{"id":799733,"date":"2019-09-24T11:30:18","date_gmt":"2019-09-24T17:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=889788"},"modified":"2019-09-24T11:30:18","modified_gmt":"2019-09-24T17:30:18","slug":"robert-hunter-grateful-dead-collaborator-and-lyricist-dead-at-78","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/robert-hunter-grateful-dead-collaborator-and-lyricist-dead-at-78\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Hunter, Grateful Dead Collaborator and Lyricist, Dead at 78"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Robert Hunter<\/a>, the poet and writer who provided the Grateful Dead<\/a> with many of their vivid and enduring lyrics, died Tuesday night. He was 78. No cause of death was provided.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is with great sadness we confirm our beloved Robert passed away yesterday night,\u201d Hunter\u2019s family announced in a statement. \u201cHe died peacefully at home in his bed, surrounded by love. His wife Maureen was by his side holding his hand. For his fans that have loved and supported him all these years, take comfort in knowing that his words are all around us, and in that way his is never truly gone.  In this time of grief please celebrate him the way you all know how, by being together and listening to the music. Let there be songs to fill the air.\u201d<\/p>\n

Considered one of rock\u2019s most ambitious and dazzling lyricists, Hunter was the literary counterpoint to the band\u2019s musical experimentation. His lyrics \u2014 heard in everything from early Dead classics like \u201cDark Star\u201d and \u201cChina Cat Sunflower\u201d and proceeding through \u201cUncle John\u2019s Band,\u201d \u201cBox of Rain,\u201d \u201cScarlet Begonias,\u201d and \u201cTouch of Gray\u201d\u2014 were as much a part of the band as Jerry Garcia\u2019s singing and guitar.<\/p>\n

Born Robert Burns in California in 1941, Hunter met Garcia in 1961. Garcia asked Hunter to play in a jug band, but Hunter passed, instead seeing a future for himself as a writer. At Stanford, Hunter took part in early LSD experiments and dabbled in Scientology before leaving for the Southwest, where he battled drug issues. There, he sent several lyrics to the Dead in San Francisco before moving to the Bay Area to reunite with Garcia. When the band was working up an instrumental at a show north of San Francisco, Hunter listened and began writing lyrics to accompany the music; the result, \u201cDark Star,\u201d was both a landmark for the band and also the official start of Hunter\u2019s new role as the band\u2019s lyricist in residence.<\/p>\n