• https://www.dead.net/features/greatest-stories-ever-told/greatest-stories-ever-told-saint-stephen
    Greatest Stories Ever Told - "Saint Stephen"

    By David Dodd

    Here’s the plan—each week, I will blog about a different song, focusing, usually, on the lyrics, but also on some other aspects of the song, including its overall impact—a truly subjective thing. Therefore, the best part, I would hope, would not be anything in particular that I might have to say, but rather, the conversation that may happen via the comments over the course of time—and since all the posts will stay up, you can feel free to weigh in any time on any of the songs! With Grateful Dead lyrics, there’s always a new and different take on what they bring up for each listener, it seems. (I’ll consider requests for particular songs—just private message me!)

    “Saint Stephen”

    The sheer unlikelihood of a song about an early Christian martyr as rock anthem makes “Saint Stephen” a wonderful and intriguing and endlessly fascinating piece, both lyrically and in its many musical variants over the years.

    The song credits go to Robert Hunter for the lyrics, and to Jerry Garcia for the major part of the song’s music, with Phil Lesh composing the music for the coda. The first documented performance, according to DeadBase X, took place on May 24, 1968, at the National Guard Armory (shades of “One More Saturday Night”!) in St. Louis. In and out of the repertoire it went, dropping away in 1971, reappearing from 1976 to 1979, then brought back for several performances in 1983. It racked up a total 289 known performances.

    “Saint Stephen” appeared on the Dead’s third studio album, Aoxomoxoa, which was released on June 20, 1969. Notably, it was captured and released on Live Dead, as part of a blockbuster suite including “Dark Star,” “The Eleven,” and “Lovelight.” In that performance, the coda (included in italics in Hunter’s Box of Rain lyrics anthology as part of “Saint Stephen”) provided a bridge between “Saint Stephen” and “The Eleven”: “High green chilly winds and windy vines in loops….”

    An interview in Relix magazine contained this exchange:

    Relix: Was Saint Stephen anyone specific?
    Hunter: No, it was just Saint Stephen.
    Relix: You weren’t writing about someone, you were writing about something?
    Hunter: Yea. That was a great song to write.

    He also discussed the song in an interview with Jeff Tamarkin:

    I had been working on this a long time before I gave it to the Grateful Dead, before I took off for New Mexico, which is where I originally sent them the lyrics from. I don't know what to say about this song, except that it was very important to me. It seemed to be saying oodles. It's still one of my favorites. I didn't know who the real Saint Stephen was until I wrote it.

    Of course, the imagery the song gets across is more or less branded into the cerebral cortices of Deadheads everywhere, and we see this saint with his rose going in and out of the garden, and we see the wishing well, and the golden bell, and the ladyfinger writing “what for?” across the morning sky. (Although, I almost hesitate to point out, some of us may visualize the “lady finger” as a lady’s finger, some of us as a celestial pastry…)

    In fact, the song is full of nothing but questions. Answers aplenty in the bye and bye, but for now, it’s questions all the way down that well.

    Unanswered questions run through the song, and not even this giant of early Christian history knows how to answer the first ones posed: “Did it matter? Does it now?”

    The Relix interviewer was very likely probing Hunter to see if he would say anything about the speculations over the years that the song was really about Stephen Gaskin, the Haight Ashbury spiritual leader who eventually founded The Farm, and who led a well-attended discussion group during the heyday of the Haight. The discussion group was known as the Monday Night Class, and at its peak during 1969 and 1970 it drew up to 1500 attendees. (It was held at a location out by the Great Highway. Lyrics within lyrics…)

    But neither Hunter, nor anyone else, has had anything positive to say about such speculation. Nope, it’s about the Christian martyr.

    And who was this martyr? He was the first deacon ordained by the apostles, one of seven deacons. “Stephen” is derived from the Greek for “crown,” (“country garland”?) and his career is documented in the biblical book of The Acts of the Apostles, chapters 6-8. (“And Stephen, full of grace and fortitude, did great wonders and signs among the people.”) He was stoned to death for preaching that Israel had deviated from God’s word, around the year 34. His feast day is celebrated on December 26.

