What Does "Black Peter" (Hunter/Garcia) Mean To You?

Some excellent points there.

Dodd raises the interesting question of whether or not the song changes perspective in the "Take a look at poor Peter" section. Assuming Peter is the narrator, we're either switching to an outside perspective, or Peter is commenting on (or mocking) the people who know but don't care that he's dying.

And yes, I think you can hear the residue of Hunter's bad trip still within the lyric. He very well could have thought he was dying.

 

like the morning sun you come
and like the wind you go

 

Could you imagine? one summer day,
That same night be on your way.

 

Up until (maybe) five years back, I was mostly lukewarm on that song. Then something undefined occurred. No idea why. Age-related, I'd have to guess.

I now find it to be majestic.

 

Winter gray and falling rain
We'll see summer come again
Darkness fall and seasons change
(Gonna happen every time)
Same old friends the wind and rain
(We'll see summer by and by)
Winter gray and falling rain
(Summers fade and roses die)
We'll see summer come again

 

I really turned the corner on “Stella Blue” when I figured out that he’s singing to his only true companion - his guitar. That’s my interpretation and I’m sticking to it.

 

You're not going to get an argument from me. My lyric interpretation skills aren't particularly acute.

I'm a Costello guy, but I often don't have any idea what he's talking about. So I just make sh#t up for my own purposes. It seems to work out well enough.

 

For many years I heard the second of these lines...

I was laying in my bed and dying
Annie Beauneu from Saint Angel

...as “everyone knows from sin and gin”.

So for a long time I heard this as the lament of one who had dug his own grave so to speak. Who knew?

 

Until I read the lyrics I used to overlook the clear “b” sound and go with the nonsensical: “Anyone know, from sin and Jill”. It’s not a line one could ever figure out on one’s own!

 

My favorite EC song, “Couldn’t Call It Unexpected #4”, treads some similar territory with “Black Peter”. I started a thread on that one a few years back too.

 

So many Dead songs were about losing and dying....

 

Probably my favorite song.
By anyone.

I sang it at my Father's memorial.

 

See here how everything lead up to this day
And it’s just like any other day that’s ever been...

That verse to me is one of the most existentially profound observations in any song — about the human condition and the fact that there’s an ordinary day waiting up ahead for each of us when we’re going to change from being alive to being dead. Or it could simply be today. The point of the song is to put you right in the center of that situation.

They didn’t call them the Grateful Dead for nothing, boys.

 

Pushing older than that, I think I should listen to Turn On Your Lovelight!

 

Very interesting comments and insights.

I always considered that the song was an hallucinated affected observation; perhaps related to death haze, drugs, pain and meditative dissociative forays. The friends were actually ghosts, devils and other forms of life in the afterlife.

I was initially hit by this song when it first was released and related elements of it to Lennon’s “Tomorrow Never Knows” and Dylan’s “It’s All Right Ma........”

 

“Stella Blue” is my absolute favorite Grateful Dead song.

"Ripple," "Unbroken Chain," "Scarlet Begonias" and "Bird Song" are certainly contenders for second position (off the top of my head).


All the years combine, they melt into a dream,
A broken angel sings from a guitar...

Dust off those rusty strings just one more time,
Gonna make them shine, shine...

It all rolls into one and nothing comes for free,
There's nothing you can hold, for very long.

And when you hear that song come crying like the wind,
It seems like all this life was just a dream.
Stella blue.

 

Hey RayS -I love your take on Black Peter. My thoughts on the song-when I play the original Lp version-I can feel the languid heat and dust of some backwater shack that Black Peter is lying in. The music conveys the world weariness, resignation, tired acceptance, nostalgia for a prior life gone and also a certain naïveté ( this could never happen to us-only to the other) now let’s go run and see-what will you make of this experience? Is it politically charged on a certain level?( ties into Workingman’s Dead theme)-is Black Peter going to die and then go run and see what is next in store on the cosmic wheel? Is the narrator teaching the children about what can happen to them-Black Peter was once a child who made choices or did he-was his life predetermined and his death in this manner inevitable? Are we to go and transform injustice? Are we all doomed to live and die in our our version of Black Peter’s death? Do we live and die many times as we linger in pain? So much in the lyrics and in the tone of the music. This has always been one of my favorites. What would Dostoevsky say about this song?

 

I prefer something a little more uplifting. Not a bad song for what it is.

 

One of Garcia's great settings of a Hunter lyric. Captures the character's mix of sorrow and calm resignation with a good lift at the "see here how everything" bridge.

 

It seems like all this life,
Was just a dream...

 

So, so true.

Not trying to be overly morbid here, but I always thought "Brokedown Palace," "Death Don't Have No Mercy," "Black Peter" and "Black Muddy River" could make choice funeral music.

 

A question about Hunter and Garcia's songwriting:

Did Hunter "just" write the words or did he do some of the vocal melodies as well? Or was that all Jerry including the music?

 

It varied from song to song. Sometimes Hunter would have a rhythm that went with the words (Tennessee Jed is the best example of this), sometimes just words, and sometimes Hunter would have melodic ideas which may or may not survive.

 

A perfect song. The bridge never fails to give me goosebumps. I play it on the guitar and sing it quite often ("Wharf Rat" is the other Dead tune I always play), and I remember even recording a version of it (the nerve!!!) on the good old Tascam 424.

 

I'll get back to you on this one later today.