Rest in Peace Robert Hunter

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SunshineSue
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Re: Rest in Peace Robert Hunter

Post by SunshineSue » Tue Sep 24, 2019 5:13 pm

What a heartbreaker. Rest in peace, Robert, your words live on forever. :cry:


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Re: Rest in Peace Robert Hunter

Post by caseyjonesed » Tue Sep 24, 2019 5:29 pm

SunshineSue wrote:
Tue Sep 24, 2019 5:13 pm
What a heartbreaker. Rest in peace, Robert, your words live on forever. :cry:

this is the 1st tune I listened to and watched after hearing the news.
grate version and Mr. Hunter looks quite dapper!

damn I am choking up again....

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Re: Rest in Peace Robert Hunter

Post by Buck » Tue Sep 24, 2019 5:29 pm

Warren talks Hunter:

Robert Hunter’s lyrics were timeless stories that transported the listener to another time and place. The music was the vehicle that brought us there. The uncanny combination of those two worlds made for an overall experience that was beyond just the music by itself.

I’ve always felt and said that it was of monumental importance that the Grateful Dead hitched their musical wagon to someone whose lyrical strength and concept was as strong and unique as their musical contribution. It was a marriage that was meant to be if ever there was one. I’ve often thought how differently that catalog of songs would be perceived if the music were coupled with typical rock song or pop song lyrics.

I recall when I first came into the whole Dead scene as somewhat of a late comer, seeing all the bootleg T-shirts with song lyrics on them. It still amazes me how many single lines from any given Robert Hunter lyric can stand out enough to warrant being on a T-shirt.

Through my playing with He who shall not be named Lesh and, eventually with The Dead, I met Hunter and was amazed at what a sweet, down to earth, unique human being he was. Private for sure, but someone who somehow miraculously hovered around that ever-growing scene in his own private airspace without being caught up in the day-to-day enormity of it all. The conversations we had varied from really deep subject matters, as one would expect, to totally lighthearted small talk, which you never expect to have with a wordsmith of that caliber.

Being given the opportunity to write music to some of his lyrics was a great honor for me. With “Lay of the Sunflower” I had just started reading the lyrics for the first time when a melody instantly came into my head followed shortly thereafter by chord changes. When I told that to He who shall not be named Lesh he said “Jerry used to say the same thing.” There was something about Hunter’s lyrics that seemed to lend themself automatically to a melody. I recall a conversation I had with Hunter after Gov't Mule recorded “Lay of The Sunflower” with He who shall not be named, in which he mentioned to me that the music he had written for that song was completely different than what I wrote to which I responded that I didn’t know he had written music for it and was surprised to hear that. He responded that he wrote music to all of the songs but never showed his music to Jerry as he didn’t want to influence the first impression of him hearing or reading the lyric.

His romantic sense of the importance of what came before us found its way into the present tense of all of our lives and made all of us more curious about worlds that existed long before we did, in a way that very few modern songwriters have been able to do.

There was only one Robert Hunter. Thankfully there are hundreds of songs that will live on – a part of him that became part of us. It would be impossible to choose a favorite. But for this moment “if I knew the way I would take you home." - WH

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Re: Rest in Peace Robert Hunter

Post by mossismyrice » Tue Sep 24, 2019 5:38 pm

Thank you for all of these amazing songs, Robert!

Today reminds me of 8.9.95.

Such a huge loss.

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Re: Rest in Peace Robert Hunter

Post by KEZHEAD » Tue Sep 24, 2019 5:59 pm

R.I.P Robert
You will be greatly missed :cry:
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Re: Rest in Peace Robert Hunter

Post by 2pigpen » Tue Sep 24, 2019 6:16 pm

Till They Put Me Under
It's Festival Time

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Re: Rest in Peace Robert Hunter

Post by Lhmwrench » Tue Sep 24, 2019 6:35 pm

From Billy the K:

Robert Hunter wrote the soundtrack to my life; his words are with me always. They’ve become part of my daily thought process, world view, philosophy…they are the closest thing I have to prayers. Many of you can say this too and it is something we all share.

He was the Grateful Dead’s lyricist but he also was the lyricist for my band 7 Walkers. He loved the music and he told me that when he played the record for the first time, he turned it up all the way and then laid down in bed to listen. Halfway through, his speakers came crashing down, almost hitting his head. He liked that. In fact, telling me about it was his form of a compliment.

