Blues For Allah 50: Franklin’s Tower

Summary

GOOD OL’ GRATEFUL DEADCAST

Episode: Blues For Allah 50: Franklin’s Tower

Date: September 11, 2025 | Hosts: Rich Mahan & Jesse Jarnow

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Episode Overview

This episode is a deep dive—both musicologically and culturally—into “Franklin’s Tower,” one of the Grateful Dead’s grooviest and most beloved songs. Serving as the finale to the Help>Slipknot!>Franklin’s suite on the Blues for Allah album, the episode marks the 50th anniversary reissue. Hosts Rich Mahan and Jesse Jarnow are joined by Dead experts, scholars, and Deadheads to explore the song’s creation, musical structure, live evolution, and layered lyrical meanings, including rare commentary from Robert Hunter himself.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Franklin’s Tower in Context

• Franklin’s Tower, released as a single in 1976, never charted commercially, yet became a fan-favorite and live staple—celebrated for its euphoric, accessible groove.
• [04:25] Jesse Jarnow: “In the reality the Grateful Dead occupied, Franklin’s Tower was a smash.”

2. Musical Structure & Composition

• The song stands out on Blues for Allah for its catchy, harmonically simple structure, especially compared to its more complex suite-mates (e.g., “Help On the Way,” “Slipknot!”).
• The groove, credited to drummer Billy Kreutzmann, makes it a classic for Dead parking lot guitarists and novice players alike.
• [05:27] Jesse Jarnow: “But Franklin’s Tower is the unusual Dead song in that the chords go exactly where you’d expect them to go. But just because it’s easy doesn’t mean it’s simple, especially when performed live.”
• [15:51] Sean O’Donnell: “Once you arrive in Franklin’s…it’s the sort of loop... busy, so things are happening, but it’s not moving forward the way we were just moving forward, like, say, in Slipknot.”

3. Lyrical Origins & Interpretive Depth

• Lyrics written by Robert Hunter in late 1974 during his time in England, inspired by his newborn son and the approaching American Bicentennial.
• [07:22] Listener Will Backstrom’s anecdote underscores how Franklin's Tower acted as a “portal song,” often drawing new listeners into Dead fandom (“It was always Franklin’s Tower that opened the door...”).
• [46:53] Jurgen Fauth: “And the professor...her whole thing is to look at the whole experience...I thought, oh, I can use this framework to look at Grateful Dead shows...There’s a ritual part and there’s a part that’s a mystery...that’s in the music.”

4. From Workshop to Studio: Recording Process

• First played in various sessions at Bob Weir’s Ace’s studio, with evolving drafts and arrangements.
• Tapes from May-June 1975 show the band fine-tuning the groove and transition between songs.
• [14:42] Jerry Garcia (heard on a workshop tape): “That’s neat. Yeah, well, that’s a song.”

Overdub & Session Insights

• Instrumental parts were laid down in layers; Garcia’s original guitar track was replaced with a Leslie-rotated version; Bob Weir held down primary rhythm.
• [29:55] Jesse Jarnow: “For what I think might be the only time in the band's history the band recorded the basic tracks, debuted the song live, then went back for overdubs.”

5. Live Evolution & Classic Pairings

• Became a signature live number, both within the Help>Slipknot!>Franklin’s suite and as a “free agent” setlist jumper.
• The “release” into Franklin’s Tower after Slipknot! became a legendary live moment, often described as cathartic by fans.
• [44:07] Jesse Jarnow: “There was a depth to Franklin’s Tower when the Dead played it live, in part because of how they framed it as the destination of a journey, but the destination was also coded into both the lyrics and the music itself.”

6. “If You Get Confused, Listen to the Music Play”: The Annotative Dialogue

• Jurgen Fauth’s essay on Dead lyric ambiguity led to a lengthy, rare public response (and mini-annotation) from lyricist Robert Hunter.
  • [53:12] Jesse Jarnow (paraphrasing Hunter): “Meaning is not an irreducible UR language. A good lyric is allusion, illusion, subterfuge and collusion.”
  • Hunter explains “if you get confused, listen to the music play” as referencing the Liberty Bell’s symbolic ring—advising a return to foundational inspiration when confused.
  • [59:48] Jurgen Fauth: “He’s saying, no, it’s the music of the bell being rung for the first and only time. And it means if you get lost, connect back to the thing that was your original inspiration...”

7. Critical & Fan Voices

• Listeners’ memories highlight the song’s power to connect and create joy, both at shows and in daily life.
• [44:50] Max Ritchie recalls 35,000 people experiencing “a collective moment of bliss and release” as Franklin’s Tower began at Autzen Stadium, Eugene, 1993.
• [72:25] Hannah Grabenstein: “That transition from Slipknot into Franklin’s Tower is the most relieving moment. It’s just such a sigh, like, oh thank God it has resolved so beautifully...I named my puppy Franklin.”

8. Legacy & Covers

• “Franklin’s Tower” has become the most covered and stylistically flexible song from Blues for Allah.
• Covered by Meat Puppets (1982), Henry Rollins/Wartime (1991), Steel Pulse (reggae, 1996), and many others.
• Subsequent bands such as Ratdog, Further, Dead & Company keep the tradition alive.
• [70:15] Jesse Jarnow: “Truly one of the most flexible Dead songs, Franklin’s Tower lent itself to the Senegalese groove of Orchestra Baobab…”

9. Personal Anecdotes & Notable Quotes

• [75:07] David Lemieux shares a personal memory of his Blues for Allah LP skipping on “One watch by day” for years: “And for every single time I listened to this record...it repeated over and over until I got off the couch and nudged it a little bit.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On the Song’s Uniqueness:

• [06:02] David Lemieux: “Franklin’s Tower reminds me of one of those where they bring it way down...and build it back up in that explosive ending.”
• [20:33] Jesse Jarnow: “I think the two and a half chord bliss of Franklin’s Tower qualifies as one of the band’s new levels.”

On Lyrics & Interpretation:

• [51:15] Hunter’s letter: "A good lyric is allusion, illusion, subterfuge and collusion…Nonsense is a loaded word, the meaning of which is unclear if it is understood as intentional multi referentiality without predetermined hierarchy rather than meaningless blather."
• [59:48] Jurgen Fauth: “If you’re confused at the show for whatever reasons, listen to the music play and it saved me many a time. But he’s saying, no, it’s the music of the bell being rung for the first and only time. And it means if you get lost, connect back to the thing that your original inspiration…”

On Fan Experience:

• [07:22] Will Backstrom: "I'd sneak the album Dead Set onto the turntable...And like clockwork, about two minutes into the song, the following would happen. Whomever was listening...they would look up and say, 'I like this. What is it?'"

On Legacy:

• [73:54] Jesse Jarnow: “Franklin’s Tower has traveled a long way from Robert Hunter’s song to the United States and to his newborn son. It’s not a folk song in the traditional sense...but the rate at which Franklin’s Tower became a folk object was pretty astounding.”

