Robert Hunter (3:23)

1.

David Lemieux (3:24)

1, 2, 3. Flipping over American Beauty, we get to Ripple. If you're a Deadhead, just those few seconds may have set your neck hairs on end. Or maybe even if you're not a Deadhead. Ripple isn't just a classic Grateful Dead song. It's a classic song, period. Timeless in its power and simplicity, and it's far transcended the band that first performed it. One metric is that it's the only Jerry Garcia Robert Hunter original included in Rise Up, Singing, the standard folk music fake book that you may have crossed paths with at a summer camp or college dorm jam session. If you're a guitarist, you only need to know four open chords to play Ripple. Unlike many Grateful Dead songs, there are no tricks. There are no bridges with strange modulations, no extra beats, no tongue twisting. If you don't know the song and are maybe only familiar with the most simple of guitar chords, you can still pick it up almost instantly. For Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter, it was magic all the way through. Grateful Dead archivist and legacy manager David Lemieux.

David Lemieux (archive or commentary) (4:34)

Ripple is a song that Deadheads love. But I think non Deadheads, music lovers, Dead fans, my brother of the world. Ripple is a song for everybody, and that's a song. You can't say that about all these songs. They're not songs for everybody. I'd like to think they are, but sadly they're not. But Ripple is a song, I think, for literally everybody, where you could play it for anyone who has never heard the Grateful Dead from any culture. And that's a thing, and I think it lends itself very, very well.

David Lemieux (5:04)

Neurotribes author and friend to Deadheads everywhere, Steve Silberman.

Stephen Barnard (5:08)

Ripple is sort of the go to song. You know, there's like, you know, crowdsourced versions from Quarantine. Now everyone's weeping. Ripple is sort of the go to.

David Lemieux (5:18)

Emot center of the Grateful Dead's music, in a way. Ripple is sung in schools here by the fifth and sixth graders of the Barton Hills Choir from Barton Hills elementary in Austin, Texas. It's a hand me down. The bars are broken.

Narrator / Various archival voices (including Jerry Garcia) (5:38)

Perhaps they're better left on some.

David Lemieux (5:44)

I don't know.

Narrator / Various archival voices (including Jerry Garcia) (5:47)

Don'T really care. Let there be songs to fill the air.

David Lemieux (5:58)

And played on bells here by the Cornell Chime. It's very much a song for all seasons. Here's Jerry Garcia discussing it with Dennis McNally in the 80s. From the audiobook version of Jerry on Jerry, five hours of Dennis's interviews with Garcia available from Hachette. Ripple Eye is a little talk, even for me.

Robert Hunter (6:35)

I still have a moment or two whenever I sing that song.

David Lemieux (6:38)

There's a moment or two. I feel like, am I really a Presbyterian minister? You know what I mean?

Robert Hunter (6:44)

It crowds me just a little. It. It's right within range. I mean, I could just manage it.

David Lemieux (6:50)

But if it were. If it had one word, one more word, right?

Robert Hunter (6:53)

If it had one more cautionary moment.

David Lemieux (6:55)

In it, you know, or whatever that.

Robert Hunter (6:57)

Is, I'd have real problems with it.

David Lemieux (6:59)

In 2003, Robert Hunter noted in his online journal, received an email today asking if Ripple was a spiritual. I replied without question, Ripple in still.

Narrator / Various archival voices (including Jerry Garcia) (7:12)

Water, when there is no pebble tossed, no wind too low.

David Lemieux (7:22)

Ripple is deeply heavy, but filled with the most beautiful sense of light. Here's Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir. Ripple.

Bob Weir (7:29)

Everybody knows, you know, it's a sing along kind of deal. Of late, I've been getting a lot of call to do that. When I go visit people who were on their way out of here, I'll bring a guitar to their bedside and play that for them because they can, you know, they don't have to struggle to remember the words. And they can kind of sing along if they have. Have the strength to do it. And everybody feels good about that.

Narrator / Various archival voices (including Jerry Garcia) (7:54)

Let it be known there is a fountain that was not made by the hands of.

David Lemieux (8:08)

The story of Ripple begins in May of 1970. Lyricist Robert Hunter was riding a creative high. Workingman's Dead was about to hit stores, and it was a breakthrough for Hunter and his housemate, songwriting partner Jerry Garcia. A very important factor in the wonderfulness of Working Man's Dead in American Beauty is the fact that Jerry and Hunter were living together in Larkspur, a floor apart. Hunter used to say that he'd be, you know, working out a melody upstairs.

Stephen Barnard (8:38)

And then when he went downstairs to bring the lyrics to Jerry, Jerry would have already heard him working it out.

David Lemieux (8:43)

He had already started improving it, you know, and so Jerry already had ideas.

Stephen Barnard (8:50)

By the time Hunter went downstairs to.

David Lemieux (8:52)

Hand Jerry the lyrics to his songs.

Stephen Barnard (8:54)

And they wrote a lot of their best loved songs when they were living together in Larkspur.

David Lemieux (8:59)

Here's one more slice from Dennis McNally's Jerry on Jerry audiobook available from Hachette.

Robert Hunter (9:05)

He's so easy to work with. God, I couldn't hope to work with a guy that was more perfect. Plus, he has the ability to say what I would have wanted to say, you know, I mean, sometimes I can read things and I, you know, he can write for me from my point of view so effortlessly that, you know, I'm as transparent to him as a windowpane. I'm sure he knows me so well.

David Lemieux (9:27)

Though known for much of his public career for being extremely private, Robert Hunter was rightly proud of his contributions to Working Man's Dead. As we learned about in the Easy Wind episode last season, he recorded promo spots for the album the Working Man's.

Robert Hunter (9:42)

Dead by the Grateful Dead, available on.

David Lemieux (9:45)

Warner Brothers Tapes and Records. In the weeks building up to Working Man's Dead release, he even visited radio stations in Boston, New York and elsewhere. And then it was off to England. The Grateful Dead arrived in London in late May 1970 for their appearance at the Hollywood Festival. You can see the band's arrival and bonus footage for Amir Bar Lev's Long, Strange trip. He told us a bit about that remarkable footage in our last episode about Candyman.

