Song of the Day 11/18: The Grateful Dead, “Touch of Grey”
The media hasn’t had time to remind you lately, what with a couple of wars and a couple of Trump trials and Republicans In Disarray Chapter XII, but Joe Biden is older today than he was last week, which is the last time they checked in on that emerging story.
Robert Hunter was not yet 40 when he wrote what became the Grateful Dead’s only Top 40 hit (their previous highest-charting single: “Truckin’,” No. 64 in 1970), but it’s not really about aging, even if the band’s first-ever video featured a bunch of skeletal musicians. Hunter, the band’s lyrics-only member, wrote it for an intended solo album of his own in 1980. He never made the album, so Jerry Garcia set the downbeat lyrics to a sprightly tune that became a concert staple from 1982 onward. But it wasn’t recorded until 1987’s “In the Dark” LP, the band’s first in seven years.
Released as a single and buoyed by the video’s frequent appearance on MTV, “Touch of Grey” rose to No. 9 on the Hot 100 and No. 1 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. The video introduced the Dead to a new, younger audience that viewed the Dead’s concerts and longtime followers as a freak show, so I understand old Dead heads don’t much care for the tune.
Do I sometimes post under psuedonyms? Yes. But today I am proud to come out as a Deadhead who is also a member of the GA. I went to several dozen Dead shows up and down the East coast starting in 1980. What’s “funny” is my predecessor also purports to be a Deadhead but I doubt his politics align with any members of the band (in any of its iterations from the Ron McKernan days to the Brent Midland days). I guess that shows the music transcends politics and probably everything else, save musical taste, that divides us.
For fun, I’d love to know people’s favorite Dead songs if they have some. While not known for discrete songs, they do have several that hold up on their own and as lead ins to trippy jams. Mine are Scarlet Begonias and Sugar Magnolia followed by Franklins Tower and Golden Road to
Unlimited Devotion. But there are so many others to bliss out on…
Eyes Of The World has always been a tune I’ve enjoyed in addition to those you listed.
One of my favorite memories was while feeling wonderfully magical at an 1989 Dead concert at RFK Stadium in DC, Jerry was playing a verrrry looog jam during Estimated Profit and my now departed friend Kelly Shea from B’Wine Hundred shouted out loud “ HEY JERRY……IF YOU GET NEAR A SONG,…PLAY IT!
Almost immediately Jerry and Bob transitioned into Fire on the Mountain then China Cat Sunflower then Uncle John’s Band (3 of my tops) I believe I still have the Dick’s Picks cassette from that concert. Ahh, simpler times.
Not in any particular order, box of rain, wharf rat, morning dew. So dead that my wife’s business was named morning dew garden. Guilty as charged, dead head till the end.