• https://www.dead.net/features/greatest-stories-ever-told/greatest-stories-ever-told-looks-rain
    Greatest Stories Ever Told - "Looks Like Rain"

    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!)

    “Looks Like Rain”

    California has been begging for rain for a few years now, and we are in the midst of a serious drought. Right now, though, and for the past few days, it has been raining—a long, soaking rain with periods of intense thunderstorm activity.

    Last night, I went to a local nightclub to hear Bill Kreutzmann’s new band, TryptoBand, and on their setlist was “The Wheel,” which was perfect given the pyrotechnics going on in the air outside the show.

    Which led me to think about “Looks Like Rain,” a beautiful song with an implied story, deftly told by John Barlow, and sung and played so well over the years by the band.

    I remember being lucky enough to be in the first rows of a Greek Theater show in Berkeley in the early 1980s, when, between songs, an audience member shouted up to Phil Lesh, “Does it look like rain, Phil?” He put a finger to his lips with a sly smile—don’t spoil the surprise—and the band eased into the song.

    That opening phrase sequence, with Weir strumming the quiet arpeggios, then his voice entering, and finally: “You were gone…” and the band enters, reinforcing the emotion behind the words.

    When The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics came into being as a printed book on paper, we were lucky enough to have Barlow contribute an afterword for the book, in which he relates a very personal perspective on the song. It’s a longish passage, but I think he wouldn’t mind my quoting it extensively here.

    When I wrote “Looks Like Rain,” I had never fallen in love. I had certainly heard a lot of love songs. I had been to an opera or six. I was not unfamiliar with the huge literature of amorous helplessness. But I remained skeptical. I secretly believed that “falling in love” was a conceit that people had made up in order to make themselves even more miserable for their perceived insufficiencies. People do stuff like that. Nevertheless, there this song was on a winter day in Wyoming, and I didn’t try to stop it from coming into existence merely because it trafficked in emotions I hadn’t quite experienced. I didn’t know who these people in the song were or, really, what they were experiencing, but as it arrived, it seemed as genuine as any other love song.

    That was in 1972. Twenty-one years later, I fell in love for the first time in my life. I looked across a crowded room and saw somebody’s back and knew. Don’t ask me how I knew. Don’t even ask me what it was that I knew.

    Now, mind you, this was after I’d had about two hundred people come up to me in various contexts and tell me that “Looks Like Rain” was the song they fell in love to, or was the song that was played at their wedding, or was the song that changed their lives and helped them feel like one person. I would nod and smile as if I knew what they were talking about.

    In any event, I was instantaneously in love with some person who face I hadn’t seen yet. She turned around and fell in love with me.

    After we’d been together almost a year, enjoying a relationship so radiant that other would gather around it like cats to a fireplace, we were at a Dead concert in Nassau Coliseum (of all grim places). Bobby started to sing “Looks Like Rain,” and I started singing it to her myself so that she would get all the words. About halfway through, I realized that I was getting all the words for the first time. I finally knew what the song was about. I finally meant it. Or perhaps one could say more accurately that it finally meant me.

    So, there you go. That is as explicit an example as you are going to find of how these songs work over time. They accrue meaning. They change in resonance with the individual listener. Sometimes, they explode in your brain in a revelatory moment, and sometimes, they quietly gather strength over the years.

    “Looks Like Rain” has also been the subject of some rather hilarious speculation over the years due to the line “written in the letters of your name.” Was it a clue of some kind? I quote, in the book, an interview conducted with Weir by Al Franken, in which Weir uses a chalkboard to reveal that the song is actually about the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

    Other attempts to derive a name from the song, whether from the letters of the notes, or of the chords, or of the first letter of each line, etc., have proven to be a fruitless, if fun endeavor.

    Weir’s end-of-song rave up of “Rain rain, go away…” is another in a long line of examples of nursery rhymes in Grateful Dead songs—the subject of an essay I wrote on the annotated lyrics website which did not make the printed book. Over the years, Garcia’s part in this extended cadenza-like part of the song became fairly formalized—a baroque-sounding figure which seemed to grow in intensity and majesty along with the crescendo, underneath Weir’s pleading lines. Stunning.

