{"id":694296,"date":"2026-01-14T00:59:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T00:59:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/694296\/"},"modified":"2026-01-14T00:59:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T00:59:14","slug":"the-one-grateful-dead-song-jerry-garcia-felt-he-failed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/694296\/","title":{"rendered":"The one Grateful Dead song Jerry Garcia felt he “failed”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Jerry<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n

Tue 13 January 2026 20:18, UK <\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t uncommon for Jerry Garcia to look down on some of the earliest Grateful Dead<\/a> songs. The guitarist and band leader had spent a large chunk of his career taking potshots at the work the band had done. It\u2019s par for the course. <\/p>\n

John Lennon would spend most of his life taking aim at The Beatles, Kurt Cobain complained about Nirvana and not a day goes by that doesn\u2019t see Thom Yorke wince at Radiohead. Garcia was just another member of this creative fraternity.<\/p>\n

While most fans agree that his collaborations with Robert Hunter represent the peak of the band\u2019s material, Hunter didn\u2019t sign on until 1967, two years after the Dead officially adopted their name. In the time between, the Dead largely relied on covers while attempting to figure out how to write songs on their own.<\/p>\n

Across various interviews, Garcia wasn\u2019t shy about his opinion when it came to the band\u2019s early material. He called \u2018Cream Puff War\u2019 \u201ctotally embarrassing\u201d, \u2018Doin\u2019 That Rag\u2019 \u201cunsuccessful\u201d, and \u2018New Speedway Boogie\u2019<\/a> \u201ca little bit dire\u201d. The latter shows that Garcia was willing to bump songs from the band\u2019s most critically and commercially successful period. Garcia was looking for constant evolution, so when certain songs from Workingman\u2019s Dead came up, Garcia wasn\u2019t always kind in his estimations.<\/p>\n

A surprising knock came against that album\u2019s lovely ballad, \u2018High Time\u2019. One of the only true love songs in the Grateful Dead canon, \u2018High Time\u2019 was a Garcia\/Hunter classic that found its way into the band\u2019s repertoire and then quickly disappeared. It hung around just long enough to be recorded for Workingman\u2019s Dead, but Garcia was never happy with his final take on the song. <\/p>\n

\"Jerry<\/a>Jerry Garcia on stage with Grateful Dead. (Credits: Far Out \/ Carl Lender)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe song that I think failed on [Workingman\u2019s Dead] is \u2018High Time.\u2019 It\u2019s a beautiful song, but I was just not able to sing it worth a shit,\u201d Garcia claimed to Yale law professor Charles Reich in 1972. \u201cAnd I really can\u2019t do justice to that kind of song now. I\u2019m not that good of a singer. But I wish someone who could really sing would do one of those songs sometime.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018High Time\u2019 is a beautiful song, but I don\u2019t think our performance on the record was very good,\u201d Garcia reiterated to BAM in 1977. \u201cIt\u2019s a better song than we performed it.\u201d <\/p>\n

The first time the Grateful Dead ever performed \u2018High Time\u2019 was at the Fillmore East in New York City for their late show on June 20th, 1969. That was almost eight months before the sessions for Workingman\u2019s Dead began. Garcia had a long time to perfect his vocal delivery, singing the song a grand total of 46 times in concert before the Workingman\u2019s Dead sessions began on February 7th, 1970.<\/p>\n

Between the start of the sessions and the album\u2019s eventual (likely slightly off) official release date of June 14th, the Dead played \u2018High Time\u2019 an additional 16 times, with four extra performances after the album was available in record stores. And then\u2026 nothing for six years. <\/p>\n

When Garcia decided to revive the song on June 9th, 1976, it had been 345 shows since the previous time the band played \u2018High Time\u2019. The song continued to float in and out of the band\u2019s repertoire throughout the next two decades, amassing a grand total of 137 performances before its 138th and final play on March 24th, 1995.<\/p>\n

Check out \u2018High Time\u2019 down below.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy) Tue 13 January 2026 20:18, UK It wasn\u2019t uncommon for Jerry Garcia to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":672514,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3936],"tags":[77,86580,133179,269,16,15],"class_list":["post-694296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-grateful-dead","tag-jerry-garcia","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115890747182499294","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694296","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=694296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=694296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=694296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=694296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}