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|---------| | 04:25 | Franklin’s Tower—A “smash” in Dead World | | 07:22 | Listener story: Franklin’s as the “gateway” Dead song | | 13:14 | Workshop tape: Garcia sings lyrics for (possibly) first time | | 15:51 | Sean O’Donnell on the harmonic “timelessness” | | 29:25 | Franklin’s live debut; the unusual sequence of recording | | 38:00 | The song’s evolution as a live “free agent” | | 44:07 | The suite as a journey from “dark to light” | | 46:53 | Jurgen Fauth discusses his essay and lyric ambiguity | | 53:15 | Robert Hunter’s direct response to lyric “meaninglessness” | | 59:48 | Hunter on the “listen to the music play” line | | 72:25 | Hannah Grabenstein’s new generation Franklin's Tower story | | 75:07 | David Lemieux’s skipping record story |

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Tone & Style

The discussion is both scholarly and conversational—peppered with fond reminiscence, inside jokes, musical analysis, and lyric quoting—making it accessible for newcomers and deeply satisfying for veteran Deadheads. The hosts and guests keep the vibe warm, curious, and reverent towards the song’s legacy.

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Final Thought

Franklin’s Tower remains an open invitation: “If you get confused, listen to the music play”—a song whose groove, lyrics, and history bridge generations, creating new moments of clarity, joy, and communion with every fading echo of the bell.

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“You can’t unring or uncrack a bell, but if you listen hard enough, you might be able to still hear it echoing.”
— [77:03] Jesse Jarnow

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Rich Mahan]

Announcing Dogfish Head Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale Collaborating for over a decade now, Dogfish Head and Grateful Dead have crafted a light bodied pale ale brewed with sustainable kerns of grains, granola and heaps of good karma for a refreshing brew that's music to your taste buds. Check out dogfish.com for more details and to find some Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale in your neck of the woods. Dogfish Headcraft Brewery is located in Milton, Delaware. Please drink responsibly the Good Old Grateful Dead Cast the official Podcast of the Grateful Dead. I'm Rich Mahan with Jesse Jarno exploring the music and legacy of the Grateful Dead for the committed and the curious. Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Deadheads, welcome to season 12 of the Good Old Grateful Dead Cast. I'm your co host Rich Mahan. Thank you very much for tuning in. In this episode of the Good Old Grateful Dead Cast, we complete the song trio of Help Slip Frank by taking a good long look at the groover that is Franklin's Tower. Well folks, the Grateful Dead Blues for all of 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition arrives this Friday, September 12th. This 3 CD set features the newly remastered album with unreleased sound check and concert recordings. Check this out. The set features almost two hours of unreleased recordings. Among the highlights are rehearsals from the band's August 12, 1975 sound check at the Great American Music hall in San Francisco, including the album tracks Sage and Spirit, Help on the way, Slipknot and today's song Franklin's Tower. The collection continues with performances from June 21, 1976 show at the Tower Theater in Pennsylvania spotlighting five blues for all the songs alongside favorites like Eyes of the World. Rounding out the set are selections from Bill Graham's Snack Benefit that Students Need Athletics, Culture and Kicks at Keysar Stadium in San Francisco on March 23, 1975. There are also vinyl variants of the original album available including a picture disc and a Midnight Fire Red vinyl edition and 180 gram black vinyl edition. Very cool looking Blues for all of 50th anniversary merch is now also available and all of these are available at dead.net and [e-mail] you can also pre order the Dolby Atmos mixes of Blues for Allah on blu ray disc. They were mixed by Steven Wilson and are ready to blow your mind. All of these fine releases are out this Friday, September 12th at dead.net and rhino.com head on over to dead.netdeadcast and check out all of our past episodes including the complete seasons 1 through 11. You can link from there to your favorite podcast platform so you can listen how, when and where you like to listen. Please help the good old Grateful Dead cast by subscribing, sharing us with your friends on social media, hitting that like button and leaving a review. Thank you very much. Do you have a great story about any of the songs from Blues for Allah? Were you lucky enough to catch the band at one of their very few shows in 1975? Then we need to hear from you. Head over to stories.dead.net and record yourself telling us all about it. You may just hear yourself on a future episode of the Dead Cast. We have transcripts from many of your favorite Deadcast episodes available for your reading pleasure. Head over to dead.netdeadcast index and check them out. Is there another song that feels as good as good when it hits as Franklin's Tower? The way it drops in after Help on the Way and Slipknot is like getting the biggest, warmest hug from a song that you could ever get. It's certainly a fan favorite, and for good reason. It's just fun. Jesse's got the details about Franklin's Tower for you right here.

[Jesse Jarno]

With one notable exception, the Grateful Dead didn't really have hits, and in fact, the song we're talking about today was released as a single in January 1976 and didn't chart. But in the reality of the Grateful Dead occupied, Franklin's Tower was a smash.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

In another time, forgotten space your eyes looked from your mother's face Wildflower seed in the sandstone May the four winds blow you safely home in the scope.

[Jesse Jarno]

Of Blues for Ala, Franklin's Tower doesn't have much competition in terms of catchy refrains, and it was one of the Dead's catchiest yet.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

Roll away the dew, roll away the dew, roll away.

[Jesse Jarno]

And not only was it catchy, but especially in the context of Blues for Allah, it was harmonically simple and easy for almost any guitarist just starting out. If you spent any regular time in a Dead parking lot, you've probably heard people playing this one on the album. It's nestled between two of the most complex songs the Dead ever wrote, and floating on a groove that earned drummer Billy Kreutzman a songwriting credit. But Franklin's Tower is the unusual Dead song in that the chords go exactly where you'd expect them to go. But just because it's easy doesn't mean it's simple, especially when performed live. Grateful Dead archivist and legacy manager David.

[David Lemieux]

Lemieux One of the things I talk about a lot is how much I love the dynamics of Grateful Dead music, where you got a song like Stella Blue, very, very quiet, explosive ending, Morning Dew, all those songs that Franklin's Tower reminds me of, one of those where they bring it way down, sort of the way they would do with around and around, where they bring it way, way, build it back up in that explosive ending.

[Jesse Jarno]

With lyrics written by Robert Hunter in England, probably in late 1974, as he thought both of his newborn son and the impending American Bicentennial, franklin's Tower contains some of Hunter's most open ended and timeless words.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

Franklin's Tower falls like four lean hounds the light will keep wildflower, cedar, sand and deer. May the four winds blow you home again.

