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DEAD MAN / ROCKING / Robert Hunter carries they lyrical spirit of
the Grateful Dead
Isaac Guzman
IN THE LONG, STRANGE history of the Grateful Dead, Robert Hunter is the
man who will be remembered for providing the journey's running dialogue.
Not only did he pen, "Lately it occurs to me what a long, strange
trip it's been," from "Truckin'," but he also wrote the words to nearly
all of the Dead's best-known songs.
From "Uncle John's Band" to "Stella Jones" to "Touch of Grey,"
Hunter was the Dead's Cyrano de Bergerac, lending his misty
philosophications to the band's sprawling mix of folk, blues and rock.
Though his close friend and collaborator Jerry Garcia died in 1995,
Hunter has continued writing and performing his own songs. He plans to
present both old classics and his new material when he plays at Westbury
Music Fair Thursday and Irving Plaza Saturday.
Hunter has released a handful of solo records, but only bootlegged
concert recordings have documented his work since 1990's "Box of Rain."
Hunter said he's often found it difficult to work with Garcia gone and
the Dead disbanded.
"I'm feeling the songwriting power touching me again," Hunter said
by telephone from his home in San Rafael, Calif. "But sometimes I
think, 'Jerry's gone and where am I going to get this tune?' Words just
bubble out of me and tunes bubble out of him, so together we made one
quick songwriter. Now I'm one slow songwriter."
Still, Hunter is proud of his recent work, especially "Scrap of
Moonlight," the new song that he has named his tour after. Hunter said
that "Scrap of Moonlight" had a Salt Lake City audience requesting a
reprise of the tune, which he did. In the song, Hunter is clearly
recalling the long shadows Garcia and other lost friends have cast on
his life. Everything that has passed, he recalls, is now just a scrap of
moonlight.
"Criminal sky with a black sun rising overhead," he sings.
"Creation's engine calling souls back from the dead. No feather pillow
here where virgins bled, just a scrap of moonlight for your bed."
Remembering is important to Hunter. Just about every day, he logs on
to the Dead's Web page (www.dead.net) and, in the "Robert Hunter
Archives," sends a journal-style missive to the world.
"I've generally taken a journal out on the road with me because you
forget, you simply forget," he said. "You learn a lot about yourself in
looking back. I guess I'm a journalist at heart."
Some of his recent entries:
On songwriting, March 24: "Every song falls short of the glory of
what a song could be. Often it's the fault of rhyme. I've discovered
hundreds of times that there just aren't enough rhymes to say what I
wanted to say, so I said something else instead. Sometimes it was a
better thing, but the thing I meant to say went unsaid. So there's an
opening for another song."
On the audience at a hometown show in San Francisco and a new,
self-tuning guitar, April 2: "An incredibly varied audience at the show:
kids, oldsters, hippies, straights, stoners, squares, tie dies, suits -
even a skinhead contingent. The new guitar didn't make it past
soundcheck again. Tuning only takes three seconds on the new model. But
the sound must equal or exceed what I already have, or no go."
Despite the constant self-exploration, Hunter said he still doesn't
feel like he knows himself.
"For me, it's a process of continual selfdefinition, whereas I have
the other people stereotyped," he said. "The only person you know for
sure that you don't know is yourself. This is an existential problem and
the creative act is the solution to it."
ROBERT HUNTER: Thursday at 8 p.m. at Westbury Music Fair, 960 Brush
Hollow Rd., Westbury, 516-334-0800. Saturday at Irving Plaza, 17 Irving
Pl., Manhattan, 212-777-1224. Tickets for both shows are $25.
Copyright 1998, Newsday Inc.
DEAD MAN / ROCKING / Robert Hunter carries they lyrical spirit of the Grateful Dead., pp C01. |
