The Bob Weir lyric about assaulting a police officer
The Grateful Dead were never the violent type. In fact, they were quite the opposite.
The band are considered one of the leading figures in the hippy movement, and their music was very much one that promoted peace, love and unity. They wanted people to be able to enjoy their music no matter what mood they were in, and they were also adamant on not gatekeeping their sound because of the joy that it brought.
As such, when they wrote their music, they put it together in a way where other bands could grab their ideas and run with them whenever they saw fit. Bob Weir was adamant that people would be able to play the band’s music even after all of the original members had passed away, as he hoped that people would be banging out the tunes of the Grateful Dead for over 300 years.
“That whole thing is constructed so that anyone can step in and do it,” said Bob Weir. “I’m hoping that people of varying persuasions will find something they can agree on in the music that I’ve offered, and find each other through it.”
Producer Don Was can attest to this. He remembers speaking to Weir and the musician, constantly thinking about the number 300. Over and over again, when longevity was a question, 300 was the answer. “The number 300 was in his head,” said Was. “In 300 years, he wanted people to still respond to this music. And we won’t let him down.”
A lot of what the Grateful Dead wound up writing was incredibly sweet-sounding and also quite experimental with its lyricism. They wrote a lot about the different trips they had when trying psychedelics, and the result was a lot of songs that spoke of chaotic imagery but didn’t necessarily come packed with different elements which individuals could draw from. Few of their songs had words that people connected with on a personal level as quite often, they were inspired by one individual trippy experience. That didn’t mean the band didn’t occasionally write from a place of fact, though.
‘That’s It For The Other One’ acts as the centrepiece for the Grateful Dead’s album Anthem of the Sun, and the song is without a doubt one of the greatest pieces of psychedelic music ever written. The whole thing consists of snippets of live sounds, studio recordings and improvised sections, perfectly encapsulating everything that fans adored about the band. The theme of the track predominantly revolves around Neal Cassady, the bus driver for The Merry Pranksters, but before that, listeners get a brief glimpse into an incident between Bob Weir and the police.
The story is simple: he assaulted them, at least that’s likely what was written in the police report (if one was actually filed). However, what really happened was Bob Weir saw some police officers standing around and so decided to throw a water balloon at them. A merry prank for many, but his actions were enough to land him a night in prison. Weir used this moment as the perfect jumping-off point for what would become an essential ode to counterculture.
The opening lyric of the classic simply reads: “The heat came ‘round and busted me for smiling on a cloudy day.”