    An 1833 hymn, “Saint Stephen Was a Holy Man” (credited to “traditional”) contains this verse, bringing to mind the line: “Wherever he goes, the people all complain:

    But when they heard him so to say,
    Their hearts in sunder clave,
    And gnashing on him with their teeth,
    Like madmen they did rave;
    And then they all so sharp and shrill,
    With violence gan ran,
    That there, without the city-walls,
    They ston'd this holy man.

    (This hymn’s chorus bears some resemblance to “Mason’s Children.” Hmmm….another time.)

    Interestingly, both Stephens were preachers, in a way. I love the line, “Wherever he goes, the people all complain.” No one enjoys being told difficult truths. They can get you killed.

    The music accompanying all of this imagery, all these questions without answers, can be at times grandiose, at times, rollicking in its initial verses, but then it melts into the bridge: “Lady finger, dipped in moonlight…” These lines were characterized by the writer Ed McClanahan, in his piece about the Dead in Playboy magazine, “Grateful Dead I Have Known,” “…the sweetest, tenderest, loveliest thing anybody had ever said to her, ever in her life.” (McClanahan was relating a speculative story about a young woman’s experience while in the act of conceiving a child she later claimed was Garcia’s own “true” child. You have to read the piece to get it.)

    But there’s that very strong image, staying with us stubbornly, of a finger, dipped in moonlight, writing a question across the morning sky. And the daybreak brings a splatter of answers, doesn’t it? And can’t you just see darkness shrugging, turning, and bidding the day goodbye? It may not “make sense” but it makes perfect sense.

    And then, where does that speeding arrow come from? And who is that babe being wrapped in scarlet, like some character in an ancient ballad? In fact, so much about this song feels ancient and at the same time hallucinatory, we are left in an altered state of consciousness by the words alone. And the music just helps that along.

    The song seems to come to some kind of conclusion, only to have its own lyrics undercut that conclusion. The very determined declamation of “Saint Stephen will remain, all he’s lost he shall regain” is followed by a verse that ends with an answer to a question that is then questioned itself: “But what would be the answer to the answer man?”

    The coda that follows seems like some lost fragment of Celtic song, or maybe that’s just the memory I have of staring at the words that were including as an insert to the Live Dead LP, which were written in a very Celtic-looking script with large elaborate capitals.

    Here’s where the song’s own garden appears—appropriately, since our saint is going in and out of said garden holding a rose. Vines, lavender, ivy, and manzanita…plenty of plants for your Grateful Dead garden, all languishing for lack of water in the barren landscape.

    The song has remained very much alive in the repertoire of the various post-Grateful Dead bands, and it’s always wonderful to hear, and especially to hear the big crowd reactions to certain lines and the roaring out of others in a huge chorus.

    It definitely seems to be saying oodles. And in my mind, it’s one of those Hunter lyrics that shows how wide open the lyrics can be, even with very specific imagery. One of these weeks, I’m going to get around to “China Cat Sunflower.”

    Here’s the craziest story I have to go with “Saint Stephen.” At my first Dead show, in October 1976, when the band played the first, ringing, opening notes of the song, the sun blinked. I mean, there was a moment of complete darkness in the middle of an outdoor, sunlit Day on the Green show at the Oakland Coliseum, and then the sun came back on. Believe it if you need it…but I did go on to become a reference librarian, and what is a reference librarian if not an answer man?

    A final connection to note here, although I am certain there are many more. Garcia’s memorial service was held at Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Belvedere, Marin County, California, with Mathew Fox presiding.

    Over to you.

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  • Donn K. Harris
    10 months 3 weeks ago
    One of the Classics

    St. Stephen could only have been written in a short 3-4 year window when anything was possible in rock music. It is impossible to describe. Is it Celtic, Renaissance, melodic, improvisational, poetic? ........ nothing quite fits. It's one of the psychedelic anthems; the band is so tight it's like one mind, and the song structure is so unique, the changes so unexpected, and it's so unlike anything written by the Dead or anyone else, that it must have come in a moment of divine inspiration. On the Live/Dead version, it was the first time I felt the power of the two drummer line-up; I almost believed it was one drummer with four hands. Given that the lead-in to The Eleven was a Phil Lesh bridge, and that he has a vocal part with 'Lady finger .........,' I suspect Phil had more to do with St. Stephen than is generally credited. That would explain its uniqueness, as Phil didn't write much and has a classical background; in any case, a composition of complexity and depth and mystery.