    The song itself was often played in the context of the weather. (And it was one of the most-played songs overall, with over 400 performances.) If they were playing an outdoor concert with rain threatening, they might break out “Looks Like Rain.” One of a number of weather songs in their songbook, and one I am thinking of today. Let’s hope it continues to look like rain, at least here in California, for a few more soaking months.

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    johnny361
    9 years 3 months ago
    3/28/90
    The Without A Net version. After playing the Spring 90 box, It sounds as if Phil pulled the "woke today" line from another version. The rest of the song seems to be 3/28/90. Awesome song!
  • Moses Quasar
    9 years 3 months ago
    My favorite version....
    ....is 4/14/72. Jerry's lead is absolutely superb! A great one!
  • Default Avatar
    wissinomingdeadhead
    9 years 3 months ago
    my 2 favorite versions are...
    5/4/77, A real tear jerker12/1/79, A passionate rendition
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14 years 11 months

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!)

“Looks Like Rain”

California has been begging for rain for a few years now, and we are in the midst of a serious drought. Right now, though, and for the past few days, it has been raining—a long, soaking rain with periods of intense thunderstorm activity.

Last night, I went to a local nightclub to hear Bill Kreutzmann’s new band, TryptoBand, and on their setlist was “The Wheel,” which was perfect given the pyrotechnics going on in the air outside the show.

Which led me to think about “Looks Like Rain,” a beautiful song with an implied story, deftly told by John Barlow, and sung and played so well over the years by the band.

I remember being lucky enough to be in the first rows of a Greek Theater show in Berkeley in the early 1980s, when, between songs, an audience member shouted up to Phil Lesh, “Does it look like rain, Phil?” He put a finger to his lips with a sly smile—don’t spoil the surprise—and the band eased into the song.

That opening phrase sequence, with Weir strumming the quiet arpeggios, then his voice entering, and finally: “You were gone…” and the band enters, reinforcing the emotion behind the words.

When The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics came into being as a printed book on paper, we were lucky enough to have Barlow contribute an afterword for the book, in which he relates a very personal perspective on the song. It’s a longish passage, but I think he wouldn’t mind my quoting it extensively here.

When I wrote “Looks Like Rain,” I had never fallen in love. I had certainly heard a lot of love songs. I had been to an opera or six. I was not unfamiliar with the huge literature of amorous helplessness. But I remained skeptical. I secretly believed that “falling in love” was a conceit that people had made up in order to make themselves even more miserable for their perceived insufficiencies. People do stuff like that. Nevertheless, there this song was on a winter day in Wyoming, and I didn’t try to stop it from coming into existence merely because it trafficked in emotions I hadn’t quite experienced. I didn’t know who these people in the song were or, really, what they were experiencing, but as it arrived, it seemed as genuine as any other love song.

That was in 1972. Twenty-one years later, I fell in love for the first time in my life. I looked across a crowded room and saw somebody’s back and knew. Don’t ask me how I knew. Don’t even ask me what it was that I knew.

Now, mind you, this was after I’d had about two hundred people come up to me in various contexts and tell me that “Looks Like Rain” was the song they fell in love to, or was the song that was played at their wedding, or was the song that changed their lives and helped them feel like one person. I would nod and smile as if I knew what they were talking about.

In any event, I was instantaneously in love with some person who face I hadn’t seen yet. She turned around and fell in love with me.

After we’d been together almost a year, enjoying a relationship so radiant that other would gather around it like cats to a fireplace, we were at a Dead concert in Nassau Coliseum (of all grim places). Bobby started to sing “Looks Like Rain,” and I started singing it to her myself so that she would get all the words. About halfway through, I realized that I was getting all the words for the first time. I finally knew what the song was about. I finally meant it. Or perhaps one could say more accurately that it finally meant me.

So, there you go. That is as explicit an example as you are going to find of how these songs work over time. They accrue meaning. They change in resonance with the individual listener. Sometimes, they explode in your brain in a revelatory moment, and sometimes, they quietly gather strength over the years.