[Jesse Jarno]

We're gonna poke and prod at Franklin's Tower for the next hour and change. But before we do, this story from listener Will Backstrom gets at probably the most important point about the song. Since getting on the bus at the April 1083 show at Morgantown, I often found myself alone in my passion for the Grateful Dead. All through the College in the 80s and beyond, I had to deal with friends, prospective girlfriends, bosses, colleagues, whomever. They would all give me quizzical looks of surprise, mostly frowning surprise, when the words Grateful Dead parted my lips. Prospective girlfriends in particular would give me the look of my parents are not going to like this and neither do I. But then I learned a trick, and that trick was when no one was looking, I'd sneak the album Dead set onto the turntable and let the needle drop down onto Franklin's Tower and then let it play and act like nothing else was happening. And like clockwork, about two minutes into the song, the following would happen. Whomever was listening beside me, they would look up and they'd say, I like this. What is it? There was always Franklin's Tower that opened the door to their understanding that the Grateful Dead's not so bad and you can like them, too. Franklin's Tower wasn't just a classic Grateful Dead song, but provided a shining portal into the band's world. I bet it was lots of people's first favorite Dead tune.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

Some come to laugh the best way Some come to make just one more deal Jam away your pleasure tears if you play nice you gonna harvest me Roll away with you Roll away, roll.

[Jesse Jarno]

Away the tune Pretty much every song on Blues for Allah developed from an involved process with the band trying to tap into new modes and methods at Bob Weir's ACEs studio in Mill Valley, with different drafts and approaches, not always resulting in songs that lasted long in the Dead's active repertoire. Franklin's Tower was the exception to almost all of the album's very weird norms. And without meaning to it all, it yielded certainly one of Robert Hunter's most cheered for lyrics that, not coincidentally, also became the launching point for big Jerry Garcia guitar solos. Here's the Without Annette version. Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter had a variety of collaborative modes. Here's how Garcia described their songwriting to Peter Simon in late March 1975, an interview eventually published in New Age Magazine, which we've linked [e-mail] deadcast. Sometimes we'll take bits and pieces of things, you know, different ideas, stick them together, polish them. I mean, we work every different way. Sometimes I think of the changes, the melody, the phrasing, you know, where there should be vowels, where there should be consonants. You know, I can get down to as much musical detail without actually having words. And he has enough technique to be able to actually fill out those requirements. That describes the lyric process for much of Blues for Allah, with lyrics written for existing music and definitely how Help on the Way was worked out as we talked about a few episodes back. But Franklin's Tower came from a different method. Sometimes he has a lyric and I'll read it and it'll just knock me out. I'll say, this is amazing. I want to set it and I'll take it and work on it. Here's Robert Hunter Speaking with WLIR in 1978, just a few years after Blues for Franklin's Tower.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

I had given Jury, oh, six months before.

[Jesse Jarno]

That's the only one on this that he.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

That he sent music to. My words.

[Jesse Jarno]

The rest of them are just given to me for our purposes. The very first sign we have of Franklin's Tower is about two and a half months into the workshop session. Though Jerry Garcia took off much of April to tour the east coast with Legion of Mary, regular gatherings resumed at Aces on April 28, and a week later is this remarkable tape dated May 5. The workshop tapes from the Blues for a la sessions are some of the most fascinating and significant of the band's career, where it's possible to hear them inventing songs in real time. And this May 5 segment is one of the most fascinating and significant bits of those put on a highlights tape by Steve Brown for Jerry Garcia. Cutting in with this groove already in progress, we have Jerry Garcia testing a microphone one of the few times the band was playing at Aces with live vocals. Hello, hello. And then a few bars later, Garcia starts singing.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

All of Sandstone.

[Jesse Jarno]

The phrasing isn't quite as emphatic as it would get, but it's Franklin's Tower fully formed. There's some very minor differences.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

One watch by night, one march by day. You get confused and let your music fade.

[Jesse Jarno]

But the kicker comes appropriately at the very end from Garcia.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

That's neat. Yeah, well, that's a song.

[Jesse Jarno]

That's a song right there, just the way it is. Yeah, I'd concur. That is in fact the song right there. This little bit of audio makes it sound to me like Garcia might have been singing the lyrics to the music for the very first time, reading them off a sheet, and by that definition, actually catching the moment the song was created. We'll have plenty to offer about the lyrics of Franklin's Tower shortly, but let's focus on the music first. As I mentioned before, the chords are easy, but even the Dead had to do a bit of work to lock in the groove. We'll illustrate this next segment with some slivers of the band working on the song from June 4th and 5th leading up to the recording of the basic tracks on the latter of those days.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

Roll away the Dune Rol Way.

[Jesse Jarno]

Still can't hear this microphone for as I mentioned before, it's not too complicated from a guitar playing perspective. From the City College of New York Deputy Dean of the Humanities and Arts, Sean o'. Donnell.

[Sean O'Donnell]

Yeah, there's something I don't want to say static, but maybe timeless once you arrive in. In Franklin's and it's the sort of the. The loop, it's busy. So some things are happening but it's not moving forward the way we were just moving forward. Like, say, in Slipknot.

[Jesse Jarno]

Listening to Franklin's Tower, one might be tempted to say that it sounds similar to certain other songs I've often seen it compared to Walk on the wild side, the smash 16 hit from 1972 by Lou Reed, formerly of the Other Warlocks.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

Holly came from Miami, fla, hitchhiked her way across usa, plucked her eyebrows on.

[Jesse Jarno]

The way, shaved her legs and then he was. She says, hey babe, take a walk on the wild side. Peace to Holly Woodlawn and all who hitchhike with her.

[Sean O'Donnell]

Yeah, it's standard rock pattern. There's tons and tons of tunes that use that grouping of chords, so. And there's very different vibe in those two tunes. A sludgier walk in the wild side as opposed to a. Again, more joy filled Franklin's world.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

Tell you where the four winds dwell Franklin's tower there can ring like fire when you lose Your way.

[Jesse Jarno]

Structurally, Franklin's Tower was similar to another Grateful Dead classic co written by one of the band's drummers. The two chord wonder of Fire on the Mountain emerged from a session at Mickey Hart's barn, likely in sometime late 1973, though it took a few years before it made the jump to the Deads book. The Dead played plenty of dance music in the form of COVID songs, but Franklin's Tower was their first original that from a non vocal perspective was almost nothing but pure groove. In the way that some bands had their own signature feels, Franklin's Tower might have been one of the Dead's. By contrast to many of the Dead's jams, the one always knows where it is and is virtually shooting up flares.

[Sean O'Donnell]

The loop is so tight that you always know when you're on the. Like the A is the launching point and you always know when you're. You're there. When you get to the one in terms of the pitch, you're never on the one chord. You're on the four chord. It's fairly common in popular music to have this happen this way. But the combination of following the very linear music and then freezing in this loop and having that ambiguity suits the text.

[Jesse Jarno]

On Blues For Allah. Franklin's Tower was an easy feel that followed the intensely composed Help on the Way Slipknot and preceded the rhythmically tricky King Solomon's Marble. Stronger Than Dirt. Jerry Garcia spoke with Peter Simon about new levels. What we hope to be able to accomplish by not performing, which is get away from our habits, get away from our old repertoire and just, you know, cut ourselves loose from the past, basically shocking as that might sound, and develop.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

You know, a new.

