Signature Songs, Vol. 8 - The Grateful Dead

This week, I’m continuing my Signature Songs series with the Grateful Dead!

The Dead had an incredible career without any real commercial album or single sales. They were never really a traditional hit-single band. They were a live band, a touring band, a tape-trading band, and a band whose fans were heavily invested in their music. But their signature song isn’t necessarily their best song, or even their fans' favorite song — it’s the song most associated with them by the general population of music fans.

And yet, without chart hits, they still produced some of the most influential music of the rock-n-roll era, and so I’m looking at the major contenders, and I’ll make the case for the one song that became the Grateful Dead's true calling card. It's all this week, on the Rock-N-Roll Show Podcast!

And then I want to hear from you - did I get it right? Let me know what you think, and check out this week’s Rock-N-Roll Show Podcast Playlist, featuring all the songs mentioned on the show:

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Transcript

Speaker 0:00

Welcome to the Rock 'n' Roll Show podcast. I'm your host, Alex Gadd, and this week I've got another episode of Signature Songs for you. Get out your favorite tie-dye shirt, maybe enjoy a legal edible, and get ready to dance, because this time I'm talking about a band that blended psychedelic rock and roll with folk, blues, country, jazz, bluegrass, and gospel into a sound that was both down-home and a little cosmic, often at the same time. This week I'm talking about the Grateful Dead. With the Dead, determining the best choice was a real challenge, the hardest one yet. So I'll run through the best options and make the case for the one song that I believe is their signature song, and then I wanna hear what you think. I hope you'll join me coming up right now. I