Robert Hunter (10:11)

Last Minute Crisis can't live without a last minute crisis this day and age.

David Lemieux (10:18)

You can see the band D Plane. We've posted the video@dead.net deadcast with sound engineer Bob Matthews, Robert Hunter takes up the rear. Here's Hunter remembering the trip to WLIR DJ Dennis McNamara in 1978.

Robert Hunter (10:33)

First time I went over there, I had this feeling of being an American that I'd never had here in an American writer. It just put me in a real good perspective. I sat down one afternoon, a bottle of Retsina, a case of Retsina. It was a case. I didn't drink the whole case, but I had all that I wanted. Just bathing and being in England for the first time. And I had a lot of people dreaming about going to London, and I was one of them. And it was a nice being there.

David Lemieux (10:58)

The band performed at the Hollywood Festival on May 24, 1970, their first show in Europe. Ask the film crew about it. Hunter stayed at the flat of Alan Trist, an old friend of his, and Jerry Garcia from their days in Palo Alto. He'd since returned to London, but when the band finally made it over, he happened to be out of Town in.

Jacob Cohen (11:17)

1970 for the Hollywood Festival. It so happened that I was on a research and writing expedition in the Gulf state of Sharjah at the time. My friend and publisher of the Middle East Economic Digest, Jonathan Wallace, had been commissioned by the Sheik to create a glossy brochure to publicize his kingdom. So I wasn't there. Jonathan would later play a role in getting us to Egypt. Hunter stayed on in my flat for a while after the band returned to California after the festival.

David Lemieux (11:53)

It was a story Robert Hunter liked to tell, and for good reason. Here's how he told it to andy Geffen and WBRU in Providence in 1979.

Robert Hunter (12:02)

I wrote three songs that day. I wrote them in London. It's my first trip over. And I sat down with a bottle of Retsina, I think it was. Or maybe it was two or three. No, I had a case of Retsina. And I wrote Broke Down, Palace, Ripple, and To Lay Me down, all at one sitting.

Jacob Cohen (12:20)

Those three songs, Ripple, Broke down, palace and To Lay Me Down. The lyrics, at least, were written in one creative bus that Hunter had in my flat in London, near Kensington Gardens.

David Lemieux (12:33)

That's an incredibly productive afternoon. Lyrics for the first two songs on American Beauty's second side, plus an indelible song that wound up on Garcia's solo debut as well as in the Dead's repertoire. Here he is on WLIR in 1978.

Robert Hunter (12:48)

I just sat down. I think in an hour period. I wrote Ripple, Broke down, palace into Lay Me down. And I could have written more. I could have just kept doing it. And I just said, well, that's certainly enough for the day. I kind of wish I'd kept on that day. That was one of the best streaks.

David Lemieux (13:03)

I'd ever had in 1973. In the book Turn It Up, I Can't Hear the Words, writer Bob Sarlin devoted a chapter to Hunter titled Robert Hunter An Invisible Song. Poet Sarlin found a number for the Dead's office in San Rafael. When he called, he asked the man who answered the phone, is Bob Hunter available for interviews? And received the unusual reply. Speaking. I swear, Charlin wrote, bob Hunter is the easiest to find invisible rock star we have. It's a fascinating chapter. You can track down a used copy online. And it includes a little bit of what's probably one of only two joint interviews by Hunter and Garcia. In it, Hunter describes part of his writing process that might well describe his experience at Alan Trist's flat in London. He told Sarlin, some of my songs are written during what I call peak experiences. For some reason, conditions are just right for me and everything falls away and I see for a bit. You just see, and the stuff comes in. And if you've learned how to use a pencil, which is a real skill, to just sit there and to write and say, here it is, here it is. There's this presence sometimes, and I get a feeling that someone is looking over my shoulder, that what I'm writing is not going to be put into a book and shoved away and eventually lost somewhere. Here's Jerry Garcia talking about Ripple with Jim Ladd in 1981.

Robert Hunter (14:23)

Well, there's some songs that sort of help you along, you know, they're sort of uplifting, you know, and that song is Lucky. I mean, we were lucky with that one. And, well, Hunter, you know, every once in a while he hits that something that is just a sentiment that's beautifully expressed, you know, or an idea, a human idea that's beautifully expressed.

David Lemieux (14:42)

In songs like Candyman and Casey Jones. Hunter played with traditional folk imagery in Ripple. His material was that of more traditional poets. Deeply spiritual language with references to the Bible and timeless images that might be allusions to the work of others could just as likely be Hunter landing on the same phrase for his own reasons. David Dodd's indispensable book, the Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics, finds resonances in ripple to Psalm 24, William Butler Yeats, Edward Gorey and others. In fact, Ripple Ripple would find fans and writers. It was especially a favorite of the Black Mountain School poet Robert Creeley. And David Dodd's book cites an incident involving Creely Ripple and Richard Brodigan, author of Trout Fishing in America and a Haight street era neighbor of the Dead. David even emailed Creely about it and got a response. Another point about Ripple, Bob Weir.

Bob Weir (15:36)

The thing about Ripple is the chorus is a haiku. I don't know if everybody knows that. A ripple in still water where there is no pebble toss nor wind to blow. It's a haiku. It has that kind of a point to it. It's one of those songs where once the song is done, there's nothing more need be said. You know, that point is mid. It sort of demands a bit of space around it.

David Lemieux (16:00)

There are two written drafts of Ripple that show a little more of Robert Hunter's process. We've posted images of both@dead.net deadcast should you like to see them. In the 90s, Hunter scanned and posted a bit of the handwritten original on deadnet above. It you can see the bottom of a few lines of other words. Either Ipple wasn't the first of the three songs written that day, or it took Hunter a few invocatory lines to warm up. It's possible to make out some of the first pass of the opening lyric. Instead of if My Words Did Glow, it begins, if my tongue were Gilded. The phrase is crossed out, but the other verses appear pretty much as we know them, with some very minor variations. And there's also a typed lyric draft of Ripple on yellow lined paper unearthed by Nicholas Merriweather in the Dead's archive at UC Santa Cruz. It surfaced along with another extremely cool document that we'll get to in a future Deadcast.

