Truckin’ on: The 10 Best Bob Weir Recordings from the Grateful Dead | music

The Grateful Dead – The Faster We Go, The Rounder We Get / The Other (1968)

The Dead’s love of the road is evident in this clip from That’s It for the Other One, the four-part opening track of their second LP, Anthem of the Sun. A rare lyric by Bob Weir details the Dead’s youngest member being arrested by the cops “for smiling on a cloudy day” — a reference to a real-life incident when Weir pelted police with water balloons while conducting what he saw as illegal searches outside the group’s Haight-Ashbury hangout. He then connects with the band’s spiritual predecessors, the Merry Pranksters, by referring to Neal Cassady, the driver of “A Bus That Never Lands.” The song later evolved into The Other One, one of the Dead’s most-played tunes and a launching pad for their exploratory sets – as on this gorgeous, haunting version at 1974’s Winterland in San Francisco.

The Grateful Dead – Truckin’ (1970)

“What a long, strange journey it’s been,” Weir said in what is arguably a Grateful Dead anthem. The group was only half a decade into their remarkable thirty-year career when lyricist Robert Hunter wrote this chessboard about their touring adventures. It’s full of thorny details—groups consumed by “reds, vitamin C, and cocaine,” and countless drug busts in hotel rooms—but Dead’s soulful delivery and, in particular, Weir’s playful growls, locate magic in their itinerant lifestyle. As with many Dead tunes, Truckin’ is best heard in concert (or at a bootleg tape being circulated in the parking lot before a show). The rumble captured in a London concert hall on the Europe ’72 Live LP is as impressive as any you’ll hear.

The Grateful Dead – Sugar Magnolias (1971)

A tribute to Ware’s longtime lover Frankie Hart — “a summer love of spring, fall and winter” who could “make any man alive” — and their most notable work include their 1970 LP American Beauty, Sugar Magnolias showcased the Dead’s embrace of Americana and songcraft. Their second most played song evolved into an upbeat finale to the concert, Sunshine Daydream, and was often the first song they played after the clock struck midnight at New Year’s Eve parties. The performance at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom on December 31, 1978, marking the closing of the venerable venue, is a Deadhead favorite.

Bob Weir – Playing in the Band (1972)

Playing in a band depicts the Dead’s lifestyle as an almost mystical profession, with the narrator being a cheap road warrior who has developed his own philosophies along the way: “I don’t trust anything / But I know it’ll come out right.” Evolving from a composition penned by David Crosby during a jam at Dead percussionist Mickey Hart’s barn, the track first appeared on the Dead’s 1971 eponymous live LP, then appeared on Weir’s 1972 solo debut Ace, before the group reclaimed it as a vehicle for their more searching, open-minded excursions. The legendary 46-minute version from Seattle’s Edmundson Pavilion in 1974 is believed to be the longest song the Dead have ever performed.

Bob Weir – Cassidy (1972)

Named after the young daughter of a dead road, Cassady is a tribute to the disgraced poet Neal Cassady, whose restless, ambitious ideal cast a long shadow over Ware. An upbeat folk-rocker, it finds Weir delivering Cassidy’s life lessons to an infant gleaned from Cassady’s imaginary lust for freedom, singing over the coda: “Let your life go according to its own designs… let the word be yours.” That feeling, combined with the pearly folk tangle of country, made Cassidy a song he revisited throughout his career, with the Dead and also with RatDog, the group he formed after Garcia’s death in 1995.

The Grateful Dead – The Music Never Stopped (1975)

Is 1975’s Blues for Allah the funniest Dead album? The swing of Jerry Garcia’s Franklin Tower is equally suggestive, as is this Weir-penned fantasy, steeped in Southern rhythms. The Music Never Stops is driven by Weir’s spiky guitar figures, evoking a groove that wouldn’t put Allen Toussaint to shame, while vocalist Donna Jean Godchaux’s harmonies give this playful number an earthiness worthy of Bourbon Street. Home Pictures, co-written with John Perry Barlow, a regular Weir collaborator, verges on the farcical, but if you’re not tempted by a “rainbow full of sound… and fireworks and calliopees and clowns,” that’s your loss.

Kingfisher – Lazy Lightning / Supplication (1976)

After the ship of the dead temporarily ran aground in the mid-’70s, Weir jumped ship to join his friend Matthew Kelly’s group Kingfish, for which he wrote these luminous two-part pictures that mix lust and addiction. The studio version, all pure, concise harmonies, FM radio-ready AOR, is magical. But as is always the case with music associated with the Dead, the song really came into its own after the group reformed and added Weir to their setlists. Shows like this one by the Sportatorium in Florida in 1977 opened up conversational and jazz possibilities that had only been hinted at in the original Kingfish studio.

The Grateful Dead – The Destined Prophet (1977)

The idea of ​​“The Grateful Dead playing reggae” may be a hard sell, but Fated Prophet is something else. The track possesses a rare menace in Dead music, as Ware depicts a darkly charismatic Manson-like figure dueling with the voices in his head and threatening to “summon thunder” and “fill the sky with flame.” The image is darkly compelling, and there’s no doubt that the band has crossed paths with as many drug-affected figures as 60s jitters. Fans cite the 1990 recording from New York’s Nassau Amphitheater as Goalkeeper, with guest musician Branford Marsalis playing lyrical saxophone, but the dark heart of the song is perhaps best represented in the recording of their 1979 show at the Oakland Auditorium, where Ware’s staccato guitar adds foreboding to Brent Midland’s keyboard solo.

The Grateful Dead – The Lost Sailor (1980)

The Dead seemed mostly unconcerned with whatever trends were moving the mainstream. During their time at Clive Davis’ Arista Records, the famous record mogul teamed them with outside producers, hoping to connect the Dead, however reluctantly, with the zeitgeist. The ’80s cover of Go to Heaven, with the group dressed in white disco suits and their hair flowing as if they’d hired the Bee Gees’ stylists, suggests an uncharacteristic misstep. But the album itself is quite dated, especially this meditative and sad number. In Lost Sailor, a disillusioned Weir recognizes himself in the character of a weary old sailor as devoted to the sea as the singer and guitarist is to the open road, musing that “freedom doesn’t come easy.”

The Grateful Dead – Hell in a Bucket (1987)

The Grateful Dead’s only Top 10 LP in the US, 1987’s In the Dark, is far from a darling among Deadheads. But while a goofy skeleton-filled video briefly sold these Boomers to the MTV generation, this sarcastic kiss of an ex proved that the Dead didn’t sacrifice their dark wits for stardom. Playing as a character from a Steely Dan song, the narrator is a loser who nonetheless fixates on the last laugh, as Weir’s Dylanesque croak portrays his ex as “the ravenous reincarnation of Catherine the Great” and muses, in an irresistible hook, “Maybe I’m going to hell in a bucket, darling, but at least I’m enjoying the ride.” It’s a timeless feeling, even if the music video, which features Weir wearing a pastel suit straight out of Miami Vice, and his leather-clad ex-wife, hasn’t aged well — although it’s clear that Bob is having fun throughout.