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Not Dark Yet #310: A different type of song

8/10/2019

7 Comments

 
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“He’s got a way with words and I do too” said Bob Dylan, referring to the poet, lyricist and his occasional collaborator Robert Hunter. “We both write a different type of song than what passes today for songwriting.” And Hunter felt the same about Bob.  “He’s the only guy I work with who I give the liberty to change things. After all, he is who he is.”
 
It has taken me some little time to get my (dead)head round the death of Robert Hunter, at the age of 78. Many Deadheads paid minimal or no attention to the lyrics of even the greatest songs in the canon. But I did. And the Dead did.
 
When the Dead was inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame, Hunter – who had never performed on-stage with them – was there, as a fully-fledged member of the band. And if there was occasionally a divergence in the visions of Hunter and Garcia – “For Christ’s sake, we’re a dance band. You might at least write something with a beat!” Garcia told him after perusing another bunch of lyrics – it is Hunter’s work, in for example Ripple, Dark Star, Saint Stephen, Terrapin which define the Dead, the latter being imho, a masterful version of Cavafy’s Ithaca.
 
When Jerry died in 1995, Hunter wrote what encyclopaedist Michael Gray called ‘a super-competent’ elegy:
 
Without your melody and taste
to lend an attitude of grace
a lyric is an orphan thing,
a hive with neither honey’s taste
nor power to truly sting.
 
But there is a case to be made for the true elegy being his collaboration with Bob on Together Through Life.
 
It’s a meditation on mortality and immortality, on the end of America. Beyond here lies nothing; life is hard; it’s all good.
 
How much is Bob’s and how much is Hunter’s? I don’t know, not for sure. But I do know that a stanza such as this must surely come individually and collectively from the relationship that both Bob and Hunter had with Jerry:
 
Ever since the day
The day you went away
I felt that emptiness so wide
I don't know what's wrong or right
I just know I need strength to fight
Strength to fight that world outside

 
Yeh, I know. They are not the best lines either of them wrote. But the sincerity and simplicity and authenticity is enough.
 
Both are clever wordsmiths. Both are masters of their craft. Both write a different kind of song.

But sometimes you don’t have to be a smart-arse for the sake of it.

Today from the everysmith vaults: Terrapin Station from March 1990.
7 Comments
Joe
8/10/2019 13:41:55

If your thesis is to draw a favourable comparison between Dylan and Hunter, you’ve failed. Hunter’s clever-clever wordplay never had the specificity of Dylan, even if they both embraced a story-telling tradition. Agree about Terrapin though. Of course to make my point, compare and contrast with Simple Twist of Fate.

Reply
Mark
8/10/2019 14:38:54

I was a fan of Hunter's work, but if you're asking, judge Dylan to be superior. If only because it took Garcia to set Hunter's lyrics. With Dylan, it was all of a piece.

Reply
Rob
8/10/2019 14:48:30

A point you miss. The elegy to Jerry is a song without music. Jerry's jams were songs without words.

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Scott
8/10/2019 14:54:36

Yes to your final paragraphs. The final four lines of the elegy:

so I'll just say I love you
which I never said before;
and let it go at that old friend,
the rest you may ignore.

Sincere, simple, authentic.

Reply
Max
8/10/2019 15:04:30

A friend (hi Rick) told me a story which he had read in one of the obituaries and which I wished I had included above:

Hunter, anonymously, in the crowd at a Dead show. They play Cumberland Blues, so seventies? As the song comes to an end, an audience member turns to Hunter, whom he does not recognise or know. "Imagine how the writer of that song would feel if he knew The Dead would be playing his song 100 years later!' Hunter regarded it as a high compliment.

Reply
Deadhead
8/10/2019 15:07:17

The story comes from Hunter himself in a footnote in his collected lyrics, A Box of Rain:
“The best compliment I ever had on a lyric was from an old guy who'd worked at the Cumberland mine. He said, 'I wonder what the guy who wrote this song would've thought if he'd ever known something like the Grateful Dead was gonna do it.' “

Reply
Max
8/10/2019 17:14:43

Thanks for this. I don't have that book because i always admired his refusal to publish his 'official' lyrics, claiming that mishearings are often more resonant and illuminating. BTW, for years I believed that God, in answer to Abe's question where do you want the killing done?, settled on Highway 61, which I still prefer to said out on.




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     Max Smith

    European writer, radical, restaurateur and Red Sox fan. 70-something husband, father, step-father. and grandfather. Resident in Warwick, England.

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