Stephen Barnard (16:54)

One of the things that really informs the archival profession is this concept of original order, which is when a records creator puts things in certain arrangement, you need to pay attention to that, because that tells you a lot about how the records were created, how they were used, all of that. With the materials that we got from the Grateful Dead, most of that original order had been lost. It had gone through a bunch of different moves. It had just been jumbled together. So these were very much just one of those cases of archival serendipity. They turned up in a completely unlikely set of otherwise unrelated file folders. And I said, oh, my God.

David Lemieux (17:37)

On the Ripple draft, next to the lyrics are the chord changes for the song in Jerry Garcia's handwriting. Jerry has added numbers next to each verse. There's an unused verse all the way at the bottom, which Garcia has slotted to come second to last. The wisest man is but a pilgrim he will not claim to know the way he will not promise dreams of glory his words are few and his ways are kind. Perhaps this is what Garcia was remembering when he said he bordered on feeling like a Presbyterian minister.

Stephen Barnard (18:10)

Jerry had a particular editorial eye and approach, and Hunter had come to trust that in that wonderful interview that Blair Jackson did with both Hunter and Garcia, you very much get a sense that they had a shared sensibility, a shared love for what they called the, you know, the elliptical old folk tale, you know, folk song that lost words, lyrics, verses, you know, morphed over time in the way that folk songs do. And they both just loved the kind of mystery that those illusions and omissions over time and gave to a song. And I think Hunter trusted Garcia to go through and kind of create that same sense of mystery and that same sense of, you know, a tale hinted at as opposed to explicitly adumbrated something.

David Lemieux (19:07)

Else fascinating on the typewritten lyrics for Ripple. One can see other chords bleeding through from the other side of the page, also in Jerry Garcia's handwriting. I reversed the image and sent it over to some friends to see if it resembled a draft of another song. Here's Jacob Cohen, visiting assistant professor of musicology at the Oberlin Conservatory, and Dead Freak Jake explained what these chord changes might or might not be and how the musicological field of sketch studies applies to the dead.

Jacob Cohen (19:35)

There's no rhyme or reason to sketches. They're not intended for public consumption, so they don't need to be understandable to anyone except for the author. And we don't know why they do them either. You know, was it an idea that they liked? Were they specifically working on a song? Were they drafting a song? Were they trying to, like, write something down while they remembered it? You know, we just don't know. So what scholars generally will do when they're working with sketches is try to piece together whatever they can and say whatever they can without saying anything too conclusively. You know, I look at that sheet, and I cannot say for sure anything about it except that it is some chords written on the back of Ripple. The things that I definitely see are it looks like it says ballad up near the top. And on that same line, we see something that looks like it says D parentheses too fast. What we see for sure is that it says G E minor with two in parentheses and then D. So G E minor, E minor, D is basically How To Lay Me down starts. So, you know, to lay is under G me down is on E minor, and then once is D and then goes to C more. Right. And can we say for sure that that is Jerry figuring out or writing down the chords to Lay Me Down? No, we can't. What we can say is that those are the chords to tell me down. And so that suggests that this notation that he has, these chords that he has on the back of this are possibly either an early version of the song that would become that To Lay Me down, or some chord changes that he just liked that he returned to when he was writing To Lay Me down and saw, okay, I liked this, I'm going to use that. But I'm also going to use something that I didn't write on this page, because there's a lot in that song that is not written on this page. There's also a bunch of things on this page that aren't in that song at all.

David Lemieux (21:50)

Another thing we can say for sure is that Robert Hunter often spoke of writing the lyrics To Ripple and To Lay Me down in the same sitting along with Broke Down Palace. But as Jake says, there are many chords on this page that don't have anything at all to do with the song that became To Lay Me Down. It's perhaps more like the dream of a fragment, of an outtake of a demo. You can roll your own, but let us know if you do.

Jacob Cohen (22:13)

And I'm looking at this one more time, and I'm realizing this is interesting. So the chords that are To Lay Me down are. And it's not even like all of To Lay Me Down. It's literally just like the sort of opening melody, right, are on the top. And then there's a bunch of space between that top part and the next. Writing in that style in that moment. So we could be looking at two different song ideas here.

David Lemieux (22:46)

So it might be like two different dreams of fragments, of outtakes, of demos. Jake and I spent like an hour on Zoom, batting around theories, all of them fun, none of them conclusive. Okay, back to Ripple. Ripple would be a truly international song, and that's not a coincidence. There's something about being in a foreign country that makes me more Western than I am here. Robert Hunter noted to Blair Jackson, adding that the lyrics for Tennessee Jed were written in Barcelona. For Ripple, the words were written in London in May 1970. The music was written in Canada slightly more than a month later. Here's Hunter on WBRU in 1979.

Robert Hunter (23:24)

I gave them to Jerry when we were. I was back. We were doing a Toronto train trip, a train trip through Canada, and I gave him the lyrics. Then he worked out the music for it sitting on a train track in Winnipeg. As a matter of fact, for Ripple.

David Lemieux (23:39)

And Garcia speaking with Jim Ladd in 1981, that song just flowed out.

Robert Hunter (23:44)

It actually came out of a guitar that Weir had. I picked it up and started playing it, and it's like that tune just wanted to come out, you know, that little melody. It's as though it were always there.

David Lemieux (23:56)

I love that story. Another time, Hunter placed them in Saskatoon. It means the words grew music between June 30 and July 3, 1970, while on the Festival Express tour. And if the song was written in Saskatoon, between Winnipeg and Calgary, it means it was written during the absolutely epic multiband party and jam that resulted in absolutely epic multiband hangovers. A new concept for much of the Grateful Dead. Check out the great documentary Festival Express for much more about when where Ripple finished itself. In case you're wondering, the guitar Weir was using was a Custom Guild Archback F50 with an extra large peghead used through the band's acoustic sets in 1969 and 1970. Thanks to Michael Klemp for this info. Ripple's live debut likely doesn't exist on tape, and the same goes for the earliest versions of several other songs that would appear on American Beauty. Grateful Dead archivist David Lemieux The Grateful.