  • Default Avatar
    Worzit
    7 years 9 months ago
    Saint Stephen
    At 59, I can't lay claim to being a Deadhead, just someone who came late to an appreciation of their music. I have to confess I didn't really get what they were all about until I heard "Turn On Your Lovelight" from Live Dead. I'll be the first to admit that I can't possibly understand their songs better than someone who's been listening to them and enjoying them for decades, but isn't it possible that Hunter was having one on us when he insisted that "Saint Stephen" was about Saint Stephen? From the first time I heard the song, I thought, "Oh, that's cool. A cryptic song about Stephen Foster." That impression is based on a few factors, not the least being that the title "saint" could be a facetious way of giving false honor to a man who is often cited as the greatest early American composer but is also suspected of stealing much of his material from slaves. "Wishing well with a golden bell, bucket hanging clear to hell, Hell halfway twixt now and then, Stephen fill it up and lower down and lower down again." Sounds to me like he's exploiting the creativity of an underclass for his own gain, especially followed by lines like "Wrap the babe in scarlet colors, call it your own." My final evidence is contained in the line "Talk about your plenty, talk about your ills, One man gathers what another man spills." Sounds to me like he's profiting from the spontaneous inventions of people who aren't even aware that he's eavesdropping on them. Deadheads, what do you think? I can't possibly be the first person who's thought of this.
  • Default Avatar
    dain_bramage
    9 years 7 months ago
    real deep
    the song is narrow and deep, like the arrow being shot... you can't ignore the christian imagery when the song is named st. stephen. to me, the babe in scarlet has always been jesus... calling it your own is st. stephen by synecdoche representing all of christianity claiming jesus as their own and the beginning of christian religion. an attempt by man to grasp something that we hope helps us explain our existence. stephen, like all mortals may have doubted jesus himself. stephen was twixt now and then like we are now, and since then, seems to have regained a whole lot. the imagery of the earth being our "home," being temporary, is expounded by the sea shore and dawn rising. this dawn has the all-important "what for?" question scrawled across it. although stephen may have thought he had the answer, his was probably based a lot on christianity. our existence, similar to the song, is a mystery. stephen definitely didn't have the answer, and the great irony is the answer man doesn't have it either.
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By David Dodd

Here’s the plan—each week, I will blog about a different song, focusing, usually, on the lyrics, but also on some other aspects of the song, including its overall impact—a truly subjective thing. Therefore, the best part, I would hope, would not be anything in particular that I might have to say, but rather, the conversation that may happen via the comments over the course of time—and since all the posts will stay up, you can feel free to weigh in any time on any of the songs! With Grateful Dead lyrics, there’s always a new and different take on what they bring up for each listener, it seems. (I’ll consider requests for particular songs—just private message me!)

“Saint Stephen”

The sheer unlikelihood of a song about an early Christian martyr as rock anthem makes “Saint Stephen” a wonderful and intriguing and endlessly fascinating piece, both lyrically and in its many musical variants over the years.

The song credits go to Robert Hunter for the lyrics, and to Jerry Garcia for the major part of the song’s music, with Phil Lesh composing the music for the coda. The first documented performance, according to DeadBase X, took place on May 24, 1968, at the National Guard Armory (shades of “One More Saturday Night”!) in St. Louis. In and out of the repertoire it went, dropping away in 1971, reappearing from 1976 to 1979, then brought back for several performances in 1983. It racked up a total 289 known performances.

“Saint Stephen” appeared on the Dead’s third studio album, Aoxomoxoa, which was released on June 20, 1969. Notably, it was captured and released on Live Dead, as part of a blockbuster suite including “Dark Star,” “The Eleven,” and “Lovelight.” In that performance, the coda (included in italics in Hunter’s Box of Rain lyrics anthology as part of “Saint Stephen”) provided a bridge between “Saint Stephen” and “The Eleven”: “High green chilly winds and windy vines in loops….”

