Hunter playing the guitar
Hunter playing in the early 1980s. Image by David Saddler under CC BY 2.0.

Robert Hunter

Jerry’s girlfriend, Diane Huntsburger, first introduced Hunter to Jerry in early 1961 at a production of Damn Yankees. Perhaps because Huntsburger also happened to be Hunter’s ex-girlfriend, it was not until a few nights later at a local coffeehouse that Hunter and Jerry really hit it off, laying the groundwork for the deep friendship and life-long collaboration that helped make the Grateful Dead into the band beyond description.

Hunter and Jerry did not immediately start writing tunes together, though. Instead, they made music, debuting on May 5, 1961, just weeks after they met, as the folk duo Bob and Jerry. While that group itself was short-lived, over the next several years, the pair were constantly playing music, rapping on all matter of subjects, and hanging out together at all hours of the day and night. 

In 1962, Hunter began taking psychedelics – LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline – as a participant in the famous Stanford experiments that Ken Kesey and Allen Ginsburg also took part in. Hunter’s experiences represented the first use of psychedelics by the nascent Grateful Dead inner circle and deeply shaped the outlook of not just Hunter, but also Jerry.

Unfortunately, during these same years, Hunter developed an increasing dependence on methamphetamines. And, in part to kick the habit, he moved out of the Bay Area, heading for New Mexico. In 1966, he was living in Santa Fe trying to make it as a Canyon Road portraitist, but also writing poetry and lyrics. While he wasn’t making any money as a painter, he could “feel the radiance happening, and intense light feeling,” as he worked on the lyrics to what would become Saint Stephen. As he said about the moment, “I was on to something, those times when the light seems to be in your hands. You follow it along, and some beautiful things just come to you.” 

He eventually sent the lyrics to Stephen, along with China Cat Sunflower and Alligator, to his old Palo Alto pal. Jerry quickly set them to music, incorporating the new songs into the Dead’s repertoire of covers and rather unsophisticated originals. Just as swiftly, Jerry replied by post, urging Hunter to return to California and become the Dead’s lyricist. Hunter did just that in 1967 and, upon his return, immediately penned Dark Star while listening to the band work through a new, lyric-less tune during their soundcheck at Rio Nido.

Over the next several months, Hunter and Jerry together wrote every song for what would become the Aoxomoxoa album. And their collaboration continued from there, really taking off when the two, moved into a Larkspur, California, house together in 1970. 

The songwriting took all sorts of forms. Sometimes, lyrics would spill right out of Hunter – as when he wrote Ripple, Brokedown Palace, and To Lay Me Down over a bottle of wine in a single London afternoon. At other points, the band would provide the music first, as they did with Uncle John’s Band, giving Hunter a forty-minute tape of them jamming on a theme. Other times, Hunter and Jerry would work through the lyrics and chord structure together. 

Initially, Hunter also wrote songs with others in the band: Sugar Magnolia with Bobby, Box Of Rain with Phil, Easy Wind with Pigpen. Eventually, though, Hunter decided he would only work with Jerry, simplifying the process and allowing the songwriting relationship to mature (it didn’t help that Bobby stuffed the only copy of a Hunter collaboration in his back pocket and washed the short shorts). By the mid-seventies, Hunter would often turn dozens of lyrics over to Jerry, who would then quickly sift through, choosing only the tunes that he wanted to put to music.

Regardless of how the songs came together, they always brought Hunter’s deep erudition to the table, weaving in arcane allusions and crafting kaleidoscopic images open to a multiplicity of meanings. At the same time, they included recognizable figures drawn from everyday life and steeped in Americana. This combination, together with Jerry’s captivating arrangements, created easily accessible and relatable songs whose meanings take lifetimes to fully unpack.

Over the years, Hunter and Jerry became brothers. According to Hunter, one of their girlfriends even commented that “it was hard to tell where he ended and I started up.” And Hunter’s attachment extended to the band. As he said, “I loved that band until I didn’t give a damn about ‘em. I’ll say that. I really just thought they were the cat’s whiskers.”

That deep love and connection between Hunter and the rest of the boys did not mean the relationship was always easy. Disturbed by the widespread cocaine use during the 70s and the behavior that spawned, Hunter distanced himself from the Dead by moving to England and no longer touring with the band. He has also said that Jerry’s being a junkie in the eighties “more or less ruined everything.” And it sure seems like he was trying to force Jerry to confront his addiction and see what it was doing to others with many of his lyrics (Althea, anyone?). 

At the same time, Hunter had great sympathy for Jerry. He always recognized – and wrote about (e.g. Standing On The Moon) – the immense weight that the Grateful Dead operation and its legions of fans put on the man.

Through all the years of the Grateful Dead’s success, Hunter had always recorded and toured on his own, including his awesome early albums, Tales of the Great Rum Runners, which was pressed under the Dead’s Round Records label, and Tiger Rose.

After Jerry’s passing, Hunter went to work with a host of artists, including Bruce Hornsby, David Nelson, Elvis Costello, and Little Feat. And he also became the only person to have a longtime collaborative relationship with Bob Dylan, writing a few songs on Down In The Groove and Tempest and all but one for Dylan’s 2009 Together Through Life.

Hunter died at his home in San Rafael, California, on September 23, 2019. At the time of his passing, his family wrote, “For his fans that have loved and supported him all these years, take comfort in knowing that his words are all around us, and in that way he is never truly gone. In this time of grief please celebrate him the way you all know how, by being together and listening to the music. Let there be songs to fill the air.” And so remember to love one another, form community, and keep the music flowing!

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