David Lemieux (archive or commentary) (24:50)

Dead's archive doesn't have a lot of gaps in terms of missing material. The big missing gap is from you could almost pinpoint it to July 16th.

David Lemieux (25:02)

Owsley Stanley was the Grateful Dead's first sound engineer. You can learn a lot more about him in our special Bear Drops episode from last season. He started with the band in 1966 while they practiced downstairs from his LSD manufacturing operation. The band and the Bear parted ways, and he was eventually busted at one of his LSD labs in late 1967. By the end of 1968, he'd return to the Dead's mixing board and his quest for better lives sound. He taped nearly every show between late 68 and the summer of 1970, what Bayer called his sonic journals. He'd so far avoided jail time, but when the Dead were busted in New Orleans in January 1970, just before the start of the Working Man's Dead sessions, it was a parole violation.

David Lemieux (archive or commentary) (25:46)

They went back to California, and that's when Bear was given the rule that he wasn't allowed to leave the state of California, which really stank for Bear. It stank for everybody. It stank for the Grateful Dead, and it stank 50 years later for Tapers. Because what that meant is anything outside of the state of California wasn't recorded by Baer. July 16th, 14th and 16th, the Grateful Dead play in San Rafael, at Pepperland, at Litchfields, at Euphoria Ballroom, whatever you want to call it, right? A block from Phil's Restaurant, from Phil's Place in the Canal District. And the Dead play there with Janice, no less. And then, I guess I don't know if it was quite this simple, but I think it was. Bear went home after the show, back to Richmond, just over the bridge, and was arrested and taken away for about two years. And for that time, not only was he not recording California shows, he was not recording anything. And so it took a while for the Grateful Ed's crew, I think, to recover from that blow. It wasn't just, you know, people being, you know, unconcerned with recording. I'm sure it was still a big priority, but, you know, you're down a man and this is a crew that was incredibly small to start with, and it wasn't until the Legion Stadium in El Monte, and that was December 26, 2728 of 1970. That's when the crew started recording quite regularly, and that's when the collection starts becoming quite a bit more complete from those shows onward.

David Lemieux (27:10)

The last show Bear recorded before going to jail was on July 16. Two weeks later, the Grateful Dead bailed on the Medicine Ball Caravan tour, opting to stay at home and record what would become American Beauty. After that, the tapes get really blurry for a month. There are newspaper listings for a number of shows, a few nights of the side project Mickey and the Heartbeats at the Matrix, which maybe didn't happen, followed by a few nights at the Lion's Share in San Anselmo, with the New riders of the Purple Sage headlining over the Acoustic Dead, which definitely did. There are a few tapes with dates from these few weeks not made by the Dead Sound crew, but it's hard to trust how most of them are labeled. No matter when or where the tapes are from, though, Ripple doesn't appear on any of them. The first Ripple that we know about on tape appears on the Angel Share. American Beauty. It didn't have its final name just yet. Let's listen to a bit of that. After all, it's Ripple.

Robert Hunter (28:06)

Hand me down provisionally.

Narrator / Various archival voices (including Jerry Garcia) (28:12)

Sam.

David Lemieux (28:37)

Birds did.

Narrator / Various archival voices (including Jerry Garcia) (28:38)

Glow with the gold of sunshine and my tunes were played on the heart unstrung Would you hear my voice coming through the music? Would you hold it near as where you roam? It's a hand me down the thoughts are broken Perhaps they're better left unsung I don't know, don't really care Best that I Happy sounds to fill the.

David Lemieux (29:32)

Air.

Narrator / Various archival voices (including Jerry Garcia) (29:36)

Rippling still water where there is no pebble toss Nor wind to blow Reach out your hand if your cup is in if you come this morning.

David Lemieux (30:03)

The song itself is as fully formed as Garcia and Hunter's stories suggest, though it's got a slightly more driving drum part and feels a little bit faster. The demo version we just heard was probably recorded Aug. 6 at Pacific High. Of the surviving tracking sheets from the band's first attempt to record American Beauty, Ripple is one of the only two that are dated August 9, 1970. Perhaps because of its apparent simplicity, it must have been one of the first songs they tried Listening to. The band's first attempts to record it, though, it becomes obvious just how much of the final version relies on the magical dynamics they wouldn't achieve until they got to Wally Hyder's There are no drums at all in the Pacific High version, nor Pigpen, for that matter, just Garcia, Weir and Lesh on acoustic guitars and electric bass. When the tape fades in, we can hear them discussing their strategy for recording. Because the song's vocals start with the first note, they will begin each take by playing a few instrumental measures and then pausing so Jerry can have guide notes. When he overdubs his vocals. I will.

Robert Hunter (31:08)

Well, that's what we'll play.

David Lemieux (31:09)

Hand me down take.

Robert Hunter (31:12)

Well, let's play the rhythm for a little while, then we'll stop it that way. The pitch will be there with only a bar in interruption.

David Lemieux (31:19)

The band recorded four complete instrumental takes of Ripple at Pacific High on August 9th and chose the first of those to overdub vocals. You can hear how that little strategy sounded in action.

Robert Hunter (31:30)

2.

David Lemieux (31:30)

2. Let's do the chord.

Robert Hunter (31:32)

Let's do the whole number.

David Lemieux (31:42)

3.

Narrator / Various archival voices (including Jerry Garcia) (31:43)

If my words did glow.

David Lemieux (31:47)

Jumping ahead slightly, here's how their overdub vocal sounded.

Narrator / Various archival voices (including Jerry Garcia) (31:51)

You who choose to lead must follow but if you fall, you fall alone if you should stand then who's to guide you? If I knew the way I would take you home.