An interview in Relix magazine contained this exchange:

Relix: Was Saint Stephen anyone specific?
Hunter: No, it was just Saint Stephen.
Relix: You weren’t writing about someone, you were writing about something?
Hunter: Yea. That was a great song to write.

He also discussed the song in an interview with Jeff Tamarkin:

I had been working on this a long time before I gave it to the Grateful Dead, before I took off for New Mexico, which is where I originally sent them the lyrics from. I don't know what to say about this song, except that it was very important to me. It seemed to be saying oodles. It's still one of my favorites. I didn't know who the real Saint Stephen was until I wrote it.

Of course, the imagery the song gets across is more or less branded into the cerebral cortices of Deadheads everywhere, and we see this saint with his rose going in and out of the garden, and we see the wishing well, and the golden bell, and the ladyfinger writing “what for?” across the morning sky. (Although, I almost hesitate to point out, some of us may visualize the “lady finger” as a lady’s finger, some of us as a celestial pastry…)

In fact, the song is full of nothing but questions. Answers aplenty in the bye and bye, but for now, it’s questions all the way down that well.

Unanswered questions run through the song, and not even this giant of early Christian history knows how to answer the first ones posed: “Did it matter? Does it now?”

The Relix interviewer was very likely probing Hunter to see if he would say anything about the speculations over the years that the song was really about Stephen Gaskin, the Haight Ashbury spiritual leader who eventually founded The Farm, and who led a well-attended discussion group during the heyday of the Haight. The discussion group was known as the Monday Night Class, and at its peak during 1969 and 1970 it drew up to 1500 attendees. (It was held at a location out by the Great Highway. Lyrics within lyrics…)

But neither Hunter, nor anyone else, has had anything positive to say about such speculation. Nope, it’s about the Christian martyr.

And who was this martyr? He was the first deacon ordained by the apostles, one of seven deacons. “Stephen” is derived from the Greek for “crown,” (“country garland”?) and his career is documented in the biblical book of The Acts of the Apostles, chapters 6-8. (“And Stephen, full of grace and fortitude, did great wonders and signs among the people.”) He was stoned to death for preaching that Israel had deviated from God’s word, around the year 34. His feast day is celebrated on December 26.

An 1833 hymn, “Saint Stephen Was a Holy Man” (credited to “traditional”) contains this verse, bringing to mind the line: “Wherever he goes, the people all complain:

But when they heard him so to say,
Their hearts in sunder clave,
And gnashing on him with their teeth,
Like madmen they did rave;
And then they all so sharp and shrill,
With violence gan ran,
That there, without the city-walls,
They ston'd this holy man.

(This hymn’s chorus bears some resemblance to “Mason’s Children.” Hmmm….another time.)

Interestingly, both Stephens were preachers, in a way. I love the line, “Wherever he goes, the people all complain.” No one enjoys being told difficult truths. They can get you killed.

The music accompanying all of this imagery, all these questions without answers, can be at times grandiose, at times, rollicking in its initial verses, but then it melts into the bridge: “Lady finger, dipped in moonlight…” These lines were characterized by the writer Ed McClanahan, in his piece about the Dead in Playboy magazine, “Grateful Dead I Have Known,” “…the sweetest, tenderest, loveliest thing anybody had ever said to her, ever in her life.” (McClanahan was relating a speculative story about a young woman’s experience while in the act of conceiving a child she later claimed was Garcia’s own “true” child. You have to read the piece to get it.)

But there’s that very strong image, staying with us stubbornly, of a finger, dipped in moonlight, writing a question across the morning sky. And the daybreak brings a splatter of answers, doesn’t it? And can’t you just see darkness shrugging, turning, and bidding the day goodbye? It may not “make sense” but it makes perfect sense.

And then, where does that speeding arrow come from? And who is that babe being wrapped in scarlet, like some character in an ancient ballad? In fact, so much about this song feels ancient and at the same time hallucinatory, we are left in an altered state of consciousness by the words alone. And the music just helps that along.

