For three decades, founding Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh was the backbone of the band. Working in tandem and glued to the guitars of Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir, Lesh was set in the background harmonizing more, over taking the lead, and still wrote and sang a collection of songs for the band during their first decade together.
The Grateful Dead’s second album Anthem of the Sun features Lesh’s co-written “That’s It for the Other One,” “New Potato Caboose,” “Alligator,” and “Caution (Do Not Stop on Tracks).” He continued writing with “Truckin’” and “Box of Rain” from American Beauty, peppering “Slipknot!” (Blues for Allah) then “Passenger” from Terrapin Station, and more throughout the ’70s.
Though Lesh parted ways with the band in 2015 and didn’t continue on with Dead and Company, the bassist honored the Grateful Dead with his band Phil Lesh and Friends through 2024.
Lesh’s contributions to the Grateful Dead were immeasurable and left behind some of their most unforgettable songs. Here’s a look at four songs Lesh wrote for the band from the late ’60s through the early 1970s.
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[RELATED: The Early Grateful Dead Song Jerry Garcia Said They “Failed”]
“St. Stephen” (1969)
Written by Phil Lesh, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Robert Hunter
On the surface, “St. Stephen,” released on the Grateful Dead’s third album Aoxomoxoa, was about Saint Stephen, the first-century protomartyr of Christianity from the New Testament of the Bible, who was stoned to death for blasphemy. For some time, fans also believed the song was about Stephen Gaskin, a Haight-Ashbury counterculture activist and author, but it was initially written by the band’s longtime collaborator Robert Hunter about the latter.
“I had been working on this a long time before I gave it to the Grateful Dead before I took off for New Mexico, which is where I originally sent them the lyrics from,” recalled Hunter in a 2019 interview. “I don’t know what to say about this song, except that it was very important to me. It seemed to be saying oodles. It’s still one of my favorites. I didn’t know who the real Saint Stephen was until I wrote it. He turned out to be the first Christian monk or something.”
Speeding arrow, sharp and narrow
What a lot of fleeting matters you have spurned
Several seasons with their treasons
Wrap the babe in scarlet colors, call it your own
Did he doubt or did he try?
Answers aplenty in the bye-and-bye
Talk about your plenty, talk about your ills
One man gathers what another man spills
Saint Stephen will remain, all he’s lost he shall regain
Seashore washed by the suds and foam,
Been here so long, he’s got to calling it home
“Box of Rain” (1970)
Written by Phil Lesh and Robert Hunter
Grateful Dead’s fifth album American Beauty opens with a song Lesh wrote for his father, who was dying from cancer. Lesh would practice the song while driving to the nursing home where his father was staying. “He wanted a song to sing to his dying father and had composed a piece complete with every vocal nuance but the words,” recalled Hunter. “If ever a lyric wrote itself, this did—as fast as the pen would pull.”
Walk out of any doorway
Feel your way, feel your way like the day before
Maybe you’ll find direction
Around some corner where it’s been waiting to meet you
What do you want me to do
To watch for you while you’re sleeping?
Then please don’t be surprised
When you find me dreaming too
Look into any eyes you find by you
You can see clear through to another day
Maybe it’s been seen before through other eyes
On other days while going home
“Box of Rain” was the last song Grateful Dead performed with Jerry Garcia during their encore at Soldier Field in Chicago on July 9, 1995, one month before his death.
Hunter opened his 1980 solo album, Jack O’Roses with a rendition of “Box of Rain.” On October 25, 2024, Phish opened their show with “Box of Rain” in honor of Lesh who passed away earlier that day at age 84.
“Truckin’” (1970)
Written by Phil Lesh, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Robert Hunter
During the Grateful Dead’s 1970 tour, the band played two dates in New Orleans, and the entire band was arrested for possession of drugs when their hotel on Bourbon Street was raided. After bail was posted—and the charges later dropped—the band went ahead with their second show. The incident was memorialized by Lesh, Hunter, Garcia, and Weir in their on-the-road anthem, “Truckin’,” which went to No. 64 on the Billboard Hot 100 and also appeared on American Beauty.
Truckin’, got my chips cashed in
Keep truckin’, like the doo-dah man
Together, more or less in line
Just keep truckin’ on
Arrows of neon and flashing marquees out on Main Street
Chicago, New York, Detroit and it’s all on the same street
Your typical city involved in a typical daydream
Hang it up and see what tomorrow brings
Dallas got a soft machine
Houston, too close to New Orleans
New York got the ways and means
But just won’t let you be
“Truckin’” was Grateful Dead’s coming-of-age song, chronicling life on the road. “Truckin’” covers the Dead’s navigation through that rite of passage,” said Weir. “We were starting to become real guys, and really enjoying the hell out of it.”
“Unbroken Chain” (1974)
Written by Phil Lesh and Robert Petersen
Lesh co-wrote two songs with poet Robert Petersen for Grateful Dead’s seventh album From The Mars Hotel. “Pride of Cucamonga,” a bluesy-country tale of hitchhiking from Oregon to Mexico, and the closing “Unbroken Chain.” Both also marked the first time Lesh sang two songs on a Dead album.
“Unbroken Chain” is a poetic forage through interpersonal complexities, forgiveness, and more and breaks off into meter twists and jazzier and bluesy interludes.
Blue light rain, whoa unbroken chain,
Looking for familiar faces in an empty window pane
Listening for the secret, searching for the sound
But I could only hear the preacher and the baying of his hounds
Willow sky, whoa, I walk and wonder why
They say love your brother, but you will catch it when you try
Roll you down the line boy, drop you for a loss
Ride you out on a cold railroad and nail you to a cross
November and more, as I wait for the score
They’re telling me forgiveness is the key to every door
A slow winter day a night like forever
Sink like a stone, float like a feather
The Grateful Dead first performed “Unbroken Chain” live 21 years after its release at the Spectrum in Philadelphia on March 19, 1995. Lesh continued to perform “Unbroken Chain” with his band Phil Lesh and Friends, including his final time during a show at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, New York on March 6, 2024.
Photo: Phil Lesh performs with The Grateful Dead at the Selland Arena in January 1978 in Fresno, California. (Ed Perlstein/Redferns/Getty Images)
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