David Lemieux (32:48)

It'S only a little different from the final recording, still a little faster, but it just doesn't have quite the right glow. We asked Bob Weir what he recalled about the abandoned sessions at Pacific High.

Bob Weir (32:59)

Back in those days, we'd write a song and then we'd find that if we took it out on the road and played it for folks, it'd grow a face. And I think that's probably what happened with those songs from the Pacific High sessions, that we recorded them right as we had written them, or as we were writing them, for that matter. And then we'd do a tour or two and the songs would come back and they'd be much fuller. And so we started over.

David Lemieux (33:28)

Back in those days, time was extremely compressed, too. After the Pacific High sessions, the band didn't play a tour or two and start again, but they did play a few shows first. There were three nights at the Fillmore west, which only survive as audience tapes, but include the first surviving live versions of Ripple. There's a KQED special they taped sometime that week, followed by a pair of acoustic dates in LA with the New Riders at the newly opened V Club in la. No tapes of those shows seem to survive at all, but it's a pretty good bet that the band performed Ripple and helped it grow its face. It's unclear if the actual American Beauty session started before or after the shows in la. But here's what Ripple sounded like with its face and a good deal more production. And here, with a new 50th anniversary remastering, it's a hand me down.

Narrator / Various archival voices (including Jerry Garcia) (34:18)

The thought lords are broken Perhaps they're better left come I don't know don't really care Let there be songs to fill the air.

David Lemieux (34:44)

The song is slower and the tempo finally feels just right. There's a drum part now. Bill Croyt's been keeping time with a gentle shuffle and giving it just the tiniest bit of swing. The American Beauty version of Ripple has two particular bits of studio mojo, and both come with excellent guests with excellent stories. The first is David Grisman's mandolin Ripple.

Narrator / Various archival voices (including Jerry Garcia) (35:07)

In still water when there is no pebble tossed no wind too low Reach out your hand.

David Lemieux (35:21)

David Grisman was an old friend of Jerry Garcia's A Few Dead Casts Back when we dove into Friend of the Devil, we learned about his and Garcia's shared roots in the bluegrass world. They'd stayed loosely in touch. And in the summer of 1970, Grisman relocated to the Bay Area. And I had a friend, Julie Silber, who lived in San Francisco. And somehow she had heard about there was going to be a softball game in Fairfax, California, between the Grateful Dead and the Jefferson Airplane. We went down there.

Robert Hunter (35:54)

Say hi to Jerry.

David Lemieux (35:56)

That's right, a softball game. We now interrupt our regularly scheduled Dead Cast about Ripple to present this brief history of the Grateful Dead's very own softball team. According to David Nelson, they earned their name after Bill Graham's squad bested them a few times and the band brought in some outside help to tell the story of the Dead Ringers. Batting first, we have the Dead Ringers ace first baseman Bob Weir.

Bob Weir (36:20)

We had a pretty good little softball team. We brought in a couple of ringers from Pendleton, Oregon. This one kid, Gary Harover, big kid, he got drafted by the Cleveland Indians, I believe, out of high school in Pendleton, Oregon, where a lot of our crew came from. He and Rex Jackson was another big kid from Pendleton. Every time they came to bat, they popped the ball out of the park, and so we were tough to beat. I didn't get the ball out of the park all that often, but I got on base a lot, had a pretty good arm, but I played first base, so it didn't matter. One of our other Pendleton guys, Ramrod, had a good arm and we put him on third base. I remember one time Bill Graham couldn't just let us have a baseball team and not Challenge us. So he put together a team out of his guys and we were just, we shall act them. There wasn't much contest. So after two or three innings we said, hey, listen, let's call that off. Everybody line up and let's choose teams. And I was playing first base. Somebody popped a fly up on the first base line. And, you know, I didn't figure I had to call for it because it's pop fly on the first baseline and that's my job. Come in a little bit. And I ran into Bill Graham, who was busy trying to glory hog a bit, as was his way. And we had a nasty little collision there. And he landed on the ground and I guess broke his shoulder. From that point on, about every other time we'd run into each other, he, you know, he pulled his shirt down and showed me where, you know, his shoulder was, had been broken and all that kind of stuff, trying to make me feel bad. And I tell him, listen, Bill, you know, it was my job to catch that flat ball. What were you doing on the first base line? That was the nature of our relationship. Bill Graham was a great guy. Something of a crook, but a great guy.

David Lemieux (38:12)

One occasional member of the softball team during the summer of 1970 was electronic composer and jazz pianist Ned Lagin, who contributed to the American Beauty track Candyman.

Ned Lagin (38:22)

Yeah, in 1970, I was really surprised and happy to know that the Grateful Dead and the Jefferson Airplane had a friendly rivalry that was not musical, but was baseball. And they used to play these games in Fairfax, where I lived with Phil. And then I moved eventually, and the field is still there. The game that I played in, I played center field. Phil was to my left, which would be right field, and to my right was Jerry in left field. And I believe Ramrod was the pitcher. I'm pretty sure Ramrod was the pitcher for the Airplane. Kantner was the pitcher. And every time they were ahead, he was happy. And every time they were behind, which had something to do with his pitching, he would threaten to quit. And Grace got the bat, I think once or twice, but she was just the obscene cheerleader in the bleachers. They had those little bench bleachers. It was so great to share with musical friends something outside of music like that. So American. I played baseball, softball and football and ran track in high school. But I. The softball and the football I played, we just met after school and played in an empty field. I was never good enough to do that. I was often picked last. Okay, here I was now on a team where I wasn't picked last or even second last. I was better than Phil and I was better than Jerry. The crew was better than me. But I, you know, but again, being an mit, you know, sciences nerd, that was like, wow, I've gotten out of, you know, last place. The ball would be hit to Jerry, a high fly ball, and he would run around with his hands up in the air like he was praying to some rain God, you know, some Hopi rain God or something, you know, just two stepping around, and then the ball with his glove up, and then the ball would just fall, plop right on the grass right next to him.

David Lemieux (40:13)

Bob Weir concurs with Ned's assessment of Jerry's fielding skills.