Alex Gadd 1:04

think you're getting the idea about what's going on in this series by now. I hope so. I'm trying to figure out an act's signature song, not necessarily their best song, and not always their biggest hit, but the song that's most tied to their public image. It's their musical calling card, the one that pops into your mind as soon as you hear the act's name. Sometimes it's the breakthrough hit, sometimes it's the biggest chart hit, sometimes it's the song that crossed over to a whole new audience, but usually it's some combination of all of that, which is why this is more art than science, and why it's so fun to discuss with your friends. As I'm working through all the members of the Rock Roll Hall of Fame in this series, I'm diving into a unique challenge today with the Grateful Dead, because they operated almost entirely out of the commercial mainstream, at least until very late in their career. Because of that, they don't really have any substantial hits in the traditional sense. Starting out as a psychedelic rock band in the Bay Area in 1965, they built a huge community of fans who came to love their music with an almost unlimited devotion. Yet a lot of average music fans either dismiss them or never really engage with them. The band released 13 studio albums across their career. Eight of those reached the top 40 on the Billboard 200 album chart, with four of those getting into the top 20, and one of those four into the top 10, and that was 1987's In the Dark. They also released a series of official live albums during their career, which is worth noting here because The Dead were always more of a live band than an album band. Across all of those albums, they released more than 30 singles between 1965 and 1990, and yet they never had a top 40 single until their late career surprise hit from 1987. That was the song Touch of Gray. That was it. One top 40 hit, which actually got as high as number nine on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. Now, only five of their other singles even charted at all. With 1970's Truckin' the next best-performing single on the charts, getting as high as number 64, just edging out Alabama Getaway from 1980, and another 1970 track, Uncle John's Band, each of those which also charted in the high 60s only. And yet The Dead was and remains one of the most influential acts in the rock hall because they took so many musical influences and helped to create the template for what became the jam band movement. Their songs are so meaningful to their fan base who followed the band around the country and traded tapes of the live shows way before nugs.net and the internet in general made hearing complete live shows so easy and accessible. So Deadheads got to know their favorite band's songs as well as any fan base has known a band's songs ever, especially because they didn't rely on the studio versions of the song to do so. But since I'm working from the definition that an act's signature song is the song that a casual music fan thinks of first when they hear the name The Grateful Dead, the most popular choice among the Deadhead community isn't what I'm looking for here, which makes identifying the Dead's signature song especially challenging. And it's even more challenging because the general image of the band's music is jam-heavy. There's the joke that a non-fan went to a show and came out complaining that it just sounded like one long song, which is both totally unfair and inaccurate, but also a pretty good summation of the way the general public thinks about them. So how do I identify a song that the average music fan is most likely to associate with the band and still capture the essence of what makes The Dead The Dead? This is a tricky one. I should also say that I'm a casual Dead fan at best. My knowledge of their music comes mostly from having attended the University of Vermont in the late '80s, when more than half the people on my floor in my freshman-year dorm were hardcore fans who shared their love of the band with me, often whether I liked it or not. With all that said, here are the songs that I think are the contenders. I already mentioned "Touch of Gray" because strictly on the merits of chart performance, there's no debate. "Touch of Gray" is the one Grateful Dead song that fully crossed over to the mainstream pop audience. It had the advantage of arriving in the MTV era with a video that was definitely memorable. The band was performing as skeletons at first before morphing into the actual band members. So for people a little bit younger than me who came of age in the mid-'80s, this would've been their introduction to the band, and the chorus, "I will get by," was super accessible, optimistic, and easy to understand, even if you knew nothing about the Dead's larger body of work even if you knew nothing about the Dead's larger body of work. So Touch of Grey has a very strong case. It was the biggest hit, the pop crossover, the MTV song, and the one that gave the Dead their late career mainstream breakthrough. Next up is Casey Jones from 1970's Working Man's Dead. If you grew up listening to classic rock radio, this might be the first Grateful Dead song you remember hearing, even though it was never released as a single. It's compact, it has a memorable chorus, and it has one of those opening lines that pretty much announces itself immediately. It also comes from a really important period in the band's evolution. Working Man's Dead was where the Dead leaned hard into American roots music: folk, country, blues, bluegrass, and old Rock-N-Roll. Casey Jones is a perfect example of that. It's not a long-wandering jam. It's a compact, catchy song that's easy for any music fan to grab onto. The fact that the song references cocaine so prominently and still got played on the radio certainly caught my ears as a kid, And I'd imagine many other kids' ears also. And familiarity matters, so Casey Jones is definitely in the conversation. Then there's Uncle John's Band, which is also from Working Man's Dead. This is one of the few Dead singles that charted at all. It has that acoustic, communal, almost campfire quality, and it fits nicely into the version of the Dead that blends folk music, country rock, and psychedelic poetry. Uncle John's Band is similar to Casey Jones because it helps show that the Grateful Dead were not just a band that stretched out songs on stage. And this one feels especially like the band captured a sense of the communal nature of their shows and their tours, even though the Uncle John they may have been referencing was John Cohen from the New Lost City Ramblers. So while Uncle John's Band might not be about the Dead themselves, it sure feels like an invitation into their community that built up around the band. Then there's Truckin' from the band's second 1970 album, American Beauty, another classic rock radio song as the Dead continued their roots rock exploration. As I mentioned, this one was the second-highest charting song in the band's career, getting to number 64 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It's accessible for many reasons. It's another tighter song without a long jam, so rock radio was able to play it more often. It's also a road song, which people love, especially when they're in their cars, and it name-checks a number of big American cities, Chicago, New York, Detroit, Houston, New Orleans, and Buffalo, so it caught people's attention that way. And of course, it has the phrase that became permanently attached to the Dead's entire journey, "What a long, strange trip it's been." Another strong contender is Friend of the Devil, which was also from American Beauty. Though never released as a single, it has gone on to become the most streamed song on Spotify in The Dead's catalog, with almost 30 million more streams than Casey Jones in second place, and that makes sense. It's one of their most approachable tracks, it's a great story song, and it has a touch of Jerry's bluegrass influence mixed in with the country rock vibe, Which is a bit more representative of the broader Dead sound, In some ways, Friend of the Devil is the Dead song for people who think they don't like the Grateful Dead. It's not intimidating. It doesn't ask you to understand the culture. It's just a great mid-tempo folk rock song. Then there's Ripple, which may be the most