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December 8, 2005
in the news
per the ap:
Academic unravels the origin of the Grateful Dead’s lyrics
By JOHN ROGERS Associated Press Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) — By day he was a mild-mannered, buttoned-down reference librarian. By night - and on weekends and during vacations - David Dodd would shed his jacket and tie for tie-dye and morph into a Grateful Dead fan.
He was one of those multicolored, often-bearded people who, for what seemed like endless summers, followed the band from show to show in search of its holy grail - that elusive, transcendent musical moment.
Then one day, this scholarly fellow stumbled upon the perfect union for his two passions.
Dodd, who finds great joy paging through books and microfilm or surfing the Web to determine the exact origin of phrases and expressions, decided he would annotate the recorded works of the Grateful Dead.
Ten years later, he has come out with “The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics.” The 480-page illustrated book was published by Simon & Schuster’s Free Press in October. It has a lengthy foreword by the band’s principal lyricist, Robert Hunter, who came out of seclusion long enough to pay Dodd the ultimate compliment: He said the researcher got it right.
“It’s a lovely book,” Hunter remarked from his home in Northern California. “I thumb through it and find it actually of interest. … I had no idea that all of these things he found had affected my songs.”
Posted by forshac at December 8, 2005 1:03 PM
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