[Jesse Jarno]

New levels to. To go off of, really to depart from just as much as the complicated Slipknot or King Solomon's Marbles. I think the two and a half chord bliss of Franklin's Tower qualifies as one of the band's new levels.

[Sean O'Donnell]

It's very outside of time in some way, even though it's very much keeping time and danceable and all that and then maybe has to do with some of the sort of more nerdy theory kind of things. It's that sort of grouping of chords where one person say it's an A, one person say it's in D kind of ambiguity. Definitely leans A, but every time you land on the A in the vocal part, you're on the D chord already. So you're getting home in the voice, but you're not getting home in the harmonies. And it kind of gives this floaty, free, willing space.

[Jesse Jarno]

It was a different kind of ambiguity for an ambiguous year of ambiguous compositions.

[Sean O'Donnell]

There's something particularly slinky in the knot world and in the feel of that riff. And again, that ties to me how where Jerry's exact placement. So I'm not talking about like the what would be the sort of the notated notation, but like where in the beat he's putting things has a very slinky kind of feel that feels elusive in that way.

[Jesse Jarno]

On the rehearsal tapes, you can hear the band trying to declutter the song to get back, seemingly to the purity of the original groove.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

It still seems like it's too busy.

[Jesse Jarno]

Compared to what the original flash of it was or the original whatever it was. Just seems like, as we've been saying, the dating on the workshop sessions for Blues For Allah is sometimes kind of provisional. But it seems like the Dead spent much of June 4th and 5th working on Franklin's Tower as well as Help on the Way in Slipknot. It isn't until late in the tape labeled June 5th that we hear this for the first time with a transition riff at the end of Slipknot and Franklin's Tower attached. And if the tempo's any indication, they're pretty excited about it.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

Sam.

[Jesse Jarno]

They stop Franklin's just before the vocal starts, almost as if they're just testing out the transition to see if it works. There's a tape labeled June 7th too, where they play through Help on the Way, Slipknot, Franklin's Tower, and I enjoy hearing Garcia's assessment at the end. Stunning. Definitely stunning. But someone should maybe remind the band that Franklin's Tower still needs an ending, still separate even from the achievements of Help on the Way, Slipknot and Franklin's Tower by themselves. The few bars that connect them turn it all into something grander. But I think the June 7th date is probably wrong. There's no session in Steve Brown's date book for June 7th. For one and for another, the master studio recording of Franklin's tower is dated June 5th, reel 126, take 2. I think this means maybe that it was only just before they recorded Franklin's Tower, maybe even that same day that they figured out how it would attach to Help on the Way in Slipknot, which wouldn't be tracked for nearly another full month and eventually spliced together on the album.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

Sam.

[Jesse Jarno]

Welcome back, Associate professor from the City College of New York, Chadwick Jenkins. It feels like an apotheosis. You've gone through all this think about about it as a narrative. You start in F minor with help on the way and it's kind of jazzy slipperiness, especially in the the refrain, which is by the way is another use of diminished chord, but this time a half diminished chord in the most typical jazz way.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

I will sing one more day. Like I say honey, it's you.

[Jesse Jarno]

Slipknot moves you up to G minor, then, then A minor.

[Rich Mahan]

And then you.

[Jesse Jarno]

Get to Franklin's, which is A major. A mix Lydian really. But. But that a major sound and so it just feels like things open up and that simplicity then works within the context of arrival. The Dead had finished off their first suite for the album in progress whenever that tape was from. So let's visit reel 126, take 2. Unusually, though, it's the core of the song. Jerry Garcia's original guitar track was wiped from the final mix with a different guitar part recorded on June 29, run through a Leslie rotating cabinet, another unifying sonic feature of Blues for Allah. For one of the rare times Bob Weir holds down the primary rhythm part on a Jerry Garcia song, they did a lot of part replacing on Franklin's Tower. Unlike their previous few albums, there were no room microphones used for the studio takes, and it's actually pretty amazing how good the separation of instruments is considering how small Aces was. All of which is to say the very beginning of the song is physically spliced off, so it could be attached to the rest of the suite. I assume that Billy Kreutzman or maybe even Garcia counted the men, but since they're credited as co writers, could be either. The only original tracks left on the final studio version are Billy the Kay's drums, Bobby Weir's rhythm guitar, labeled Ace on the tracking sheet, and Phil Lesh's stereo bass. Let's listen to the rhythm section. As always, the bass moves the groove along without doubling the song's rhythm. In between the basic studio tracking and the rest of the overdubs, though, the song made its live debut June 17 at Winterland at the Bob Freed Memorial Boogie.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

Roll away the dew Roll away the dew Roll away the dew Roll away. I won't roll away Roll away.

[Jesse Jarno]

You were supposed to remind them to write an ending for what I think might be the only time in the band's history the band recorded the basic tracks, debuted the song live, then went back for overdubs. Lot of asterisks around here. We'll go in the order of overdubs. Jerry Garcia recorded a scratch Vocal on June 5, which didn't get erased, and which we'll use for a few of our segments.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

In another time's forgotten space. Your eyes looked from your mother's face Wildflower seed in the sand and stone May the four winds blow you safely.

[Jesse Jarno]

Home and I promise, like really, we'll talk about the lyrics, but not yet on June 29, Garcia recorded a new guitar part through the Leslie. They hadn't wiped the original yet, which was on a different track, so he was probably using it as a guide. Here's the first verse into the chorus. On July 3rd, someone overdubbed a harmonica part. I'm gonna guess Bobby Weir's Kingfish bandmate Matt Kelly, but it got over overdubbed a few days later, as did a track of backing vocals. Hold those tracks, though. On July 4, Keith God show celebrated Independence Day 1975 by adding a Rhodes part where Jerry Garcia's original guitar was There's a cigarette burn directly in the middle of track six on the tracking sheet. As far as I can tell, there's almost no variation in the keyboard part for the song's nearly five minute runtime. Like a piece of funky minimalism hidden beneath the chattering, churning dead at the very end of the track, it gets cut off like it kept going. Maybe it's still going now. On July 4th, Garcia recorded vocals again, trying again on July 6th with the Keeper Take.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

I'll tell you where the four winds dwell in Franklin's tower there hangs a bell it can ring turn night today it can ring like fire when you lose your way Roll away the dew, you better roll away the Dew.

[Jesse Jarno]

On July 6, Keith Godshow added some organ. I guess the B3 went back to Aces. After the snack benefit on July 7, he wiped over it with a new B3 part. It goes through the song, generally staying in the lower register in the beginning and getting into higher tones in the end.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

SA.

[Jesse Jarno]

On July 8, they wiped Garcia's second vocal take with the backing vocal track described on the sheet as a stack, possibly bounced down alongside an earlier session from July 3rd featuring Weir, Garcia, Donna Jean, and maybe even Keith Godshow and Phil Lesh, both credited on the album, with vocals, and I'm not sure where else they'd be Roll away the.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

Dew, Roll away the dew Roll away the dew Roll away the dew Roll away the dew Roll away, roll away.

