What unraveled within each song by Grateful Dead song was the layered interplay among each band member, which was primarily driven by the band’s two songwriting duos Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter and Bob Weir and John Perry Barlow.
“Everything is new for the first year when you’re listening to the Grateful Dead—everything,” said John Mayer, who co-founded Dead & Company with the Grateful Dead’s Weir, drummers Mickey Hart, and Bill Kreutzmann, along with bassist Oteil Burbridge and keyboardist Jeff Chimenti. “And what you’re listening to more than songs are moments.”
Mayer continued, “You don’t know what the songs are but you go ‘Oh, that’s a cool moment.”
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Within the band’s bountiful catalog, Garcia’s lyrical contributions, alone, filled the majority of the band’s 13 albums, from 1967 debut The Grateful Dead through Built to Last in 1989, including a handful of songs composed solely by the singer. Here’s a closer look at the three Grateful Dead tracks within a 10-year span (1967-1977), credited to Garcia.
1. “Cream Puff War” (1967)
Released on the Grateful Dead’s self-titled debut in 1967, “Cream Puff War” is the only track on the album credited solely to Garcia. It’s also one of two original tracks on the album of covers, along with the band’s “The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion).”
The title of the song, which Garcia insisted didn’t mean anything, came after he wrote the lyrics.
“This is the only song that I claim totally,” said Garcia in a 1967 interview. “This is mine from beginning to end. … We were down in LA, I was writing, I had the changes worked out and the bridge and the first verse. The whole thing was just meandering along. Pigpen [late Grateful Dead keyboardist Ron McKernan] said let’s call it ‘Cream Puff War.'”
[RELATED: Top 10 Grateful Dead Songs]
During the interview, Weir interjected “No, I said it.” Garcia responded “Or you did. Somebody did. At any rate, the title doesn’t really mean anything particularly, it’s just the name of the song.”
Garcia continued “Did you ever read ‘Through the Looking Glass’ or ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ where they have a thing about something and then the name of it, and the name of its name, and so on, so that the thing is named several times removed from the actual thing and not in any way related to it. Well, we kind of name our songs that way. So ‘Cream Puff War’ is the name of that song just because it was a name that happened to be around, and then later on I happened to work it into the lyric as the last line.”
No, no, she can’t take your mind and leave
I know it’s just another trick she’s got up her sleeve
I can’t believe that she really wants you to die
After all, it’s more than enough to pay for your lie
Well, can’t you see that you’re killing each other’s soul
You’re both out in the streets and you got no place to go
Your constant battles are getting to be a bore
So go somewhere else and continue your cream puff war
2. “Cryptical Envelopment” (1968)
Jerry Garcia opens the four-part “That’s It for the Other One” from the band’s second album Anthem of the Sun, with his “Cryptical Envelopment.” The recording is rounded out by “Quadlibet for Tenderfeet,” written by Garcia, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh, Ron McKernan, and Bob Weir; “The Faster We Go, the Rounder We Get,” by Kreutzmann and Weir; and “We Leave the Castle,” the only song ever written by keyboardist Tom Constanten, who played with the band from 1968 through 1970.
The other day they waited
The sky was dark and faded
Solemnly they stated, “He has to die
You know he has to die”
All the children learnin’
From books that they were burnin’
Every leaf was turnin’, to watch him die
You know he had to die
3. “Refrain” (“Terrapin Part 1,” 1977)
On July 27, 1977, the Grateful Dead released their ninth album, Terrapin Station. “Estimated Prophet,” a cover of Martha and the Vandellas’ 1965 hit “Dancin’ In The Streets,” written by Marvin Gaye, William Stevenson and Ivy Jo Hunter, along Phil Nesh’s contribution “Passenger,” a rendition of the traditional song “Samson & Delilah,” and the Donna Godchaux-penned “Sunrise” filled Side A. The flip side of Terrapin Station was dedicated to band’s 16-plus minute, seven-part title track, “Terrapin Part 1,” which was written predominantly by Garcia and Hunter with parts by Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart.
The final section of the song, “Refrain,” is a reprise of the “Terrapin” section that was composed by Garcia with the addition of English Choral.
Considered one of the band’s greatest pieces, in 2016, The National recorded the Grateful Dead opus, along with Grizzly Bear, the percussion quartet Sō Percussion, and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, for the tribute covers album Day of the Dead.
Photo: Don Paulsen/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