Bob Weir (40:19)

He wasn't his strong suit, so we put him at shortstop for a little bit, and that didn't work so well. You know, I saw him chase a ground ball and just throw his mitt at it.

Ned Lagin (40:30)

But a lot of the Airplane family were there and the Grateful Dead family were there, and it was just, you know, and to put this in some context, in 1968, when I studied with Chomsky and I started thinking about electronic music as evolutionary, generative, okay, this was the same year that Martin Luther King was killed and Bobby Kennedy was killed, and our world was basically turned upside down, as I think it was. The Fireside Theater said, everything, you know, is wrong. And so in 1970, to being played baseball with my psychedelic friends had some normalcy to it. And these hippies were still Americans with some of the same American traditions.

Bob Weir (41:12)

Pigpen had the good sense to not turn out for the team, but he would sit behind the plate and call balls and strikes. He did his best to be impartial, but there was some back and forth there as well.

David Lemieux (41:23)

There are two brief newspaper items about matchups between the Dead Ringers and the Jefferson Giraffes at Contratty park in Fairfax. And they're both worth citing in full. Unfortunately, neither comes with box scores. The first is from A nationally syndicated Aug. 29 Popwire column by music journalist Lisa Robinson, now a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. She noted, the Jefferson Airplane are celebrating their fifth birthday with a perfect record of losses this season by their baseball team, the Jefferson Giraffes. The Jefferson Airplane Giraffes have been defeated by the Grateful Dead ringers of San Francisco. The second report comes from the October 8th edition of Herb Kane's own nationally syndicated column. It's News to Me and indicates that Bill Graham got a bit of mileage out of the old shoulder injury. It reads, fillmore Bill Graham Is groaning around with a dislocated shoulder after pitching the Grateful Ed softball team, the Dead ringers, to a 1716 victory over the Jefferson Airplanes giraffes at Fairfax. You see, there's more than one way to go on grass. Graham suffered his injury after a giraffe ran into him with malicious intent.

Bob Weir (42:30)

Well, yeah, you know, we used to beat most everybody. I don't recall getting beat much. If things got close, we'd bring in another ringer. We didn't show up with the intention of ever losing.

David Lemieux (42:42)

David Grisbon may be the world's most legendary mandolin innovator, but he's a lousy sports reporter. What the hell, dog? I don't remember who won, you know, but I remember talking to Jerry. He asked me if I'd come and do some overdubs on this record they were making that was, I think on a Saturday or a Sunday and Monday, I believe.

Robert Hunter (43:03)

When was a session.

David Lemieux (43:04)

American Beauty co producer and engineer Stephen Barnard.

Bob Weir (43:07)

Grisman came in just all of a sudden, you know, I say, who's this guy? You know, and then he, you know, oh, okay, mandolin player. Cool. You know, and. And then he did his little, you know, thing. And. And.

Robert Hunter (43:18)

And then I said, okay, great.

Bob Weir (43:21)

Can we get another one? You know, I. I had in mind the. The putting that one.

Robert Hunter (43:26)

I just. I like space.

Bob Weir (43:27)

I like stereo, and said, that might be a cool stereo. They have the mandolin. Do something on both sides. That was my idea. I take full blame to that. It worked really well. So I got to put in my ideas. It was a real great give and take.

David Lemieux (43:42)

I think they probably had me harmonize. Yeah, I harmonized the first part. Yeah, like double stops, tremolo. There was pretty much a kind of formula at that time, which I. A tremolo on the chorus. I liked the tunes and it was.

Robert Hunter (44:00)

Well suited for what I was doing.

David Lemieux (44:03)

Only a few weeks after Grisman recorded his parts for American Beauty, he joined the band on stage at the Fillmore East. As Jerry Garcia recalled to The British magazine Swing 51 in 1983, Dave Grisman and Dave Nelson were both there. So I had them both come out. See, Grisman does twin parts on Ripple, a double mandolin part. So Grisman just taught Nelson the second part. We had the actual full thing, twin mandolins and everything, and we were able to do Ripple with the original instrumentation on the record. Sadly, that recording falls in the gap not covered by the Grateful Dead's tape vault. Though the Fillmore east stage crew made a recording that circulates in trading circles. There was one other part of the studio version of Ripple that gives it an extra something. We'll take the scenic route to that part as well. Here's Sam Cutler, who was the tour manager for the rolling stones in 1969. After Altamont, he went to work for the Grateful Dead. You can hear more from Sam in our Cumberland Blues episode from last season.

Sam Cutler (45:01)

I went there, you know, to Wally Hiders a couple of times, and it was all good. It was all cooking. For a tour manager, studios are boring. There's nothing going on. You know what I mean, man? It's like, yeah, okay, you know. You know what the band's doing. The band's making an album, you know, where they all are. Somebody might call you up and say, where the fuck is Keith? Or somebody's supposed to be here. I think their car broke down or whatever, you know what I mean? But by and large, there's not much to do in the studio. So, as I say, I always felt a bit like a spare prick at the wedding in studios and not much to do. So I'd call him, say hi, have a little listen. Somebody might play me something back. But, you know, it hadn't been equalized or it hadn't been mixed, you know, so it's all very rough. I'd rather listen to the test pressing. Even with the Rolling Stones, I didn't spend much time in the studio, man, you know, other than, you know, with the Rolling Stones, maybe just to make sure that everyone was cool, you know, Keith wanted a bottle of booze or whatever. Somebody wanted sandwiches, whatever. Other than that, there wasn't much to do. Although I did play the car horn on Country Honk, one of my more sophisticated contributions to 20th century music. But I was busy, you know, on other things, you know, getting gigs together, basically, you know what I mean? And sitting on the phone 23 hours a day.

Stephen Barnard (46:33)

I remember Ripple.

Sam Cutler (46:35)

I remember Ripple. I remember hearing that at the rehearsal hall. And then I was actually in the studio when they added everyone. We all sang at the end of it. That was lovely. Yeah, that just seemed. That was such a lovely song. I mean, to this day, I think it's one of the most beautiful songs of the Grateful Dead and very, very special.