beloved song in the whole catalog. Ripple has become almost hymn-like over time. It's spiritual without being specific, and it captures a lot of the Dead's deeper appeal. The sense of searching, community, and mystery that the fans found in the music and in each other. If this was a question of the song that the best expresses what the Dead mean to Deadheads, I think Ripple would have to be pretty high on the list, maybe at the top. It feels like a benediction. It's the song you play at the end of the night or at a memorial service, which is exactly what happened for Bobby Weir's public memorial service in San Francisco when John Mayer played it in his memory. I think those are the viable candidates for the Grateful Dead's signature song. Of course, there are others because I'm really struggling to come up with a strong answer here. You could make a case for Sugar Magnolia, Fire on the Mountain, Scarlet Begonias, or Franklin's Tower, and I think all of those represent important pieces of the Deadheads' appeal. Sugar Magnolia has the concert energy. Scarlet Begonias and Fire on the Mountain represent that jam band flow and were paired together a lot once Fire on the Mountain entered their catalog, often at the beginning of a second set. Franklin's Tower has become one of those songs that feels bigger live than it ever did as a conventional single. It barely performed as a conventional single at all. But for me, most of these are great Grateful Dead songs rather than signature Grateful Dead songs. They matter a lot among the fan base, but I don't think they rise to the top when you ask what song is most publicly attached to the band's image. And finally, the Dead covered songs and made them their own as well as any band ever has. So songs like Not Fade Away or Me and My Uncle or I Know You Rider are truly baked into the culture of Dead music. But I'm not considering them for this exercise because I think the band produced enough great songs of their own. So to recap, I'm considering Touch of Gray, Casey Jones, Uncle John's Band, Truckin', Friend of the Devil, and Ripple. But those are far from my favorite Grateful Dead songs, and as I've said many times in this series before, favorite song and signature song are not necessarily the same thing. My personal top five favorite Grateful Dead songs are at number five, Monkey and the Engineer. Now, this is from a live album, Reckoning, in 1981, and I know this isn't one of their best songs, but listen up. I used to play and sing this one for my daughters when they were really young, and they loved singing along. So it's a deeply seated memory for me, and it's here to stay in my top five. At number four, Friend of the Devil from American Beauty was the first Dead song I taught myself to play on guitar when I was a kid, So it's on my list. At number three is Bertha from another live album, the Grateful Dead or Skull Roses album in 1971. This one just makes me happy whenever I hear it. I don't know how anyone couldn't feel that way, even though it's not necessarily a happy song. Number two is US Blues from the Mars Hotel, the album is called, 1974, and it's maybe the most overtly political Dead tune there is. It's certainly one of their most straight-ahead rockin' songs, and I always was drawn to the rock and roll aspect of it. And finally, at number one is Franklin's Tower from the Blues for Allah album in 1975, which for me encapsulates everything unique and good about the band. It's the Goldilocks Dead song for me, with an almost hypnotic groove and melody, but not too spacey, not too jam bandy. Plus, my old buddy Chad used to play this one in a combo he played in up in Burlington in the early '90s, and I love the way he did this song. So that's always stuck with me. All right, while I thought hard about choosing Franklin's Tower as the signature song, because it really is, to me, the best middle ground example of everything The Dead encompassed, I just don't think enough people would know that one, though I do think anyone who heard it would not be surprised to find out it was The Dead. But as much as I love it, best example isn't the same thing as signature song, and so Franklin's Tower is out. And Touch of Grey is also out because while it may be the Dead's biggest hit, it feels more like the moment the mainstream finally caught up with the Grateful Dead than the song that explains who they were. "Ripple" is a strong candidate, but I don't think it's the answer because it's probably too inward-facing to be the signature song. It means a lot to people who already deeply care about the band, but I'm not sure it's the casual fan answer. "Casey Jones" and "Truckin'" are both classic rock staples, but I'm not sure casual fans attach either one to the Grateful Dead as strongly as you'd want from a true signature song. Maybe Truckin', and Uncle John's Band is tempting because of the dreamy quality of the song and the parallels to the Dead that can be inferred, but in the end, I'm going with Friend of the Devil. I understand that it can also be classified as being too straightforward a Grateful Dead song, the same way Casey Jones, Truckin', and Uncle John's Band can be, But there were three differentiators here that pushed it over the top for me. First was the data. Streaming's not the whole answer, but it matters here because it tells us which Dead song continues to travel outside the hardcore fan base in the new century. And right now, Friend of the Devil is the most streamed song in the Dead's catalog, at least on Spotify. It's also the most covered original Grateful Dead song, which means it's made an impact across the music world and exposed the song to people who may not even think of themselves as Dead fans or even know it's a Grateful Dead song. Those two points are pretty compelling. Secondly, the bluegrass vibe here is important because among all of the radio-friendly tracks in their catalog, Friend of the Devil is at least a little broader in its musical influences than those other radio-friendly hits. And the Dead were all about blending together a broad range of musical influences into a sound they really defined. Finally, because I was still struggling to come up with the best answer here, I reached out to four of my friends who know the Dead's music really well, better than me for sure. All four of them have been on the podcast as guests, and three of the four said Friend of the Devil right away, and the other one said it was too good a song to be their signature song, which made me laugh. My buddy Jeff even sent me a quote from Jim Newton's book, Here Beside the Rising Tide, which he just happened to be reading this week. In reviewing the track list for American Beauty, Newton wrote that "Friend of the Devil" would come to define The Dead in the eyes of the more casual fans, and that's the whole ballgame for this series. So since I can't really justify Franklin's Tower, and I acknowledge that this is probably the toughest call that I've had to make yet, I'm going to declare that the Grateful Dead's signature song is Friend of the Devil

15:14

I lit out from Reno I was trailed by twenty men I didn't get to sleep that night till the morning came around. Set out runnin', but I take my time. A friend of the devil is a friend of mine. I get home before daylight, I just might get some sleep tonight

Alex Gadd 18:12

Okay, what do you think? Did I get it right or wrong? Let me know, because as I said at the start, I'm doing this podcast to have fun discussing great bands and great music, and I still got a ton of Hall of Fame acts to get through. So if you like what you heard today, I'd appreciate it if you would like and either subscribe or follow this channel to make sure you get notified about each new episode, and please tell your friends. Also, a reminder that I release a playlist for every episode, so look for the Rock-N-Roll Show Podcast playlist on Spotify and Apple Music every week, this week featuring all the Dead songs I mentioned here today, plus a few more classic tracks, so check that out. Additionally, as I said, I wanna know what you think. Please leave me a comment, and I'll try to respond to every one of them. The Rock-N-Roll Show Podcast is a World Highway Media production. I'm your host, Alex Gadd. And until next time, remember that life is short, so get those concert tickets