Billy DeLyon made more than one mistake. He never should have been gambling in the family’s drinking establishment, and he should have been a better judge of character. After all, there must have been some sign that Stagger Lee wasn’t the kind of man who would lose his Stetson Hat in a dice game without exacting some kind of revenge.
It was Christmas Eve in 1940 that Stagger Lee shot and killed Billy DeLyon, at least according to Grateful Dead lore. There isn’t anything else in the song that would really lead you to believe that the story took place in the 20th-Century. When did they start serving Gin Fizzes? I guess that’s something that you can date.
Stagger Lee is otherwise a straight-up Old West ballad, and a great tribute to Delia DeLyon who gets justice for her husband or brother (you decide which) when all the men in her town were too cowardly to attempt it.
You can think of her as the female equivalent of Clint Eastwood in the old spaghetti westerns, particularly Hang ‘Em High.
When Robert Hunter put together his version of the Ballad of Stagger Lee and Delia DeLyon, he was drawing on a very old tradition. Whether called “Stacker Lee,” “Stack-O-Lee” or “Stag-O-Lee,” this legendary fellow had already been sung about by people as varied as Mississippi John Hurt, Cab Calloway, and Woody Guthrie.
This was the kind of well that Hunter liked to draw from, and he came up with reworks and originals that consistently painted compelling pictures of 19th-Century American life. Often, this was life on the frontier, but not always. Peggy-O, for example, is a story about the Civil War set in Louisiana. Jack-A-Roe is about an English sailor who sets off to fight in some unspecified war, possibly the War of 1812.
The vast majority of songs in the Grateful Dead’s repertoire have no references to anything modern like cars, planes, people or events. Most travel is done on horseback, ship or train. Men court women in traditional ways. There’s a lot of saloons, gambling, gunfights, sheriffs, posses, and jailhouses. Hanging is a common punishment. Vigilante justice is a common theme, but so is the outlaw who seeks to elude the vigilantes.
Even when the lyrics explicitly bring us into the 20th-Century, as with Stagger Lee and Brown-Eyed Women, the picture remains antique.
In 1920 when he stepped to the bar
he drank to the dregs of the whiskey jar
In 1930 when the Wall caved in
he paid his way selling red eye gin
If you’re doing a song about Prohibition, you could sing about Al Capone or Jay Gatsby, but Hunter focuses on a “tumble down shack in Bigfoot County” where it “snowed so hard that the roof caved in.”
It’s one of the oddities of the Grateful Dead that the perception of the band in the popular imagination is that they are a bunch of psychedelic-taking musicians who play weird improvisation music and long jams. Their fans are seen as countercultural hippies and idealistic peaceniks. But when you packed 20,000 Deadheads into a auditorium, they cheered along to songs about killing your uncle for his gold, running off to Mexico to drink tequila and bed down 14 year olds, and working in the coal mines for five dollars a day.
It’s hard to say that the Dead traded in nostalgia, exactly, because the picture they painted of the old America was hardly idealized. It was white-washed of Native-Americans, but the picture presented a hard, luckless frontier life where lawlessness was the norm and justice was elusive. The predominant theme was of the antihero as protagonist, or at least the storyteller. These were stories of people who made their own rules.
I just jumped the watchman
Right outside the fence
Took his ring, four bucks in change
Now ain’t that heaven sent?
There wasn’t much in the way of “can’t we all just get along?” For a bunch of hippies, the Kumbayah element was almost entirely missing. If you’re looking for a hippie theme to the Dead’s lyrics, it’s probably best to look for back-to-the-land kind of ideals. In some way, their near-total refusal to embrace modernity is a call for simpler times and less complicated lives. I’ve always felt that this was the core message of their 1973 album, Wake of the Flood, and especially of its epic Weather Report Suite which took up nearly a third of the record.
(These next lyrics were written by the Dead’s other lyricist John Perry Barlow)
The plowman is broad as the back of the land he is sowing
As he dances the circular track of the plow ever knowing
That the work of his day measures more than the planting and growing
Let it grow, let it grow, greatly yieldSo it goes, we make what we made since the world began
Nothing more, the love of the women, work of men
Seasons round, creatures great and small, up and down, as we rise and fall
This is not to say that the Dead didn’t have their psychedelic side because they certainly did. The song China Cat Sunflower, for example, is basically a verbal description of either a mescaline or peyote trip that Hunter took down in Mexico. Other songs attempt to describe the kind of “a-ha” moment that can sometimes accompany a journey on LSD: “Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right,” “Sometimes the light is all shining on me, other times I can barely see,” “Gone are the broken eyes we saw through in dreams. Gone – both dream and lie.”
These insights (or referrals to insights) could be embedded in nonsense or they could be doled out as pearls of wisdom. As with a lot of effective poetry, sometimes the whole can be less than the parts. I don’t know what the song Row Jimmy is really about, but I know that there was something really important and meaningful for me as a confused fourteen year old boy in being encouraged to just keep rowing, without any assurance that I’d ever get where I was going. Hunter’s words just spoke to me.
