), a guy had written a scholarly essay about Dead lyrics and in it used the word "meaningless". Hunter took exception and replied back with this, using Franklin's as an example:

Spoiler alert!

http://artsites.ucsc.edu/GDead/agdl/fauthrep.html

That's really cool - some of that I had thought of some was new to me.

Thanks for the interesting post/link. Now I am almost certain that no matter how well read I am, and how diverse and authentic my life expriences...I will never be able to write good song lyrics

WOW, great read. Thank's.
And I thought I expanded my mind? Obviously not enough. Where did I put that vile of liquid?

tatittle wrote:Thanks for the interesting post/link. Now I am almost certain that no matter how well read I am, and how diverse and authentic my life expriences...I will never be able to write good song lyrics

Don't get down on yourself, Hunter is a master lyricist. There are plenty of great songs out there written by mere mortals at the task. Hunter is very well read and has excellent metacognition about his craft. Plus, he gave a nice, but friendly smack down to the author of that critique.

Awesome!

Rare indeed! Maybe most of us came for the scene. But we stayed because of what we found!

"The further you go in, the bigger it gets!" ...John Crowley

Peace to All.
M

Wow! "Call my lyrics meaningless eh?"

Really interesting look into Hunter's thought processess. I understand and agree with his decision to keep his intent and literary references private, but that is a really fascinating peek through the looking glass into his mind.