[Jesse Jarno]

On July 8, Weir tried a new rhythm part, which he abandoned in favor of his original take. His amp miked up, but also run direct, which we'll combine and isolate here. It's A little more varied than what Keith is playing on the roads, but not by much. There's an undated stereo percussion overdub, too, which could be a late addition by Mickey Hart. So herd together the Blues for Olive version of Franklin's Tower, and as we noted, no ending, just a fade out in the studio. It finished up sort of like this. Here's Bob Weir, Phil Lesh and Bill Kreutzman's original ending. One of the fun bits of the new expanded blues for a LA50 is getting to hear the August 12 soundcheck for the Great American Music hall show the next night. And you can hear them rehearsing Franklin's Tower's newly written ending. Really just the ending to Slipknot, adapted slightly, finished before the album was out and yet not on the album. Sounds like there was a chomper in the house. Franklin's Tower obviously became a live staple, one of the places where the band's revived double drummer lineup could easily find a groove. We'll spend more time at the Lindley Meadows show from September 1975. Later this season. Franklin's Tower appeared separately from Help on the Way in Slipknot, but I think only because somebody popped a string. Jeff Gould, founder of Modulus, was there, and he immediately got a blast of the moment that became a joyous peak at many Dead shows for the next 20 years to come.

[Jurgen Fauth]

In Franklin's Tower, where he says, if.

[Jesse Jarno]

You get confused, listen to the music play.

[Jurgen Fauth]

And then he rips off this. I don't know what you call it. I think it's kind of a chord metallic shard. That's just wonderful sound.

[Jesse Jarno]

That'S now in the 30 trips box set. And there's definitely some spectral guitar happening. The live takes on the new Expanded blues for a la 50, recorded in Philadelphia in June 1976, has the distinction of the Dead's most bicentennial song being played in Philadelphia during the bicentennial year, just a few weeks short of Independence Day and about six miles from the Liberty Bell as the crow flies closer. Maybe for the Round Records Crow. By the end of 1976, the band started experimenting with playing Franklin's Tower without Help on the way and Slipknot before it, and by the end of 1977, made that arrangement semi permanent, putting the beginning of the suite away for a half dozen years. The not Franklin's Tower. Like Eyes of the World by the later 1970s, the tempo and feel of Franklin's Tower could be pretty radically different from night to night. Here's an especially fast High altitude version, about 10 beats per minute faster than the usual from Red Rocks, July 8, 1978.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

Roll away with you Roll away with you Roll away with you Roll away.

[Jesse Jarno]

With you there's some really fun versions during Brent Midland's early tenure with the band, where very occasionally the song would appear in the second set Jam Suite and float Higher and Higher, featuring the chiming sounds of Midland's Dyna Rhodes keyboard. Like this one from December 4, 1979 in Chicago. Now on Dave's Picks 31. The dead were pretty committed to Franklin's Tower, and I can see why. Chuffed enough with how it sounded with Brent Midland to include it on the live album dead set in 1981. Grateful that Archivist David Lemieux.

[David Lemieux]

You know, I think one of the first ones I heard that was not with help on the Way was Dead Set.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

Some come to live the best way Some come to make just one more tear Jab away your pleasure tears if they're nice, you got a harvest win.

[David Lemieux]

Franklin's Tower Yacht I call it a free agent whenever it was not with help on the Way and Slipknot, I call it a free agent because it could appear anywhere in a set. There was that period where Half Step would often say again to Franklin's it's.

[Jesse Jarno]

From an audience tape, but here's one from March 24, 1981 in London. The transition from Mississippi Half Step into Franklin's Tower wasn't always as smooth as this, but I love the way it snaps from the end spiral of Half Step into the opening gallop of Franklin's. Garcia discovered the easy linkage between Mississippi Half Step and Franklin's tower in 1978, playing the two together 40 times through 1987. If we think of Mississippi Half Step as having its own two part structure, which we discussed during our wake of the flood season, it creates a new kind of Garcia suite with Franklin's Tower. Also, the chords for the across the Rio Grandio coda are A to D. Insert a passing G chord in the middle and it becomes Franklin's Tower. And instead of a release after a rhythmically and harmonically dense piece of music like Slipknot, but it's an upshift from the Lazy river into a joyous boogie. Not only that, as Sean o' Donnell points out, the vocal melody for the last line of Mississippi Half Step and the first line of Franklin's Tower are pretty eerily similar. Exhibit A Across.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

The Rio Grandio Exhibit B In another times forgotten space, Franklin's.

[Jesse Jarno]

Tower presented a rich text no matter how the band framed it, but perhaps especially if it was inside of its original form. Following the naughty perambulations of Help on the Way and Slipknot and the almost claustrophobic Robert Hunter lyrics, Max Ritchie left us this the first time I heard Franklin's Tower live was at Autson Stadium in Eugene in the summer of 1993. They opened the second set with Help on the Way, Slipknot, and I always thought that the triptych was a very powerful journey from dark to light, and even though it was still daylight at that time, it was just that. That afternoon, as Jerry starts drumming the first notes of Franklin's Tower, I turned around from my position on the field to take in the stadium, and what I witnessed was 35,000 of my friends in a collective moment of bliss and release and a unified bounce. Just as it the energy kind of circulated in the stadium. It was an incredible moment that I will never forget. There was a depth to Franklin's Tower when the Dead played it live, in part because of how they framed it as the destination of a journey, but the destination was also coded into both the lyrics and the music itself. We've once again posted a [e-mail] deadcast to Melvin Backstrom's piece in grateful Dead Studies spring from night into the sun, Metaphors of dark and Light in the Music of the Grateful Dead, in which he discusses the movement from the minor key emotional confusion of Help on the Way to the reassuring major key bounce of Franklin's Tower, a song that continuously pointed home both harmonically and lyrically.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

Wildflower seed in the sand and wind May the birds blow you home again.

[Jesse Jarno]

But starting by 1980, there was one line of Franklin's Tower that got special attention. You can hear the cheer on Dead Set, but here's an audience tape from a few days before that at Radio City Music Hall. It's a line that punctuates countless Deadhead stories, and it's the lyric at the center of the story we're about to tell, but in a pretty unexpected way, even by Deadhead standards. Please welcome to the Deadcast Jurgen Foth.

[Jurgen Fauth]

I was an English grad student in the early 90s in Mississippi, and I was taking a poetry class and we had to pick a poet to write on. And I just had recently gotten on the bus and I'm gonna write about Robert Hunter. He's okay. He translated Rilke. He counts since this short span might.

[Jesse Jarno]

Well be lived as lives the laurel, deeper in its green than all other green surrounding leaves edged by wavelets smiling like the breeze Then why destiny overcome Must we still be human and long for further fate?