When I first formed 7 Walkers, I had called him up asking for a dozen songs and I told him they had to somehow reflect New Orleans or have cajun, creole, voodoo influences. He took that direction to heart and when he returned with words, I asked how he got so many of the details right — stuff you would’ve only known about if you lived in New Orleans. But Bob never lived in New Orleans. He just said, “Oh, well, I read a lot.” This just goes to show that his sorcery skills were no joke.

I’m bringing up his collaboration with 7 Walkers because it gave me one more time to work with Bob, this time one-on-one. We had one major argument over changing one word, from “Seattle” to “New Orleans.” He was very protective over every single word; he’d fight you over syllables.

The other time I worked with him outside the Dead was on Jerry’s solo album, Garcia. Hunter was inside the control room, writing lyrics as we played music. “The Wheel” came out of that. “Sugaree,” too. “Bird Song.” “Deal!!” Songs I still play today and that many of us can recite by heart — I know I sure can.

But there’s always one thing I think of first, and that I keep coming back to, when looking back on our friendship: Bob was by my side for a particular day, seemingly lifetimes ago, that would forever alter my adventure on this planet — my first acid trip. You never forget your first, and Bob was there with me on that journey, complete with us watching the garbage trucks go by in the morning, after being up all night, convinced they were actually aliens or other fantastical things.

I will always cherish my many wonderful memories of Robert Hunter and I am sad that there won’t be any new ones. I cried when I heard the news and I’ve spent all day reflecting. And all my thoughts lead me to this: Robert Hunter is gone, but his words will live on forever. How many people can we say that about? Not many. He was a rare bird and a gift to us all.

Wildflower seed on the sand and stone, may the four winds blow him safely home.
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Re: Rest in Peace Robert Hunter

Post by Muhammed » Tue Sep 24, 2019 6:38 pm

Very sad news. We will probably hear his words every day for the rest of our lives. RIP.
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Re: Rest in Peace Robert Hunter

Post by vegeta_ban » Tue Sep 24, 2019 6:45 pm

Here are some shows I taped of his a couple years ago. Will miss him so much.


"There's a dragon with matches that's loose on the town - Takes a whole pail of water just to cool him down"
R. Hunter

"Entropy is the most powerful force of nature"
Bob Weir 2010-02-15

http://gd19881995.info/live2.htm

311->294

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Re: Rest in Peace Robert Hunter

Post by redial2 » Tue Sep 24, 2019 6:53 pm

FaceOnMars wrote:
Tue Sep 24, 2019 2:46 pm
at a loss for words, but no loss for tears
Well put, may he rest in peace.
Let it be known: there is a fountain, that was not made by the hands of men.
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.
-RH

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Re: Rest in Peace Robert Hunter

Post by Subwoofer » Tue Sep 24, 2019 7:21 pm

Muhammed wrote:
Tue Sep 24, 2019 6:38 pm
Very sad news. We will probably hear his words every day for the rest of our lives. RIP.
Pretty amazing gift.
I'm living in yesterday's tomorrows...

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Re: Rest in Peace Robert Hunter

Post by Sling Shot On Mars » Tue Sep 24, 2019 7:51 pm

If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine

RIP Mr. Hunter. You will be missed everyday and your words will truly live on everyday. Thank you from the bottom of my heart

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Re: Rest in Peace Robert Hunter

Post by Mary Poppins » Tue Sep 24, 2019 8:13 pm

Sad day, indeed. Thanks for all the words that helped shape my life. RIP RH.

This is the article I read after seeing the headline:

Robert Hunter, the man behind the poetic and mystical words for many of the Grateful Dead's finest songs, has died at age 78.

Hunter died Monday at his Northern California home with his wife, Maureen, at his side, former Grateful Dead publicist Dennis McNally told The Associated Press on Tuesday. The family did not release a cause of death.

"We loved Bob Hunter and will miss him unimaginably," Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart said, adding the lyricist was "a visionary wordsmith extraordinaire."

Although proficient on a number of instruments including guitar, violin, cello and trumpet, Hunter never appeared on stage with the Grateful Dead during the group's 30-year run that ended with the 1995 death of lead guitarist Jerry Garcia, his principal songwriting partner.