Broken heart don’t feel so bad
Ain’t got half a what you thought you had
Rock your baby to and fro
Not too fast and not too slow
There’s an idea in that stanza that when you lose something you really haven’t lost as much as you think because you never had as much as you thought you had. And then there’s the further comfort that you can set that stuff aside and just find refuge and comfort in intimacy with another person.
The song Ship of Fools practically served as a personal ethos and roadmap for my life: “I won’t slave for beggar’s pay, likewise gold and jewels. But I would slave to learn the way to sink your ship of fools…The bottles stand as empty as they were filled before. Time there was and plenty but from that cup no more. Though I could not caution all I yet may warn a few: Don’t lend your hand to raise no flag atop no ship of fools.”
In important and often devastating respects, the culture around the Grateful Dead was about taking mind-alterning substances: turning on, tuning in, and dropping out. The band members seemed to embrace the delusion that the world could be redeemed if enough people found enlightenment through psychedelics, and the end result was a predictable tragedy for countless people, including Jerry Garcia.
But there was so much more to the scene than addled idealism and addiction and overdoses. The Dead and Deadheads weren’t mere proxies for a generation of hippies. And a big reason why is that Robert Hunter is a much deeper and more timeless thinker than that. He’s an anthropologist of American folklore and folk music, a brilliant poet and song writer, and a person with a seemingly bottomless font of wisdom ready to impart.
Thanks for this, BooMan. I did my share of mind-altering substances as a younger man, but all the same turned up my nose at the DFH reputation that surrounded the Dead and their Heads. When I began seeing my future wife, she introduced me to their live shows, and I quickly grew to appreciate both the band and their fans. They never became a touchstone for me, but my life has been improved by my growth in this way.
I never thought too much about their lyrics, but could generally see that most of the band’s work was grounded right in the middle of the blues. The power of the blues to me is that it gives people a chance to gather around and share stories of difficulties which people have dealt with and overcome, or difficulties people are struggling with and developing ways to accept. In the end, it’s an ethos which projects optimism, and the Dead’s ethos was particularly optimistic in that way.
By the way, Griel Marcus’ writings about the history of the Stagger Lee story, from verbal tellings to written and musical versions, is the best writing I have ever read about music and its interaction with culture. My life was changed by his correlative analysis of the lyrics of “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)”. Behind the cheery and awesome funk, we’re listening to a uniquely chronicled story of a man facing down the Devil and wrestling with him over a gun. Amazing and terrifying.
The vast majority of songs in the Grateful Dead’s repertoire have no references to anything modern like cars, planes, people or events.
The vast majority of the songs also have no reference to a good relationship. How many bands with a repertoire as vast as the Dead’s can say that?
PS–Ripple is my favorite. I have no idea what it means but it is beautiful.
https:/youtu.be/671AgW9xSiAhttps:/youtu.be/671AgW9xSiA
that’s an interesting comment. I’d say pop music in general is no place to look for good relationships, a lot of artists have more breakup songs than love songs.
To understand Ripple, it probably helps to study a different song that Hunter wrote about 9 years later: Terrapin Station.
In Terrapin, Hunter is clearer about summoning the muse at the outset:
While he doesn’t explicitly call on a muse to help him in his storytelling, this introductory stanza should be considered as a summoning prayer.
Likewise, in Ripple:
Here, though, the summoning prayer is moved around a bit so that it comes in form of a question. If he wrote “Let my words glow with sunshine” this would be much more obvious.
Notice that he doesn’t waste time getting to his theme, however. How can you play a tune on an unstrung harp? How can there be a ripple when no stone was thrown?
So, right away, we’re onto the mystery.
Now, when Hunter begins by summoning the muse, you know that he is your bard/tribune. And Hunter knows that the challenge for the tribune is that he is a leader and people are depending on him. Is he up to the challenge? Can he communicate both what he wants to communicate and something that people will be edified by, and understand?
In both Ripple and Terrapin, this is the doubt and responsibility that Hunter is struggling with.
Remember, I wrote above that Hunter likes to delve into folklore. He finds his inspiration in hand-me-downs. But are they good enough?
To hell with it, I don’t care, let’s sing the song!
In Terrapin, he ruminates more on his role as bard/tribune and the role of the muse in giving inspiration:
Then he shifts to the audience, first person:
You can’t buy from the teller what only the muse can provide.
Now back to the narrator, first person. And another invocation to the muse:
I could talk at length about Terrapin, which is basically an epiphany or Buddha-like state of perfection and total insight. But we’re talking about Ripple. It is more like a zen koan. What is the sound of one hand clapping? What is a ripple in still water, when there is no pebble tossed, nor wind to blow? What does it mean to say that those who lead must follow?
And, finally, the wisdom.
“There is a road.” This is your road. “That path is for your steps alone.” The muse cannot give you the directions, although he does wish he could do more.
But he doesn’t know the way. Only you do. And that’s okay.
As for the storytelling, Hunter describes what happens in Ripple in the lyrics to Terrapin Station:
Rewritten more plainly:
While the muse is inspiring me the story will come forth until finally you learn something ineluctable, mystical, from the experience. What was unknown will become familiar, but how?