[Jurgen Fauth]

I had studied semiotics, theater semiotics, in Germany. And the professor there was a student of Umberto Echoes. And her whole thing is to look at the whole experience of a play and see all the different channels. Information comes on with the play. You have the lyrics, but you also have the movement on the stage. You have the costumes and everything else, and those are all channels of information you get. And I thought, oh, I can use this framework to look at Grateful Dead shows in which you have. You have the lyrics, but you also have the music. You have the lights, you have the people, you have all these different ways meaning is created. Argument of the paper, really was that the. That the lyrics. There's. There's something familiar about the Dead shows and something unfamiliar always. There's. There's. There's a ritual part and there's a part that. That's a mystery, a part that's new and different every time, and that's in the music. You have the. You have the written parts and you have the jams. And my point was you also have this, in a way, in the lyrics, where some of the lyrics, we understand what they mean, or we think we understand what they mean, but then there's also a mystery and they're indeterminate and we don't quite know. And so the lyrics can mean something else on any given night to you because of the music, because of the location you're in, because of the jam that went before, because of the headspace you're in.

[Jesse Jarno]

Seems solid to me. Jurgen passed his essay along to David Dodd, the editor of the wonderful and now sadly defunct website the Annotated Grateful Dead lyrics, launched in February 1995, perhaps the first truly collaborative lyric annotation site on the web and an important precursor to genius and lots of other online projects. David Dodd's subsequent collection, the Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics, belongs on every Deadhead bookshelf. We've posted links to both the original site and the [e-mail] deadcast.

[Jurgen Fauth]

And after I wrote the paper and got my grade back and everything, I sent it to him, and he put it up on Annotated Grateful Dead lyrics.

[Jesse Jarno]

Jurgen's essay was titled the Fractals of Familiarity and Innovation. Robert Hunter and the Grateful Dead Concert Experience. And we've obviously posted a link to that, too.

[Jurgen Fauth]

The music of the Grateful Dead and the lyrics of Robert Hunter open up spaces within the work of art they form together that make Textual interpretation of the lyrics futile. The lyrics function not as an absolute that is stated, but as a tool for semiosis at every concert. They can and do mean something different according to how the variable parts in the music change every time a song is performed, a different set of potential meanings that are inherent in the piece will be actualized for a different audience. But I think for sort of a flourish, I wanted to end the piece on a big note or something. And I completely overstate the case in that last line where I say they don't mean anything at all. Like that's not what the. I think that's what you meant. That's not what the paper says before. That's not at all.

[Jesse Jarno]

And it was this flourish that caused something pretty extraordinary to happen.

[Jurgen Fauth]

The result is one of an ever changing, fluctuating whole that contains familiar parts while never completely yielding to reason. Robert Hunter's lyrics are a vital part of this experience, providing the mind searching music with an incessantly fascinating imagery that both underscores and counterpoints its meaning by not meaning anything at all.

[Jesse Jarno]

Jurgen's essay was posted in late 1995 or early 1996, and by March it elicited a response.

[Jurgen Fauth]

I think David sent me an email and said, check it out, you know Hunter responded to your essay.

[Jesse Jarno]

Hunter took offense to the idea that his lyrics might be heard on any level as meaningless and churned out a 2,000 plus word response. Fractures of unfamiliarity and circumvention in pursuit of a nice time. Obviously [e-mail] deadcast I'll be reading some excerpts. We'll be using the alternate take of the vocal, by the way. If you prefer not to know what Robert Hunter meant by Franklin's Tower, you might want to skip ahead. Let's rewind the music slightly. Dear Jurgen, meaning is not an irreducible UR language. A good lyric is allusion, illusion, subterfuge and collusion. When the semiotician suspects of looseness without corresponding exact reference, he charges the poet with nonsense. Nonsense is a loaded word, the meaning of which is unclear if it is understood as intentional multi referentiality without predetermined hierarchy rather than meaningless blather. One would find no fault with the term, but it isn't so. The charge of nonsense and meaninglessness levied by a scholarly and plausible source does much to put people off exploring further.

[Jurgen Fauth]

At first I was really embarrassed because he's making fun of me. Yeah, he's like the whole academic thing. He's messing with the title, making it silly and ridiculous. But Then I came to realize, no, no, this is fantastic. He's explaining the song and he's never done anything like this anywhere else that I know of. Somehow this paper must have hit the right combination of it must have been interesting enough to read through and stupid enough in the last line to tick him off.

[Jesse Jarno]

Hunter zeroed in on one particular part of Jurgen's essay.

[Jurgen Fauth]

Certain catchphrases within Hunter's lyrics seem to yield an especially enthusiastic response by the audience. A good example for this is if you get confused, listen to the music play from Franklin's Tower, a line that, taken by itself, offers guidance to a perplexed listener, yet it is embedded within a song that is as obscure as a lot of Second Set lyrics. Franklin's Tower is evocative, yet of undeterminable meaning. The above mentioned catchphrase line is almost hidden within the song and has to be read out of context to prompt the joyful response it usually gets.

[Jesse Jarno]

I choose to reply by explicating one of your Franklin's Tower. I do this reluctantly because I feel that a straightforward statement of my original intent robs the listener of personal associations and replaces them with my own. I may know where they come from, but I don't know where they've been. My allusions are admittedly, often not immediately accessible to those whose literary resources are broadly different than my own. But I wouldn't want my listeners trust to be shaken by an acceptance of the category meaningless attached to a bundle of justified signifiers whose sources happen to escape the scope of simplistic reference in.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

Another time's forgotten space. Your eyes looked from your mother's face Surface intent.

[Jesse Jarno]

You have your mother's eyes, child. The very shape, color, and intensity of the eyes that looked through her face so long ago. Born on the varied winds of chance and change, like a dandelion seed, you may find yourself deposited on barren soil. My wish for you is that the forces that brought you there may sweep you up again and bear you to fertile ground.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

In another time's forgotten space. Your eyes looked from your mother's face.

[Jesse Jarno]

Deeper intent, relative immortality of the human species is realized through reproduction. Dominant traits inherited from an ancestor, the lyric suggests, share more than a mere similarity with those of the forebear, but are an identity endlessly reproducible. In other words, when someone says you have your mother's eyes, they're not speaking in simile. Nor would it be incorrect to say that your mother has your eyes, if in fact possessiveness is an appropriate term in the context. Poetic license will assume it is, if only for the sake of moving on to the next couplet.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

I'll tell you where the four winds dwell. In Franklin's toe there hangs a bell.

[Jesse Jarno]

Note that this song appeared in 1975, the year after my son was born, and the year before the American Bicentennial. Both facts are entirely relevant. The young American hey, me again. I'm also going to annotate the annotation occasionally. Bicentennial fever was everywhere in the mid-1970s, a theme that's come up in other contexts like US blues and acted as a current in the culture. Even if you were born after the bicentennial, material remnants could be spotted throughout the culture for the next decade and change. Americana was a deep theme of Robert Hunter's lyrics during the dead so called Bakersfield period, so it's worth observing how few obvious Americana themes can be heard on Blues for Allah anyway.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

It can ring turn night to day it can ring like fire when you lose your way.

