What is the Grateful Dead’s longest song?
American rockers the Grateful Dead were forged in the cauldron of early psychedelia that was developing around the San Francisco Bay area in the mid-1960s. While they were primarily a live band, and this trait was a mainstay throughout their career, the Dead’s discography includes far more live releases than studio albums, and they used their gigs to push their music as far as it could go.
There was the off-the-cuff psychedelic experiments of their early days, genre-straddling spontaneity of their middle period, and the virtuoso soloing of their final years. Some of the Dead’s songs became best known for their live versions, even if they were initially recorded in the studios.
One or two of these tracks became staples of the band’s setlists, immovable objects despite the dozens of different songs they recorded through the decades. These pieces formed the basis of extended improvisations, which not only allowed specific members of the band their own solos but encouraged the group to create something new together, live on stage.
No song encapsulates this sense of spontaneous, telepathic co-creation more than the aptly entitled ‘Playing in the Band’. This simple, heartfelt homage to the pure, tribal instinct that binds a band of musicians together in song first appeared on the 1971 live album Grateful Dead, otherwise known as Skull and Roses, clocking in at just four minutes 39 seconds.
From that moment on, though, the song gradually got longer and longer, expanding into mind-bending psych-jazz meanderings that sent Dead fans into ecstasy. Eventually, in May 1974, the band used it as the basis for their longest-ever recording of a single piece of music.
Just how long is the longest version?
The Grateful Dead’s performance of ‘Playing in the Band’ in Seattle, Washington on May 21st, 1974, was released as its own limited edition album for Record Store Day 2018. And it certainly gave as good as any other album out there, having to be cut in half to fit on two sides of a vinyl LP.
In total, this version of the song lasted a total of 46 minutes and 24 seconds, making it one of the longest rock songs ever recorded. This release exceeded the 1972 recording of their masterpiece ‘Dark Star’ from a live show in Paris, which was released for Record Store Day on the 50th anniversary of that performance in 2012. The Dead racked up a mere 39 minutes and 27 seconds of playing time on ‘Dark Star’. A trifling track, by comparison.
It only seems fitting that the Dead’s Ode to Playing in the Dead should be the longest song they ever played. Arguably, no band has meant more to play in for its members than Palo Alto’s finest did to the song’s composers Bob Weir and Mickey Hart and their bandmates.
Longtime Grateful Dead collaborator and non-member Robert Hunter did write the lyrics to ‘Playing in the Band’, it must be said. Still, that takes nothing away from the on-stage magic shared between its classic line-ups when they took the piece in new directions each time they played it.