And then he describes the approach to enlightenment (the train station at Terrapin):
It’s clear that he’s not satisfied with the train station straight-line destination metaphor. He doesn’t know if he reached somewhere new or returned to the starting point, but the signals are plain (brakes are on, whistle is screaming) that enlightenment/station is straight up ahead:
TERRAPIN!!
Maybe this is as far down the road as the muse can carry us. We must take the last few steps alone.
After all, nine years earlier, he told us that he didn’t know the way.
So, Ripple is about Hunter’s role as bard, the limits of his abilities, the ultimate source of his power being beyond his control, and his desire to show leadership and guidance while advising us that that we all have our own fates –and guides can only take us so far.
Thank you, BooMan, for these insightful thoughts on lyrics I’ve heard so many times but have never really thought about in this way. Robert Hunter’s words are truly a gift.
You’re welcome.
Here’s a gift for you.
I give you the studio version in this case because the song was too difficult for them to play and especially sing live, so it’s always distracting to listen to all the imperfections in the live performances. And, while the jams are great, we’re talking about lyrics today on the 50th anniversary of the band.
Almost reads like a man on his death bed looking back on life, but we have to recall the days still to come. On the other hand, it’s midnight on the carousel ride.
So much bittersweetness in those lyrics.
But, again, there’s the theme of not quite being able to get where Hunter wants (or wants us) to go.
But we try.
After writing the above comment, I found the following interview from 1992.
Then I found Hunter talking about the Muse[s] and specifically about Terrapin.
Pretty validating.
Not a Dead fan, but I do like their songs that I’ve heard covered by other bands I love, and I always assumed that was down to Hunter. Cracker does a cool take on “Loser” and a few years ago the War On Drugs chose (of all things) Touch of Grey as part of their archaeological trawl through aging rock of the 80s.
I also used to really despise noodly jamming because I saw it as aimless. Then I ended up playing in several bands where that’s much of what we did in rehearsal before lashing those jams into shape as “real” songs. So I became what I hated! Never got interested in the associated substances; they tended to dull my creative edge too much. I’m also a Dylan geek, and I know that Dylan and Garcia come from the same place aesthetically. Don’t really like the live album they made, though.
Anyway, the laugh’s on me even more because for the past 2 years I’ve enjoyed working at a company owned by the 2 biggest Phish-heads I’ve ever met. So I’ve learned to live and let live with people from that general scene.
Aside from all that, I prefer Nick Cave’s depraved take on Stagger Lee. But that’s just me!
The version of Stagger Lee in this YouTube isn’t very good.
It’s probably about the third time they ever played it live. Bob Weir is doing some idiotic things on his slide that he fortunately abandoned soon after, and the timing is off.
Ah, ok. I’ll go dig up another one if I can find it.
Hey, thanks for brightening my day!
I always thought Hunter had this unique mix of Americana, beat poetry and 60s hippy.
When I first came around to the dead, I never knew which songs were covers. So many of them sound like they could’ve been written 100 years ago, and with Stagger Lee, you know Hunter’s updating a classic, so that blurs the lines even more. Mix in Samson and Delilah and then you hear Brown Eyed Women and I had no idea if that was a cover or not.
Hunter did write Brown-Eyed Women, although he called it Brown-Eyed Woman originally. Probably changed it to differentiate it from Van Morrison’s classic.
Hunter said that Friend of the Devil was their best collaboration and that’s hard to argue with.
But, man, how can it get better than Brown-Eyed Women?
It’s just majestic.
More validation:
Thanks for this — great analysis. Just want to add two things:
While I know to the bone how unfair the stereotypical opinions of the Grateful Dead is, the fact that they alternated 20-30 minute versions of Dark Star and The Other One nightly for seven years straight does give a bit of credence to the hater (for the record, I’m a big fan of just about every version I’ve heard of both song). Each of these songs are psychedelic in structure and lyrics and they go on for miles.
I particularly find The Other One telling in terms of this discussion, as the That’s It For the Other One Suite is one of my favorite things the band did, particularly the Cryptic Envelopment (“he had to die”) coming out of the Other One. It has a beautiful country blues sound that gets me every time. In addition, Garcia’s lyrics are about a Jesus-like martyr.
I’ll throw an additional plug for He Was A Friend Of Mine, which is an early song they mainly did in ’69 and maybe once or twice in ’70. This is a reworking of a traditional standard Dylan did, but was in effect a Byrd’s cover arranged about the Kennedy assassination.
I wrote not dissimilarly about Hunter a while back . . .
http://kikoshouse.blogspot.com/2015/03/for-robert-hunter-song-is-naked-living.html
Thanks, great post! Here in the SF Bay Area there is a whole scene still very much alive, centered around mostly Terrapin Crossroads, Phil’s club in San Rafael and also Bob Weir’s Sweetwater in Mill Valley. Phil holds regular jams with local musicians and there are many different incarnations of jamminghood regularly. I’ve had the privilege of participating on keyboards in many of these jams and people regularly pack these venues to experience it. There is also the highly heralded Stu Allen and Mars Hotel who will be playing some of the after-shows in Chicago. Stu is the real deal and worth checking out.
“I ain’t often right but I’ve never been wrong…” (<;