[Jesse Jarno]

The allusion to the Liberty Bell and the situation of the Philadelphia Congress in the hometown of Ben Franklin has not gone unnoticed by other commentators. This song is a birthday wish both for my son and for my country, each young and subject to the winds of vicissitude, individual and collective freedom, liberty conscious. All that is contradicted by those concepts is suggested in the image of the tolling bell.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

God save the child who rings that bell and may have one good ring. Baby, you can't tell One watch by night, one watch by day. If you get confused, listen to the music play.

[Jesse Jarno]

The bell rung once cracked and could not be safely rung again from an actual bell. It therefore became a symbol of the potential to ring. The single toll signaling birthday can now be heard only in its reverberations in our history and ideals. Some have had to bear those ideals in difficult circumstances war, the Great Depression, and general benightedness. Others have had the more enviable task of keeping watch eternal vigilance during periods of conscious and dynamic change, the full light of day. The 60s, the writer assumes, were such a time. You can't tell if ringing that bell a second time would destroy it in the act of producing another mighty peal. And it might be foolish, if courageous, to try. Perhaps the music of the original ideals symbolized by the first and only toll should be taken to heart and implemented rather than obviated by a new source of ideation, communism, anarchy, religion based governmental apparatus, etc. To resolve this confusion, pay attention to the original inspiration, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, collectively, individually maintain awareness of conscience and one's own early ideals.

[Jurgen Fauth]

I have always taken for face value this is what it means. If you're confused at the show for whatever reasons, listen to the music play and it saved me many a time. But he's saying, no, it's the music of the bell being rung for the first and only time. And it means if you get lost, connect back to the thing that your original inspiration to the thing that sent you on your way. Like the US Constitution, I think he talking about. And that was something I'd never before understood. So there's again, there's layers and layers to it.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

Some come to laugh the passed away Some come to make it just one more day.

[Jesse Jarno]

This verse scarcely needs commentary in light of the above remarks. The precursor to the first couplet is I Come for to Sing, as performed, possibly written by Pete Seeger.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

Some come to dance, some come to play Some merely come to pass time away Some come to laugh, their voices do ring but as for me, I come for to sing.

[Jesse Jarno]

That perhaps, obviously was not Pete Seeger. As much as I'd love to cram in a Pete Seeger connection to Franklin's Tower, he didn't write and as far as I can tell, never performed I Come for to Sing, which was written by Chick Young and Dennis Wright and first performed by one of the many musicians that Seger influenced, the folk singer Bob Gibson. Hunter probably knew this 1957 version around the time he was president of the Folk Music Club at the University of Connecticut.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

Whichever way your pleasure tends, if you plant ice, you gonna harvest wind.

[Jesse Jarno]

The second couplet source is biblical. Who sows wind, reaps the hurricane. That'd be Hosea 8, 7 from the king James version. For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the hurricane.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

In Franklin's tower the four winds sleep like four lean hounds. The lighthouse keep wildflower seed in the sand, and wind may the four winds blow you home.

[Jesse Jarno]

Again we assume a bell tower for the great bell. By the trope of simile we see the bell tower, the day watch turn to a lighthouse, and the four winds become sleeping hounds. The night watch, worn out by the events of such a metaphorical day, as related by E.E. cummings in his familiar lyrics, all in green went my love riding. Let's let Joan Baez demonstrate.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

Four lean hounds crouch low, and smiling the merry deer ran before.

[Jesse Jarno]

By the use of quotative allusion, the lyric attempts to borrow some of the emotive spark of Cummings poem, providing a kind of link button into a different but complementary space allusion here functions as a sort of shorthand cross patch into a series of metaphoric events which, with a double clutch shift of simile access A downloadable description of the kind of day it's been for a wildflower seed and its adventures in the wind. There may be some objection to the elastic interchangeability of the similes of hounds and winds in this set of couplets, but the test of the illusion as I see it, is whether or not the appropriate emotions are evoked to lead to satisfying closure and an opening door on other possibilities. Now to the real stretch.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

Roll away the dew, Roll away the dew.

[Jesse Jarno]

The line is appropriated from a fairly well known sea shanty Blow away the morning Dew.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

The dew and the dew Blow away the morning dew. How sweet the birds listen.

[Jesse Jarno]

That's Joni Mitchell performing Blow Away the Morning Dew in 1965 Child Ballad 12, a Ruid ballad number 11 to use more modern numbering. Of course, it has a dead connection too, Hunter observes, as surely everyone knows by now, Bonnie Dobson's song Morning Dew, made famous by Garcia's singing of it, is set in the aftermath of a nuclear war.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

Walk me out in the morning do my honey Walk me out in the morning.

[Jesse Jarno]

Reason he can't walk you out in the morning dew my honey is because of fallout. Though Garcia has wisely dropped the verse containing this denouement, allowing the song a heightened romantic mystery achieved through open ended ambiguity for generations now alive, the nuclear specter personifies the forces which most threaten our attempt at Jeffersonian democracy.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

Roll away the dew, Roll away the dew.

[Jesse Jarno]

With the song's sub allusion to roll away the stone, an anthem of joyous Eastertide resurrection. A resultant combination message of dire necessity as in the final you've got to roll away the dew and promise of renewal in case resolution is effective are enjoined should this hyper elusive train of thought become too confusing to process. The invitation to just listen to the music play acknowledges both the melody and performance context of the lyrics and the metaphoric bell described above.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

Roll away the dew, you better roll away the doom. Roll away the doom, you better roll away the do.

[Jesse Jarno]

Well, now that you know what I meant by it, it's no great shakes, is it? Mystery gone, the magician's trick told the gluttony for meaning temporarily satisfied, one can now take issue with my intent and avoid the song itself, substituting the assignable significance for the music. I mean, for Christ's sake, there are lots of ways in which Robert Hunter was an innovator and one undersung One was that he was an early personification of a meme. Are you coming to bed? An out of frame voice calls I can't. This is important. What? Someone is wrong on the Internet.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

A.

[Jesse Jarno]

Few weeks after posting his response to Jurgen, Robert Hunter launched his very own proto blog. If Jurgen's essay was an inspiration, Hunter never mentioned it. But it's certainly a marker of Hunter's early Internet adventures. And certainly Hunter never did it again, though it occasionally dropped nuggets about various tunes when he saw fit, but mainly stuck to the mode he displayed in Amir Bar Lev's Long Strange Trip. Shall we go, you and I, while.

[Jurgen Fauth]

We can, through the transitive Nightfall of Diamonds?

[Jesse Jarno]

What is unclear about that?