The song seems to come to some kind of conclusion, only to have its own lyrics undercut that conclusion. The very determined declamation of “Saint Stephen will remain, all he’s lost he shall regain” is followed by a verse that ends with an answer to a question that is then questioned itself: “But what would be the answer to the answer man?”

The coda that follows seems like some lost fragment of Celtic song, or maybe that’s just the memory I have of staring at the words that were including as an insert to the Live Dead LP, which were written in a very Celtic-looking script with large elaborate capitals.

Here’s where the song’s own garden appears—appropriately, since our saint is going in and out of said garden holding a rose. Vines, lavender, ivy, and manzanita…plenty of plants for your Grateful Dead garden, all languishing for lack of water in the barren landscape.

The song has remained very much alive in the repertoire of the various post-Grateful Dead bands, and it’s always wonderful to hear, and especially to hear the big crowd reactions to certain lines and the roaring out of others in a huge chorus.

It definitely seems to be saying oodles. And in my mind, it’s one of those Hunter lyrics that shows how wide open the lyrics can be, even with very specific imagery. One of these weeks, I’m going to get around to “China Cat Sunflower.”

Here’s the craziest story I have to go with “Saint Stephen.” At my first Dead show, in October 1976, when the band played the first, ringing, opening notes of the song, the sun blinked. I mean, there was a moment of complete darkness in the middle of an outdoor, sunlit Day on the Green show at the Oakland Coliseum, and then the sun came back on. Believe it if you need it…but I did go on to become a reference librarian, and what is a reference librarian if not an answer man?

A final connection to note here, although I am certain there are many more. Garcia’s memorial service was held at Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Belvedere, Marin County, California, with Mathew Fox presiding.

Over to you.

