Also included in these glosses are “notes from readers,” who weigh in with their own speculations and scholarly addenda. The extensive hypertext version of the project includes editorial footnotes explaining each song’s references, with sources. And true students of the band can study the many literary references and allusions in their songwriting with The Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics, an online project begun in 1995 by UC Santa Cruz Research Associate David Dodd, and turned into a book in 2005. There have been university exhibits and academic conferences devoted to the Grateful Dead. Hunter’s reluctance to interpret his lyrics hasn’t stopped fans and scholars of the Dead from doing so. An accomplished poet and translator of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus, Hunter served, writes Rolling Stone, as the band’s “primary in-house poet.” In a rare and moving interview with the magazine, the reclusive writer muses on his former role, and hedges on the meaning of his songs: “I’m open to questions about interpretation, but I generally skate around my answers because I don’t want to put those songs in a box.” We mostly have Robert Hunter to thank for those hundreds of memorable verses.
The Grateful Dead’s official output may have been uneven at times, marred by excess and tragedy, but the band’s words remained consistently inspired and inspiring, each song a poetic vignette filled with oblique references and witty, heartfelt turns of phrase.
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