David Lemieux (47:28)

That makes Sam Cutler the answer to a rock and roll trivia question. Who is the only person to appear on both the Rolling Stones, Let It Bleed and the Grateful Dead's American Beauty? As for the other voices in the Ripple Corral, co producer Stephen Barnard, I'm trying to remember.

Bob Weir (47:44)

It was definitely some women there and it was a lot of people. And it could have been some of.

Robert Hunter (47:48)

The people from the office.

Bob Weir (47:49)

It could have been David and Bonnie Parker who eventually wrote checks. You know, when I worked, when I worked for the band, or old ladies, probably, you know, I don't know if Frankie was around then. I didn't know the band at all. I only knew Jerry when we did the record. I didn't know Phil. I didn't know anybody except Ramrod. And I remembered him. And I'd done overdubs with Jefferson Starship and with Bruin Shipley.

David Lemieux (48:16)

The singers included members of the band's office staff. One person singing was definitely Eileen Law, housemates with Bob Weir at the Rucka Rucka Ranch. It was there only a few weeks earlier that she'd given birth to her daughter Cassidy. As Weir had worked out the chords for the song that would bear her name later, Eileen would be familiar to Deadheads as the voice of the band's official hotline.

Jacob Cohen (48:38)

Thank you for calling the official Grateful.

David Lemieux (48:40)

Dead west coast hotline number.

Narrator / Various archival voices (including Jerry Garcia) (48:42)

This is a new message.

Jacob Cohen (48:43)

As of March 29, the Grateful Dead.

Robert Hunter (48:47)

Spring tour is completely sold out.

David Lemieux (48:49)

And there will be no tickets sold.

Jacob Cohen (48:51)

At the door for any spring tour concerts.

David Lemieux (48:54)

So please, if you don't have a.

Jacob Cohen (48:55)

Ticket, don't come to the concerts. Thank you.

David Lemieux (48:59)

The Grateful Dead will play May 5th and 6th at the Cal State Dominguez.

Jacob Cohen (49:03)

Hill soccer field in Carson, California.

David Lemieux (49:06)

Dead archivist David Lemieux Ilina told us.

David Lemieux (archive or commentary) (49:09)

About the studio version where as Sam told you that lots of people were mic'd up for that chorus. Eileen had told us about that, the chorus at the end. And at the Fillmore east in April of 71 when they played Ripple, a bunch of the family members, Eileen, I can't remember who else. There were three. Three or four women backstage with the band and they mic them up backstage for Ripple. And we actually did an isolated track of that and played it for Eileen. We brought her into the studio cause she had told us the story and we thought, wow, we'd never heard that before. And I knew the tape from. They did 428 and 429. They played it. We listened to that Ripple. And I didn't hear it, but we listened to the multi track and it was on there. When you listen to Ladies and gentlemen, the Grateful Dead, they are on that. And it's very subtle because they weren't mike loudly and they were backstage. They were behind the curtain. They weren't visible to the public, but they did it. And that's when they Dropped Ripple after that.

David Lemieux (50:31)

That was ripple. April 29, 1971, the band's last show at the Fulmar east. From, ladies and gentlemen, the Grateful Dead. American Beauty would be one of their most enduring albums, and Ripple was one of its key songs. Leading off the second side, one fan is Pavement guitarist Stephen Malkmus. Number one for me is Ripple. It kind of reminds me of Michael Hurley, and I like the trippiness and simplicity of the lyrics. Not simplicity, but just, I mean, maybe the end. I don't really love the da da da da da. Everyone's singing that at the end, but just the way it starts and the naturalness and sweetness of it. Sort of got a. Yeah. Raccoon Records. Very Marin county, or even North. There's something about it that just, you.

Robert Hunter (51:22)

Know, when I just listen to the.

David Lemieux (51:23)

Album today, you know, I'm just like, that's it. You know, that's obviously a classic, right? They've played it many times and. Or do they play it live a lot? After the band stopped doing acoustic sets in November 1970, the same week American Beauty hit stores, Ripple only had a very brief life with the electric dead. Four surviving versions from 1971 before it disappeared for nearly a decade. But when the Dead briefly revived their acoustic sets in 1980, Ripple was right there with the band, sometimes even encouraging the audience to sing along during the ending. Here's how it sounded on Reckoning. This version was recorded September 26, 1980, at the Warfield Theater in San Francisco.

Narrator / Various archival voices (including Jerry Garcia) (52:08)

Really care. Let there be souls.

Robert Hunter (52:19)

That's Otis.

David Lemieux (52:29)

The only real change in the arrangement is the arrival of Brent Midland replacing Phil Lesh in the harmonies with his baby grand piano mimicking David Grisman's rippling mandolin. The special mojo in the Reckoning version of Ripple is Otis, Bob Weir's dog who wandered on stage during the performance. You can hear more about those 15th anniversary shows in our Dead cast bonus episode called Dead Dead ahead. Here's how Jerry Garcia remembered the revival of Ripple to radio host Jim Ladd.

Robert Hunter (52:58)

It was a real great experience doing it. You know, performing it for people. It was such a flash because people hadn't heard us really before perform it very much. When we did, when we were performing acoustic, we didn't really perform very often. You know, we didn't do it for a very long period of time. And we never did perform that song very much because it was sort of difficult for us to do. It used to be harder for us to do. It's like such an acoustic. I mean, it's doing it was really a rush. I mean, it really. It raised the bumps on good nights.

David Lemieux (53:27)

When the Grateful Dead stopped doing acoustic sets in 1981, Ripple disappeared with them, with one exception. On September 3, 1988 in Landover, Maryland, the Dead played at Electric, part of a double Encore, one piece of commonly held Deadhead folk knowledge. And actually true is that this performance came about as the request of a dying fan, archivist David Lemieux.