When he did attend the group's concerts, he was content to either stand to the side of the stage or, better yet, sit anonymously in the audience. It was in the latter location, he told The Associated Press in 2006, that he received his greatest songwriting compliment, from a man who had no idea who he was.

"He turned to me during 'Cumberland Blues' and said, 'I wonder what the guy who wrote that song a hundred years ago would think if he knew the Grateful Dead was doing it,'" he recalled, referencing the colorful tale of hardscrabble American miners.

Other of Hunter's most memorable Grateful Dead songs include "It Must Have Been the Roses," ''Terrapin Station," ''The Days Between," ''Brown Eyed Women," ''Jack Straw, "Friend of the Devil," ''Box of Rain," ''Uncle John's Band" and "Black Muddy River."

Although the man who spoke to him during "Cumberland Blues" couldn't know it, he had perfectly captured Hunter's songwriting brilliance contained in all of those songs: the ability to craft lyrics that sounded so timeless that listeners were certain they had heard them before. It was a skill he matched seamlessly with a boundless knowledge of subjects running the gamut from classic literature to street life, which in turn allowed him to write authoritatively about everyone from card sharks and hustlers to poor dirt farmers and free-spirited lovers.

All of those stories he seasoned with a poetic skill some would say rivaled even that of Bob Dylan, with whom he sometimes collaborated.

"He's got a way with words and I do too," Dylan told Rolling Stone magazine in 2009. "We both write a different type of song than what passes today for songwriting."

"There was nobody like Bob Hunter and there never will be," Hart said Tuesday. "He explained the unexplainable and the words struck deep."

"Truckin'," arguably Hunter and the group's best known song (and the one containing the memorable line, "What a long, strange trip it's been") was designated a national treasure in 1997 by the Library of Congress.

In more than a dozen verses it chronicled the travails of a touring band, among them the Grateful Dead's 1970 drug bust after a show in New Orleans: "Busted, down on Bourbon Street. Set up, like a bowlin' pin. Knocked down. It gets to wearin' thin."

Another song, "Ripple," which was set to a maddening beautiful melody that Garcia composed on guitar, contains the lines Hunter once said he was most proud of: "Reach out your hand, if your cup be empty. If your cup is full, may it be again. Let it be known there is a fountain. That was not made by the hands of men."

Once asked by The Associated Press who his influences were, he laughed and replied that, "just to throw people off," he would often cite both the great 19th century theatrical songwriting team of Gilbert and Sullivan and the American folk music balladeer Woody Guthrie.

After a moment's reflection, he added more seriously, "Actually, that's pretty close to the truth."
Other influencers included novelists James Joyce, John Steinbeck and Hans Christian Andersen, musician Josh White and the traditional European ballads published by American folklorist Francis James Child.

Born Robert Burns on June 23, 1941, Hunter was 7 when his father abandoned him and his mother, resulting in his spending several years in foster homes. It was an experience he said scarred him emotionally and left him feeling forever the outsider.

When he was 11, his mother married McGraw-Hill publishing executive Norman Hunter, who gave the boy a new last name and an appreciation for such peerless writers as William Saroyan and T.S. Elliot.

Hunter toyed with becoming a novelist himself but music called and by his senior year of high school he was playing trumpet in a fusion Dixieland-rock band. He attended the University of Connecticut for one year where he studied drama, became a Pete Seeger fan and turned his interest to folk music.

He met Garcia in 1960 at a production of the musical "Damn Yankees," introduced by a former girlfriend who by then was Garcia's first wife. The pair quickly formed a folk music duo called Bob and Jerry.

Both homeless for a time, they lived out of their cars, parking them side-by-side in a Palo Alto, California, vacant lot. They survived those days, both would say later, by eating tins of pineapple Hunter had pilfered from a military installation during his brief time in the National Guard.

Hunter had moved to New Mexico by the time Garcia, Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann, He who shall not be named Lesh and Ron "Pigpen" McKernan had formed the Grateful Dead. Hart would join soon after.

When Garcia asked him to send some lyrics along that could be set to music Hunter quickly responded with future Grateful Dead classics "China Cat Sunflower" and "St. Stephen." Garcia then asked him to return to the San Francisco Bay Area and write for the band.

Eventually Hunter would write for all of the group's members, and when the Grateful Dead was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994 he was included as the lyricist.

He and Garcia were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2015.