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On page 175 of Paul Grushkin's Book of the Deadheads, a drawing by an unknown artist called "And They Played St. Stephen." In which, from the crowd to the stars above, explosive joy rules the day. I love that thing. Indeed, one did not get this song nearly often enough!
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for all of the historical info. on one of my top three favorite Dead songs. This song has always seemed so appropriate to our crowd, "wherever (they) go the people all complain". Never saw us Deadheads as welcome "customers" here in the Midwest and still don't. St. Stephen is, to me, a beautiful Hunter song in support of the misunderstood underdog, "all he lost he shall regain". Love it! Always have, always will :)
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St. Stephen has remained with me - in my ringtone. I still love the song, the tune as much as I did when I first heard Live Dead. But, I prefer the early versions, the pre 1971 versions best. Even today whenever I am listening the the closing sequence of any version of Dark Star I feel empty if St. Stephen doesn't materialize.
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From what show was it that Bobby punctuated the line "One man gathers what another man spills" with "except in California".
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knowing EXACTLY what they mean with the "lady finger" lineshearing it in the GD movie one time that sounded like a giant, rolling around the 10/31/83 version (on tape) that was sublime 5/2/70! Aoxomoxoa's version 7/13/76: bah-bah (crowd goes WILD after the first bah) 10/11/83 10/15/83 6/15/76 (I think) :)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
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Anyone who writes songs, or studies poetry or lyrics, knows it can be years before some true or timely relevant meanings contained within the words reveal themselves - usually in fragments - and as with a lot of Grateful Dead songs, this one is certainly no exception. You also often wonder where in the world they really come from, whether purely from your imagination or from somewhere else. Who knows? Inspiration hits. You scribble it down as fast as it comes, work out the chords, screw around with the words for what seems like forever and there you have it. I'm pretty certain that this one is actually about or was intended for Stephen Hawking - and Stephen would answer, if he only knew how. Kinda cold, I know, but right to the point. It sure doesn't stop his mind though from wandering in and around the garden. I sent him the lyrics in a letter a few years ago to see if he might find them interesting. Wonder if he ever read them...?
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An amazing, amazing song. It's power to set souls to sailing is beyond all reason, so I won't even try to explain it. So, just a tiny personal nugget on this one, inspired by Double D's reference to the insert in the Live Dead LP (a large format sheet with playful Celtic filigree borders and lyrics to St Stephen and, if I recall correctly, also The Eleven). I was fortunate enough to meet Hunter once, and he graciously signed my copy of that insert. Thanks again, Hunter! I was also fortunate enough to meet Jerry once. Jerry was gracious enough to say hello and let me shake his hand while I babbled something idiotic. That is a precious memory for me, BUT... I often regret failing to ask Jerry for an autograph on that same LP insert. Dang!
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...on a great song. "Saint Stephen will remain - All he's lost he shall regain". Good stuff. Lin in Bangor
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I thought I once read somewhere that Robert Hunter actually wrote the music to this song. Or maybe just the intro? Did I dream this....anyone?
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... and while we were waiting for Sly and the Family Stone, someone suggested we go see "Some band from San Francisco" that was getting ready to play on the other stage. This unlikely crew of freaks started playing this weird music, and then there was this song called "Dark Star" that was really mellow and flowing and went into this cord progression at the end and all of a sudden they were playing something else about "Saint Stephen" and the jamming commenced and they shifted into another realm, space opened up, a bus stop appeared, "The bus came by and I got on, that's where it all began."
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Bob dropped that line at the 3/1/69 Fillmore West show. But it wouldn't surprise me if he did it more than once.
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Love the St. Stephen from this show. It's a really "bouncy" version... Love the whole show in general! The Dark Star is phenomenal. One of my favorite DP's even though it's only 1 disc...
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Think I'm going to have to spend this otherwise quiet Saturday Night, grooving to the versions on Dave's Picks 6. Two St. Stephens on one release! That subscription is starting to pay off!
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Maybe the single best disc GDP has ever released.
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Ok.. Totally with you on DP2. Start to finish, it's gotta be the best single disc ever. A close second for me though is disc #1 from Dick's picks 12. Providence 6/26/74. The China Rider is unbelieveable... Then the truckin' and the MONSTER spanish jam... Wow! That disc doesn't contain a St. Stephen, so I apologize for getting off topic...
