The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics

The first-ever complete and fully annotated compilation of lyrics by the most enduring band of the 20th century.

When the Grateful Dead's in-house publishing company, Ice Nine, decided that the band's fortieth anniversary was a good time to publish their entire lyric catalogue, a wave of excitement swept across the world of Deadheads, or would have had they known. What was the unclear word in 'Uncle John's Band'? Would 'Revolutionary Hamstrung Blues' be included? Would Robert Hunter reveal the meaning of anything at all? These questions are finally answered in this book, but in true Grateful Dead fashion you'll have to dig around to find the answers and have fun doing it.

'The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics' is an authoritative text, providing standard versions of all the original songs so that you can win an occasional bar bet. Or not. To provide a context for this formidable body of work, of which his part is primary, Robert Hunter has written a foreword that goes to the heart of the matter. These are some of the best-loved songs in the modern American songbook. They are hummed and spoken among thousands as counterculture code and recorded by musicians of all stripes for their inimitable singability and obscure accessibility. How do they do all this? The annotations on sources provide a gloss on the lyrics, which goes tot he roots of Western culture as they are incorporated into them.

Annotation is a venerable literary tradition. All genres of writing can be illuminated by it. David Dodd is well suited to the task. An avid Grateful Dead concert-goer for two decades, he is a librarian who brings to the work a detective's love of following a clue as far as it will take him. With the addition of artist Jim Carpenter's illustrations, whimsical elements in the lyrics are brought to light. What he has seen to illustrate itself illustrates the American legend that is present in 'The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics'. You won't think of the cultural icon that is Grateful Dead the same way again.