It wasn't yet the jam-song it would become next year, more of a delicate pop song - kind of a cosmic counterpoint to Golden Road. The Dead had wanted to create songs that were more poetic (Phil's New Potato was so far their only 'poem-song'), and here was a song that invited the listener on a transportational journey. For me, that suggestion always means, 'Great, let's look around. ![]() You could take whatever you will from that suggestion. They are saying, 'This universe is truly far out.' That's about it. "The reason the music is the way it is, is because those lyrics suggested that to me. Garcia also said the words and music belonged together. It brings up something that you can see." ![]() I don't have any idea what the 'transitive nightfall of diamonds' means. Eliot around the time I was writing Dark Star," Hunter said, and one line was clearly influenced by a line in 'The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock' - "Let us go then, you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky." "Beyond that, that's just my kind of imagery. Then, a couple of days or weeks later," Garcia said he wanted another verse, so Hunter wrote the next verse sitting in Golden Gate Park. I heard the Grateful Dead playing, those were the words it seemed to be saying. He said, 'Oh, this will fit in just fine,' and he started singing it. I wrote the first half of it and I went in and handed what I'd written to Jerry. I heard the music and just started writing Dark Star lying on my bed. They were rehearsing in the hall, and you could hear from there. So in July, Hunter returned, and in September he found himself listening to the Dead's rehearsals for their scheduled second-album sessions later that month. (Bear was also visiting, which is how the 9/3/67 show happened to be recorded.) Hunter had been living in the southwest, mailing some lyrics to the Dead in June '67 Garcia wrote him to say that the band had set Alligator to music, and asking him to come to San Francisco to work with the band. One of their guests was Robert Hunter, who had recently joined up with the Dead as a lyric-writer. Reich: Well, yeah, talk about it a little.ĭark Star was born in September 1967, while the Dead were staying at Rio Nido. ![]() "Dark Star" has meant, while I'm playing it, almost as many things as I can sit here and imagine, so all I can do is talk about "Dark Star" as a playing experience. So I have a long continuum of "Dark Stars" which range in character from each other to real different extremes. Garcia: You gotta remember that you and I are talking about two different "Dark Stars." You're talking about the "Dark Star" which you have heard formalized on a record, and I'm talking about the "Dark Star" which I have heard in each performance as a completely improvised piece over a long period of time. Reich: Well then if we wanted to talk about "Dark Star", could you say anything about where it comes from?
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