[Jurgen Fauth]

I mean, it sends what it means. This wouldn't have been possible in the age of Twitter. You wouldn't write a response this long. You know, it must have taken some time to do this on Twitter. I just would have gotten a quick smackdown or something.

[Jesse Jarno]

Franklin's Tower is almost certainly the most covered song from Blues For Allah. It's certainly the most malleable. One of the earliest I know about was from 1982, though not officially released until a bit later. Ladies and gentlemeets, will you welcome please, the Meat Puppets. And for that matter, Henry Rollins did it in 1991 with his project Wartime, his collaboration with longtime wean partner Andrew Weiss.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

Beware the four winds dwell tower.

[Jesse Jarno]

But it just as easily became a reggae song, like on the 1996 fire on the Mountain tribute produced by our pal Henry Kay, performed by Steel Pulse.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

Whichever way your pleasure takes if you plant it as you're Gonna Harvest Jesse.

[Jesse Jarno]

McReynolds, an influence on Jerry Garcia as part of the McReynolds Brothers, recorded it in 2009.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

God help the child who rings that bell May have one good ring left we can't tell One watch for night, one watch by day if you get confused, just list to the music play.

[Jesse Jarno]

In as much as there was a scene of bands that followed the Grateful Dead, Franklin's Tower became something of a standard, largely because of its simple elegance. When Jerry Garcia died in 1995, Dickey Betts of the Allman Brothers began to pay tribute by using Franklin's Tower as a lead in To Blue Sky. Truly one of the most flexible Dead songs, Franklin's Tower lent itself to the Senegalese groove of orchestra baobab. On 2016's Day of the Dead benefit album, they found a new path through the changes. Nothing ever replaced the original. Help on the Way Slipknot, Franklin's Tower in the Dead songbook, it was an almost classical form and a technical feat for younger bands to prove their mettle, as well as a ready made ploy to crack the suite open and play with that tension. As a very young band, Phish never played Franklin's Tower, but they did play Help on the Way Slipknot into their own ACDC bag. Virtually every successor band to the Grateful Dead has played with it in some ways, from Ratdog and Phil Lesh and Friends to Further Fare Thee well and dead and company in the 21st century. It's rarely a given that Help on the Way and Slipknot will go into Franklin's Tower. Hannah Grabenstein left us this story.

[Hannah Grabenstein]

I am too young to have seen the Dead, like, legitimately in person, although I could have when I was a toddler and I did in utero. But, you know, I caught a lot of Dud and Company shows and I went with a friend to Wrigley in 21 or 22, I don't really remember. And behind me, behind us was this couple where the man had, I think, been ahead his entire life, and he had brought his female partner, who really had never been into it, which, like, is how the story always goes. But she was there to support him and hang out. And they played Help Slip. And I was so tense because I was really worried it wasn't going to go into Franklin's, because I think that that transition from Slipknot into Franklin's Tower is the most relieving moment. It's just such a sigh, like, oh, thank God it has resolved so beautifully. And when it did, when they. When Dead and Company did go into Franklin, I just, like, lost my shit. And I was, you know, like, dancing and arms outstretched, and it's just like, you know, feels like I was in church and the woman behind me leaned over and was like, I've never seen anybody so happy and enjoying the music so much. And I was like, yeah, that's what the hell Slip Franklin's suite will do for you. Anyway, I love this song. I love Franklin so much that I named my puppy Franklin. And he's my best friend, and he does the song justice.

[Jesse Jarno]

Franklin's Tower has traveled a long way from Robert Hunter's song to the United States and to his newborn son. It's not a folk song in the traditional sense, especially because we can run down its history and even the authorial intent. But the rate at which Franklin Tower became a folk object was pretty astounding. A rolling stone might gather no moss but it does collect meaning. We'll end our visit to Franklin's Tower with David Lemieux's first meeting with Blues for Allah.

[David Lemieux]

And so I put it on, and I knew all the songs, or most of them. I couldn't believe how great this album sounded. And it kicks in to help on the way. And I was like, oh, my God. Unbelievable. Slipknot. Incredible. And I'm hearing these sounds, and it's just blowing me away. Franklin's Tower starts as it gets to the line, One watch by night One watch by day the album started skipping on the line. One watch by day God save the.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

Child and raise that man May have one good ring Baby, you can't tell One Watch by night 1 Watch by day 1 Watch by day 1 Watch.

[David Lemieux]

By Day One watch by day so it kept so. One watch by day One watch by. So I finally, after, like, hoping it would. You know. Sometimes you hope the needle's gonna kind of the weight of it will move on. Literally, it didn't. So I probably went for about 30 seconds, 40 seconds, and I nudged the needle. If you get confused, listen to the music play. And for every single time I listened to this record, which was often, I had a lot of live tapes, but I still all. I listened to the Dead records all the time. And every time this album, I put it on, it got to One watch by night One watch by day One watch by day and it repeated over and over until I got off the couch and nudged it a little bit.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

One Watch by day 1 Watch by day One watch by day if you get confused, listen to the music play.

[David Lemieux]

So this went on for years. And to this day, when I hear the record, that's what I hear. When I hear live versions, I anticipate it coming up. And then one day, many years later in the. I'm going to say, in the 90s, and I look at the pressing, and I look very closely, and right at that spot, there's a little white bit of schmutz just. Just visible. So it's like, well, that's interesting. So I took a little soft cloth, wetted the tiniest bit, and popped it off. And I popped this little piece of schmutz off. I said, that can't be it. Put the record on for the first time. After over a decade of listening to this record, I got to hear it for the first time.

[Jesse Jarno]

And voila. Just what we always want, new music from the Grateful Dead. While we can't reintroduce you to Franklin's Tower entirely, we can offer this supercut of the studio version, where you can clearly hear all the parts that make the hole. You can't unring or uncrack a bell, but if you listen hard enough, you might be able to still hear it echoing.

[Robert Hunter (lyrics/quotes)]

And another time forgotten space your eyes looked from your mother's face the dew, roll away the dew Roll away the dew Roll away the dew God save the child who rings that bell and may have one good ring Baby, you can't tell One watch by night one watch by day if you get confused, listen to the music play yeah.

[Rich Mahan]

Thanks very much for tuning in to the good old Grateful Dead cast, friends. While it's hard to deny the genius that is Help on the way Slipknot Franklin's Tower I would put my goosebump money on the Feels Like a Stranger into Franklin's from Dead set any day of the week. Man, that one always gets me. We'd like to thank our special guests in this episode David Lemieux, Jeff Gould, Jurgen Fauth, Sean o', Donnell, Chadwick Jenkins, Will Backstrom, Max Richie and Hannah Grabenstein. Extra special thanks to friend of the Dead cast David Ganz for his ongoing contributions of audio from his interview archive. Executive producer for the good old Grateful Dead cast Mark Pincus, produced for Rhino Entertainment by Rich Mahan Promotions and Jesse Jarno. Special thanks to David Lemieux, Brian Dodd and Dorin Tyson. All rights reserve.