For a certain generation of high-school students, the knowing way to quote the Grateful Dead in one’s yearbook was not by naming the band. Rather, it was by attributing a line to its likely source—Robert Hunter, the group’s first principal lyricist. Hunter is now seventy-three, and two years ago he almost died. “I got really, really sick, with a spinal infection that put me in a hospital for a couple of months, and it was touch and go,” he said recently. “I had my guitar with me, and as soon as I got well enough to play there was nothing else to do in that hospital. The nurses would come in and request songs.”
One sunny afternoon in London, in 1970, Hunter wrote the words to three magical Grateful Dead songs, “To Lay Me Down,” “Ripple,” and “Brokedown Palace.” He is a lyricist with few equals, and, together with Jerry Garcia, he conjured up the majority of the Dead’s original songs. Their collaboration continued until Garcia’s death, in 1995. Along the way, Hunter recorded a few solo albums, performed sporadically, translated Rilke’s “Duino Elegies,” and published his own poetry. Mostly, though, he stayed home, to be with his family and to write for many artists, including Bob Dylan. “When I got out of the hospital, it was one of those classic things—you’re looking death in the eye, and it changes you. I thought, I ought to go back on the road.” He booked a short tour, his first in a decade, which brought him to New York last fall. The shows went so well that Hunter, who lives in San Rafael, California, and hates to travel, is returning for more gigs on the East Coast this summer. “It’s natural for me,” he said. “I’m going to keep it up for as long as my health allows it.”
Hunter knows his audience. “I’ll put in a little bit of my own stuff,” he said. “But they don’t really come to hear me do new songs.” Instead, he sticks with classics from the Dead. “My two honeys are ‘Sugaree’ and ‘Ripple.’ I always do those. I’m going to break out ‘Attics of My Life,’ which I’ve never performed before, as far as I can remember.” He plans on including “Touch of Grey,” as well as, possibly, “Casey Jones” and “West LA Fadeaway,” but he said that, for the most part, he likes to keep the set list a surprise.
His newfound pleasure onstage creates a challenge. Performing, he said, “kind of knocks me off my writer’s game.” The distinction between the two activities is complicated. “It’s probably like the difference between eating watermelon and playing basketball,” he said. “It’s like ‘China Cat Sunflower’ ”—the early and imaginative Dead song. “You know what it means, or you don’t.” Hunter is at City Winery July 21-23 and Aug. 2. ♦
