‘Alligator’: The first song Robert Hunter wrote for the Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead, arguably the definitive band of the counterculture, were always the sum of their parts. Led by the eminent Jerry Garcia and featuring other staples of the era, such as Bob Weir and Phil Lesh, together, the group crafted some of the most distinctive music of their generation, fusing innovative, jam-oriented rock ‘n’ roll with Americana, jazz, psychedelia and an array of other palettes. Another man who was vital to most of their brilliance was Robert Hunter.
Although Hunter passed away in 2019 at age 78, he left a tremendous legacy with the Grateful Dead. Famously, Garcia had founded the band in 1965, but it was only at the end of the decade that Hunter would converge with them and help lift their work.
Garcia was invited to join the Grateful Dead as a lyricist, with his first substantial contribution to an album being 1969’s Aoxomoxoa. One of the group’s finest offerings, the record features favourites such as ‘St. Stephen’ and ‘China Cat Sunflower’, two tracks that Hunter had a defining hand in penning. Later highlights he would bring to life would be ‘Ripple’, ‘Truckin” and ‘Terrapin Station’.
Before the significant brilliance came to the fore, however, there was one track that started it all for Hunter and the Grateful Dead. His first credit with the band is ‘Alligator’ from the group’s second album, Anthem of the Sun. A storied composition among hardcore Deadheads, the song carries an interesting backstory that offers insight into the inner workings of the band. In May 1967, the Dead took a trip to the Russian River in northern California following the invitation of John Warnecke, a friend of drummer Bill Kreutzmann. Warnecke’s father was a famous architect who’d constructed a vacation home in the area surrounded by several smaller cabins.
The Grateful Dead stayed out in the countryside for two weeks, taking large amounts of acid and attempting to freak out holidaymakers on the river by blasting animal sounds and strange noises through their speakers. Amid all the playfulness, though, the band also worked on new music. It was, in their own typically bizarro way, a temporary hippie paradise.
During the trip, when they weren’t getting kicks out of perturbing unsuspecting kayakers, the group started working on what would become one of their definitive songs, ‘Dark Star’. In the years since, Kreutzmann has also said he believes that ‘The Other One’ also formulated during this trip.
However, more significantly, it was during this stay that Garcia remembered some of the lyrics that Hunter – his friend since the early 1960s – had sent him. Enjoying the double entendre of his words, the band incorporated them into keyboardist Ron ‘Pigpen’ McKernan’s music, resulting in ‘Alligator’. Accordingly, when they returned to San Francisco, the Grateful Dead had a new member, and his lyrics were to help them down a path that would see them forge much more profound art than ever before.
Listen to ‘Alligator’ below.
