{"id":583392,"date":"2025-11-20T22:06:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T22:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/583392\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T22:06:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T22:06:13","slug":"the-grateful-dead-song-that-simply-came-from-nowhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/583392\/","title":{"rendered":"The Grateful Dead song that simply “came from nowhere”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/p>\n

(Credit: Alamy)<\/p>\n

Thu 20 November 2025 19:49, UK <\/p>\n

The 1972 solo debut from Jerry Garcia<\/a> wound up being a treasure trove that was judiciously plundered by the Grateful Dead. Future classics like \u2018Sugaree\u2019, \u2018Deal\u2019, \u2018Bird Song\u2019, and \u2018Loser\u2019 all originated on the first side of that particular record, setting the stage for hundreds of live performances over the next 23 years. <\/p>\n

Even the more experimental side two found use with the Dead, as the \u2018Late for Supper\u2019\/\u2019Spidergawd\u2019\/\u2019Eep Hour\u2019 medley was included as the background music for the opening sequence of The Grateful Dead Movie<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Garcia ends with another song that would go on to be a certified Dead anthem, the psychedelic and ethereal \u2018The Wheel\u2019. The track took a few years to get integrated into the Dead\u2019s live show<\/a>, making its first appearance in 1976. But from that point on, \u2018The Wheel\u2019 stuck around all the way until the band\u2019s final year of 1995, with just over 250 total performances from the Dead. That doesn\u2019t include the times when Garcia busted out the tune with The Jerry Garcia Band.<\/p>\n

\u2018The Wheel\u2019 was so popular, in fact, that virtually every variation and spin-off of the Dead that formed after Garcia\u2019s death has played the song. That includes Bob Weir\u2019s RatDog, Phil Lesh\u2019s solo performances, and the current John Mayer-led Dead and Company that continues to tour. For a track that wasn\u2019t actually technically a Grateful Dead song, \u2018The Wheel\u2019 has had quite a bit of staying power.<\/p>\n

The effortless flow of \u2018The Wheel\u2019 is what gives the song some of its massive appeal. Finding Garcia at his most effortlessly engrossing, the track benefits from some hypnotic grooves courtesy of drummer Bill Kreutzmann and a series of mind-expanding lyrics from Robert Hunter. According to Garcia, nothing about \u2018The Wheel\u2019 was contrived or forced.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat side [side two of Garcia] was really almost one continuous performance, pretty much,\u201d Garcia explained. \u201cWhen a song would come up in there, or just a progression, we\u2019d play with it and work it through a few more times. And \u2018The Wheel\u2019 came out of that. It wasn\u2019t written, I didn\u2019t have anything in mind, I hadn\u2019t sketched it out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anyone who has come into contact with Jerry Garcia will already be unsure of this list. Much of what made Garcia and the rest of his bands, first with the Grateful Dead and then with the Jerry Garcia Band, is his mercurial nature. It is what makes his music so essential and what makes this conception unsurprising. <\/p>\n

Bob Matthews, the engineer who worked with Garcia on the album, concurred with the free-flowing atmosphere of the recording. \u201cAs we were playing it back and doing some of the overdubs, Hunter was there and he had a big piece of paper and he was writing on it up on the wall,\u201d Matthews remembers. \u201cHe was writing words while we were listening to one of the playbacks and it turned out to be perfect. It was \u2018The Wheel\u2019. That song came from nowhere and just happened like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Garcia music was about the moment<\/a>. Whether that moment took him off course for the chorus was by the by, for Garcia it wasn\u2019t the destination but the journey that was important. This attitude, complemented by the band\u2019s impressive musical chops, meant songs like this exist in all their glory. <\/p>\n

Listen to the studio version of \u2018The Wheel\u2019 down below.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credit: Alamy) Thu 20 November 2025 19:49, UK The 1972 solo debut from Jerry Garcia wound up being…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583393,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[91533,77,86580,133179,269,158998,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-583392","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-1970s","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-grateful-dead","11":"tag-jerry-garcia","12":"tag-music","13":"tag-songwriting","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115584302807439546","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}