“Looks Like Rain” has also been the subject of some rather hilarious speculation over the years due to the line “written in the letters of your name.” Was it a clue of some kind? I quote, in the book, an interview conducted with Weir by Al Franken, in which Weir uses a chalkboard to reveal that the song is actually about the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Other attempts to derive a name from the song, whether from the letters of the notes, or of the chords, or of the first letter of each line, etc., have proven to be a fruitless, if fun endeavor.

Weir’s end-of-song rave up of “Rain rain, go away…” is another in a long line of examples of nursery rhymes in Grateful Dead songs—the subject of an essay I wrote on the annotated lyrics website which did not make the printed book. Over the years, Garcia’s part in this extended cadenza-like part of the song became fairly formalized—a baroque-sounding figure which seemed to grow in intensity and majesty along with the crescendo, underneath Weir’s pleading lines. Stunning.

The song itself was often played in the context of the weather. (And it was one of the most-played songs overall, with over 400 performances.) If they were playing an outdoor concert with rain threatening, they might break out “Looks Like Rain.” One of a number of weather songs in their songbook, and one I am thinking of today. Let’s hope it continues to look like rain, at least here in California, for a few more soaking months.

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California has been begging for rain for a few years now, and we are in the midst of a serious drought. Right now, though, and for the past few days, it has been raining—a long, soaking rain with periods of intense thunderstorm activity.
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Greatest Stories Ever Told - "Looks Like Rain"
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California has been begging for rain for a few years now, and we are in the midst of a serious drought. Right now, though, and for the past few days, it has been raining—a long, soaking rain with periods of intense thunderstorm activity.
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California has been begging for rain for a few years now, and we are in the midst of a serious drought. Right now, though, and for the past few days, it has been raining—a long, soaking rain with periods of intense thunderstorm activity.