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Like Stephen's Rose, this song has delicate and subtle twists of imagery and meaning that unfold and touch upon one another and even other flowers from other songs and other stories. What's it all mean? "Oodles" says Hunter. "Stephen would answer if he only knew how" Ultimately we must consider "what would be the answer to the answer man?" Somewhere I read how Hunter felt the meaning of his lyrics is best explained by the song itself. Meanwhile ; as I attempt to compose my thoughts; I find I have an annoying Muse on my shoulder who looks curiously like Eric Idle. He asks and asks - "But where is the Ambiguity???"....Over There - in a Box of Rain... ( real crazy-I know!) So as I write this I am wanting to hold fast to the "speeding arrow" and spurn all the "fleeting matters." The arrow has One Point to Make which will be clearly seen and felt once it hits its mark. Meanwhile we find ourselves "half way twixt now and then." Somewhere in Stephen's bucket between heaven and hell. Perhaps we've been here so long we've "got to calling it home" Then someone like Stephen comes along and blows the lid off of our personal little Boxes of Rain. We all like to keep the rain in a box where its easier to manage...but Truth be Told...you can't Keep the Rain in a Box! Stephen is a Radical. In my box he's the character from the Bible. Maybe he's an Astrophysicist in your box, or a Discussion Group Leader,...or maybe Steven Stills who described Jesus Christ was a Non-Violent Revolutionary. Whoever you see Stephen as; I trust you see him as a Bone-Fide Radical! In a way I see him much like Ken Kesy and the Merry Pranksters. Stephen in the bible upset the established order and sacred views of his neighbors. He could see things that they weren't seeing. Things they didn't even want to see. So he did his best to show them and some didn't like it. Stephen wanted to lift everyone up to see the Golden Bell on the wishing well. Well...when the lid gets blown off of the Box as happened with Saint Stephen...there is a disturbance to the established order and Chaos erupts and soon a new form and order emerges. I'm sure you've noticed in your own way how the Grateful Dead Music has a way of pulling back the curtains and revealing the unseen Spiritual realm...full of winds both foul and fair... Saint Stephen had such an experience. Acts 7:55&56 says Stephen saw the Glory of God. He saw the heavens open up and saw the Son of Man Standing at the right hand of God. -What A Vision- Well...the point we are heading to...or at least the point I am trying to make ...is getting to the point where we will all be able to stand before the "Answer Man." We will all come to the place of promise where we will find sense and understanding to all the misunderstandings. Where all we've lost we shall regain. Yup "answers aplenty in the Bye and Bye" !
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A Lady Finger is also a banana variety, fairly common in Australia.
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I can't believe how many times Bob Weir screwed up the "St. Stephen will remain" verse during shows in 1971. He persistently sang "Did he doubt or did he try..." while Garcia sang the correct verse. Examples include 4/28/71 Fillmore East and 4/7/71 Boston Music Hall (where Bobby's error almost causes the song to come to a complete halt).... 4/8/71 Boston as well!!
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Pretty sure not this one, mustin321.... "Easy Wind" and "It Must Have Been the Roses," both music by Hunter. Anyone have other info?
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Hey, me too! I got my copy of that signed by Hunter when he played the Whole Earth Festival at UC Davis in 1977 or 1978. How fun!
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I first listened to St.Stephen in late June of 1969 just after the release of AoxomoxoA. Still one of the best studio albums from the Dead. Fast forward six months later I bought Live-Dead at the same time as buying my first Dead tickets (Fillmore East 1/2/70). Live-Dead became the powerhouse of John Coltrane style extended improvisation and jamming. St. Stephen was the song that combined images of ivy wrapped around the manzinita like a Celtic knot. The lyric insert is a work of high art and caligraphy. Canyon Road,Santa Fe,New Mexico is where Hunter wrote St. Stephen along with other gems like China Cat. The most powerful live performance of St. Stephen I ever saw was 4th row center at the Fillmore East 9/19/70. It all melts into a dream.
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The elevator at my workplace plays the first two notes of St. Stephen-- the first two notes you hear following the silence at the end of Dark Star, that tell you to settle in for a bit because, hell yes, they're going to play Saint F'ing Stephen--when it arrives on my floor to take me home at the end the day. As a result, I leave work every day with the song playing in my head. Been working there two years and I haven't gotten tired of it yet, though I'm looking for an elevator that plays the opening to Dark Star.
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In the Fall of 1983, I was riding my motorcycle from NH to FL and stopped in Greensboro, NC to catch the Dead show on 10/9. I forget how this happened exactly, but somehow I found myself in the arena lobby during soundcheck. By putting my ear up to the crack in the door to the hall, I could clearly hear the band practicing the tricky parts to St. Stephen over and over. They didn't play it that night, but two nights later broke it out in NYC. Closest I ever came to hearing that song live.