David Lemieux (archive or commentary) (53:50)

It's unfortunate that it's a song that was around for such a short amount of time. 70, 71, the acoustic stuff in 80, and then that one time in 88 that I was fortunately at that one of the many, many Dead shows, I saw a lot of very vivid memories and a lot of blur. And I think the most vivid memory I have was a Shakedown Street. I saw the dead play in 1989 and ripple 8-3-88. And it was because I knew the gravity of what I was seeing that I was seeing the Grateful Dead play Ripple for the first time. And I remember my friends who didn't get into that show, and I remember trying to make them feel better by saying, oh, I bet they'll play it in Philly and then again at the Garden next week. I knew they wouldn't. I had no idea that it was the Make a Wish story. I had no idea about that. But I do remember thinking that this was a one off. I had no idea why. And that was it. We weren't gonna get Ripple again, and we never did.

David Lemieux (54:45)

Dennis McNally's authorized biography, long Strange Trip, adds one other piece of detail to the 1988 version of Ripple, perhaps to provoke him into playing it. Bob Weir bet Jerry Garcia $10 that Garcia couldn't remember the lyrics. Weir lost the bet and apparently never paid up either, but he clearly hadn't been keeping up with the setlist from Garcia's solo shows. Though the Dead didn't play an acoustic set again after an October 1981 show in Amsterdam where they played Ripple. Of course, Jerry Garcia began playing regular acoustic set six months later. Ripple was often the closer, sometimes even after Goodnight Irene. It was a favorite in his duo sets with John Kahn from 1982 to 1986, with the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band in 1987 and 1988, and with David Grisman between 1991 and 1994. They even rehearsed it briefly with David Grisman quintet percussionist Joe Craven trying out the second mandolin part, just like David Nelson did at the Fillmore East. Here's how it sounded with the Jerry Garcia acoustic band Sandy Rothman on mandolin from acoustic at the eel, recorded in 1987 and released in 2019.

Narrator / Various archival voices (including Jerry Garcia) (55:56)

Ripple in still warm There is no pebble toes no wind to grow Reach.

David Lemieux (56:09)

Out your hands New Yorker staff writer Nick Palmgarten. One of the first times I encountered Ripple, this might be wrong, like, this might be anachronistic, but I do remember watching the movie Mask. It's the movie with Eric Stoltz at the end, you know, when he's sort of embraced by the bikers and Ripple plays. And it's a major, like, you know, heart tugging moment. And that was at a time when I saw that where the Grateful Dead were not ubiquitous in popular culture. You know, Like, I remember Bill Walton after the Celtics won in 1986. You know, they interview him in the locker room and he's like, nothing left to do but smile, smile, smile. I was like, holy shit. Like, there's Grateful Dead on tv, you know, basketball, you know, like now it's just like everywhere you go, it's everywhere. But back then it was like, how do they know? Because it was rooted so strongly in the 1970 and 1980 acoustic eras. Ripple isn't really part of the language of Deadhead tape collecting in quite the way as most of their best known songs for the same reason. Not a lot of Dead cover bands seem to play it either. But it's a fairly easy to remember melody that seems to carry through nearly any setting. And unsurprisingly, there are tons of covers from outside the dad's world. Chris Hillman of the Birds and the Flying Burrito Brothers performed it on 1982's Morning Sky.

Narrator / Various archival voices (including Jerry Garcia) (57:33)

If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine and my tun were played on the heart of a strong.

David Lemieux (57:49)

Jimmy Dale Gilmore, also known as Smokey and the Big Lebowski. On One endless night Would you hear.

Narrator / Various archival voices (including Jerry Garcia) (57:54)

My voice come through the music? Would you hold it as were your own?

David Lemieux (58:09)

Jesse McReynolds of the McReynolds Brothers on Songs of the Grateful Dead.

Narrator / Various archival voices (including Jerry Garcia) (58:12)

It's a hand me down the thoughts are broken Perhaps they're better left unsung.

David Lemieux (58:28)

Rick Danko of the band on times like these, Jane's addiction on the 1991 tribute album Dedicated.

Narrator / Various archival voices (including Jerry Garcia) (58:56)

Where there is no devil tossing no shout your hand if you're copying me.

David Lemieux (59:15)

Again the great vocal group the Persuasions might as well the Persuasions sing the Dead.

Narrator / Various archival voices (including Jerry Garcia) (59:21)

There is a road no simple highway between the dawn and the dark of night and if you go no one may follow that path is for your steps alone.

David Lemieux (59:47)

Andrew Branch on what if I told.

Narrator / Various archival voices (including Jerry Garcia) (59:49)

You'D ripple in still water when there is no pebble tossed, no wind to blow.

David Lemieux (60:02)

There are tons Yola, Tango, Wilco, the Walkmen, the Mountain Goats, Built a Spill, and Sara Louise to name a few. It took them a few years, but various post Grateful Dead configurations began to play Ripple as well, including Ratdog, the Dead, Phil Lesch and Friends, Further, and most recently dead and company. You can find a comprehensive list@deaddisc.com some of my very favorite versions of Ripple are by the incredible trumpet player Stephen Bernstein, who's performed and recorded two very different arrangements with his group Sex Mob and the Millennial Territory Orchestra. And we'll leave you with bits of those the Millennial Territory Orchestra first from MTO Volume one, then Sex Mob from Solid Sender.

Rich Mahan (61:26)

How many of you zoomed back in time a little bit when the clip of Eileen Law on the Grateful Dead hotline played. I know it took me right back. I went to the Rock and Roll hall of Fame a few years back when they had the Grateful Dead exhibit upstairs and they had an old landline phone on the wall. You picked up the receiver, put it against your ear and could listen to a loop recording of one of Eileen's messages. So cool. And I love that that first show Eileen mentioned in this episode were the Cal State Dominguez Hill shows. I had a sizable crew who camped in my parents front yard that weekend. Let there be songs to fill the air indeed. Thanks very much for tuning in. Visit us over@dead.net deadcast spread the love and light. Share this podcast with a friend and a neighbor. See you next episode. Executive producers for the good old Grateful Dead cast Mark Pincus and Doron Tyson. Produced for Rhino Entertainment by Rich Mahan Productions and Jesse Jarno. Special thanks to David Lemieux. All rights reserved.