Over the years Hunter also released nearly a dozen albums of his own, published several volumes of poetry and co-wrote songs with Dylan. He also published two books translating the works of German poet Rainer Maria Rilke.

"Bob was an intellectual and I can't tell you that there are a lot of intellectuals in the rock and roll business. But Bob was an intellectual," longtime friend Barry "The Fish" Melton of Country Joe and the Fish said by phone from Paris Tuesday.

Hunter's survivors include his wife and daughter Kate.

Associated Press
https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/mus ... 8-n1058356

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Re: Rest in Peace Robert Hunter

Post by Lhmwrench » Tue Sep 24, 2019 8:19 pm

I am heartbroken. Last night we lost Robert Hunter. As much as anyone, he defined in his words what it meant to be the Grateful Dead. His lyrics, ranging from old border ballads to urban legend, western narratives and beyond, brought into sharp focus what was implicit in our music. A case in point is “Box of Rain” - he heard so deeply what my feelings were when I composed the music, feelings I didn’t know I had until I read his lyrics. The lyrics he wrote for Jerry likewise tapped into the very essence of Jerry’s heart and soul - drawing forth the music living there. Significantly, the very first lyric Robert wrote for us was “Dark Star”, which became the definitive GD exploratory vehicle.
So fare thee well, rh, when my time comes I’ll be looking for you and Jer out there in the transitive nightfall of diamonds.
Love,
He who shall not be named
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Maybe it was the doses..."

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Re: Rest in Peace Robert Hunter

Post by bones » Tue Sep 24, 2019 8:29 pm

For me with Hunter, its the line in Uncle John's Band: Are you kind?

That I strive to be able to answer unequivocally YES I AM..or at least I certainly try to be...

KIND,,,every day,,,every way possible :idea:

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Re: Rest in Peace Robert Hunter

Post by Rich » Tue Sep 24, 2019 8:37 pm

From Anthem to Beauty, the retsina story and writing Ripple, TLMD, and Brokedown that afternoon.

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Re: Rest in Peace Robert Hunter

Post by Mary Poppins » Tue Sep 24, 2019 8:42 pm

From Rosie McGee

I don't have the skill to find adequate words for the scale of our loss of Hunter - as a person, and as a lyricist and poet. I do know that without his sublime mastery of the English language, the Grateful Dead would have been an altogether different band.

Rest in peace, dear man, and thank you for the tales and images that populate our dreams, now and forever.

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Re: Rest in Peace Robert Hunter

Post by Mary Poppins » Tue Sep 24, 2019 9:01 pm

From David Lemieux

Fare you well, Mr. Hunter. We love you more than words can tell...

For a man who provided us with so many meaningful words, the soundtrack to our lives, he's left us a bit speechless with his passing. For more than 50 years, since his first lyrical contributions to the Grateful Dead in 1967, Robert Hunter has been just as integral a part of the legacy of the Grateful Dead as those who recorded the music to accompany his words, those who walked out on stage to bring his words to life. More than 2,000 times 1967-1995, these six (or five or seven) proud walkers on the jingle bell rainbow, plus countless thousands of times since then by other performers, the Grateful Dead have brought Hunter's words to life in front of all of us as their witness. Not a single day has gone by since 1984 that Hunter's words haven't been a part of my world; I've heard Jerry, Bob and others sing his words literally every day for the past 35 years.

When the final Fare Thee Well show ended in Chicago in 2015, Mickey Hart famously sent us on our way by asking us to "please, be kind," and that lesson along with its lyrical brethren written by Hunter, "ain't no time to hate," and "are you kind?" are some of the truest words to live by. No matter what meaning, solace, lesson you find in Hunter's lyrics, please go out and do some good with them.

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Re: Rest in Peace Robert Hunter

Post by UGot2Rollme » Tue Sep 24, 2019 10:22 pm

Hunters lyrics took the Grateful Dead from the earth to the stars - from a great innovative band to a legendary timeless wonder... though his passing from this earth is of course sad for us, it`s heart-warming to read these tributes and realize how much he is appreciated. I get the feeling he felt the love, too.

(a sad side note: it was a shame to read that he felt compelled to tour for financial reasons to pay his medical bills a few years ago... I would have thought that his royalties were plentiful but then again medical care in the US is a scandal when it comes to affordability).

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Re: Rest in Peace Robert Hunter

Post by Chez » Tue Sep 24, 2019 10:32 pm

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