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Hi! To me this has always been one of the deepest, most basic Dead songs. And I've always felt it was a "worrying" song. Stephen is pacing back and forth, going in and out of the garden, like he's got a big question on his mind, perhaps the question the Lady's finger writes in the sky. This back and forth sway is accentuated by the couplet rhyming scheme in the first few verses and the last few, and the image of the bucket halfway 'twixt now and then. The question ("What for?") is not cosmic, it's about something specific that he did or didn't do. And it'll be ok, been here (in a state of indecision/angst) so long he's got to calling it home. Do we have any clue what he did or didn't do? Well, he's going to wrap the babe in scarlet covers and call it his own for what that's worth. And as well documented by Mr. Dodd et al., the rose that opens the song can be seen as a masculine symbol of love. OK, the rose can also be seen as a symbol of mystery, of death (when held by a martyr), etc. I don't mean to say the song has a simple meaning for me, but wanted to point out a possible narrative and my feeling that it's a song about fateful decisions. BTW, to go a little off track, I was at the Boston Music Hall on 6/9/76 when the Dead opened the second set of [essentially] the first post-hiatus tour with St. Stephen, and boy, I can still feel the thrill. Two years was a long time for me back then, not to mention 6 years since it had been played. It was a chestnut from the mystical past of the Dead back then, and it's still one of their most precious songs! To go even more off track, I saw DSO cover that 6/9/76 show in Boston a couple of years ago, about 50 yards from the old building where the boys played.
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Handjive, you remember correctly. The insert in Live Dead contains the lyrics for sides one and two of that double album, i.e. Saint Stephen, The Eleven, and Dark Star. We know that R. D. Thomas did the cover art. Did he do the insert as well?
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9 years 11 months
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the song is narrow and deep, like the arrow being shot... you can't ignore the christian imagery when the song is named st. stephen. to me, the babe in scarlet has always been jesus... calling it your own is st. stephen by synecdoche representing all of christianity claiming jesus as their own and the beginning of christian religion. an attempt by man to grasp something that we hope helps us explain our existence. stephen, like all mortals may have doubted jesus himself. stephen was twixt now and then like we are now, and since then, seems to have regained a whole lot. the imagery of the earth being our "home," being temporary, is expounded by the sea shore and dawn rising. this dawn has the all-important "what for?" question scrawled across it. although stephen may have thought he had the answer, his was probably based a lot on christianity. our existence, similar to the song, is a mystery. stephen definitely didn't have the answer, and the great irony is the answer man doesn't have it either.
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the song is narrow and deep, like the arrow being shot... you can't ignore the christian imagery when the song is named st. stephen. to me, the babe in scarlet has always been jesus... calling it your own is st. stephen by synecdoche representing all of christianity claiming jesus as their own and the beginning of christian religion. an attempt by man to grasp something that we hope helps us explain our existence. stephen, like all mortals may have doubted jesus himself. stephen was twixt now and then like we are now, and since then, seems to have regained a whole lot. the imagery of the earth being our "home," being temporary, is expounded by the sea shore and dawn rising. this dawn has the all-important "what for?" question scrawled across it. although stephen may have thought he had the answer, his was probably based a lot on christianity. our existence, similar to the song, is a mystery. stephen definitely didn't have the answer, and the great irony is the answer man doesn't have it either.
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At 59, I can't lay claim to being a Deadhead, just someone who came late to an appreciation of their music. I have to confess I didn't really get what they were all about until I heard "Turn On Your Lovelight" from Live Dead. I'll be the first to admit that I can't possibly understand their songs better than someone who's been listening to them and enjoying them for decades, but isn't it possible that Hunter was having one on us when he insisted that "Saint Stephen" was about Saint Stephen? From the first time I heard the song, I thought, "Oh, that's cool. A cryptic song about Stephen Foster." That impression is based on a few factors, not the least being that the title "saint" could be a facetious way of giving false honor to a man who is often cited as the greatest early American composer but is also suspected of stealing much of his material from slaves. "Wishing well with a golden bell, bucket hanging clear to hell, Hell halfway twixt now and then, Stephen fill it up and lower down and lower down again." Sounds to me like he's exploiting the creativity of an underclass for his own gain, especially followed by lines like "Wrap the babe in scarlet colors, call it your own." My final evidence is contained in the line "Talk about your plenty, talk about your ills, One man gathers what another man spills." Sounds to me like he's profiting from the spontaneous inventions of people who aren't even aware that he's eavesdropping on them. Deadheads, what do you think? I can't possibly be the first person who's thought of this.
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St. Stephen could only have been written in a short 3-4 year window when anything was possible in rock music. It is impossible to describe. Is it Celtic, Renaissance, melodic, improvisational, poetic? ........ nothing quite fits. It's one of the psychedelic anthems; the band is so tight it's like one mind, and the song structure is so unique, the changes so unexpected, and it's so unlike anything written by the Dead or anyone else, that it must have come in a moment of divine inspiration. On the Live/Dead version, it was the first time I felt the power of the two drummer line-up; I almost believed it was one drummer with four hands. Given that the lead-in to The Eleven was a Phil Lesh bridge, and that he has a vocal part with 'Lady finger .........,' I suspect Phil had more to do with St. Stephen than is generally credited. That would explain its uniqueness, as Phil didn't write much and has a classical background; in any case, a composition of complexity and depth and mystery.