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You know how, on some roller coasters, there might be a moment at the apex of a hill where you are weightless for a split second? The first time you ride, it catches you by surprise; but, as you ride again and again, you anticipate it, look forward to it, look around right before it happens to see how others react to it? This song, on its best nights, had that moment in the solo, where I swear the whole world seemed to stop and take a breath, weightless, for just a second. The anticipation, for me, was always to see if Jerry was going to land that next note-reaching for that ol' gold ring down inside. Hear it come again!
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....is 4/14/72. Jerry's lead is absolutely superb! A great one!
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11 years 4 months
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The Without A Net version. After playing the Spring 90 box, It sounds as if Phil pulled the "woke today" line from another version. The rest of the song seems to be 3/28/90. Awesome song!
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This song has touched me more personally than any other Dead song, by hitting home at the end of an almost 30 year marriage. Those feelings have been nailed perfectly in finding that other side of the bed, and indeed the entire landscape, empty when the love of your life really is gone. Even while being one of the best love songs I've ever heard, it also serves as an amazing post-breakup song as well.
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Maybe it was my altered state mixed with the swirling emotion of the arena or maybe it was the state of my crumbling relationship... The LLR from that night grabbed me like it never had before. The playing, Candace's Close Encounters lighting and Jerry's prolonged moan through the crescendo combined for a real mind bender!
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It's so heartwarming to hear how others react to this song. Barlow's own experience with it is of course especially poignant. That said, I skip it every time it comes up on a recording. It makes me cringe. What is wrong with me? I am in love and have been for years, and I'm full of the sentiments expressed. I think it has more to do with the choice of words (the cats and all). Not my thing. But if I had to pick one version I could tolerate, it would be one of the ones from the Europe '72 tour with the pedal steel accents. Those are the nicest.
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Thank goodness, I'm not the only one who does that!Cheers One man, always nice to know that you are no longer alone. Bill
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Tom Rush sang... "The hours that were yours echo like empty rooms Thoughts we used to share I now keep alone I woke last night and spoke to you Not thinkin' you were gone It felt so strange to lie awake alone No regrets - No tears goodbye Don't want you back - We'd only cry again Say goodbye again" It holds the same Sentiments as "Looks Like Rain" Learning how to Let Go of the One you Love and to "Brave the Storm to Come" maybe this song takes Some to a place they don't want to go. I tend to hum it when I'm Grieving for someone who's died. Especially the old Finale (which I love Much More than the "Can't Stop the Rain" refrain) When the Bass and Drums would Thunder and Jerry would Weep and Bob would Sing and Donna would Wail " It Looks Like Rain and it Feels Like Rain -OHHHH- Here Comes the Rain" Inspiring the Intestinal Fortitude to Carry a Broken Heart
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the 76- 78 versions of LLRbrave the storm to come, indeed
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One of my favorite Bobby songs and one that has stood the test of GD time.
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Partly, I confess, I posted about Looks Like Rain to see if we here in California might get some of that rain magic going. And tomorrow, we're expecting to be walloped by 5 to 6 inches in a single night, along with 50 mph winds, so I am happy about that. Thanks for the very interesting string of comments, everyone! For each of the songs I've written about, I am fascinated by the very particular ("picky Deadhead") choices of renditions that everyone posts. They demonstrate our familiarity with the specific nature and character of the band's various manifestations, and how they apply to the song under discussion--the pedal steel accents of 1972; the baroque stateliness of the early 1980s; the thunder of the 1990s.... I remember feeling, over the years when I would see the band live, that I was seeing a completely new, different-sounding band once in a while. More orchestral after the release of Terrapin. More shiny after Go To Heaven. Bigger in every way after Touch of Grey. This has been quite a ride. There are a lot more songs I haven't written about yet. Let me try to find one for this week.
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Among the variety of e-mail that comes my way - was this psychology tidbit: "Everyone has a song in their playlist which they always skip over, but never delete". LLR happens to be one of those for me. But I'm glad a lot of folks find it so very meaningful. Maybe I'll not hit the skip button next time. 'Nuff said.
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A great song that starts with a great image. They say that senses like touch and smell are more evocative of memories than sight and hearing. How long will the bed be warm from where she was lying?
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Spartan Stadium, San Jose, Brent's 1st show. A few clouds and as the band was playing Looks Like Rain, a light rain began to fall. The band was truly in the moment. Kinda like playing The Race Is On on Kentucky Derby Day.
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Or else expecting rain. 1972 versions of Looks Like Rain had the most amazing pedal steel work. When sound translated to white light. And a hard rains gonna fall. Peace on Earth and good will to ALL Men and Woman.
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...with their favorite LL Rains, one that speaks to me most is the version from 10-3-87, on account that Jerry carries it with some seriously sublime guitar work. Bob's vocal histrionics notwithstanding, it may be my favorite version of all time, although it's damn near impossible to nail down a favorite of any version of any song, at least for me... http://youtu.be/HzzRvhY5VW0?t=48m6s
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A few weeks ago, I had a dream about a toy that I had when I was a little kid and then the next morning I was cleaning up my house and I found this same toy. I didn't even know that I still had it. What does this have to do with Looks Like Rain? Not much, except the toy was sitting on top of a book. When I opened this book, an old college textbook, the chord/lyric sheet for Looks Like Rain that I had printed off many years ago fell out of the book...at the very same instant I heard on the stereo, "I woke today..." Pretty eerie, but kind of amazing at the same time.
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Maybe it's an illusion, but don't those events of synchronicity seem to occur with undue frequency in relation to the Dead and all things related?
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...at least that's what it looked like at Woodstock...after the helicopters flew over. Who knows what the fuck it really was.
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Someone Said Somewhere ( and I think it was Jerry ) that Janis sang "Bobby McGee" about Love and the Grateful Dead sang it about Freedom. The last verse of "Looks Like Rain" spells out the tension generated by the human desire for Love and Freedom and has helped me temper my relationships accordingly. For example... In October 1990 I held my baby girl in the palms of my hands and sang to her... "If I had the world to give, I'd give it to you Long as you live, would you let it fall, or hold it all in your arms?" Now she has graduated from College and its so good to have her back home with us while she pays off her loans. The other morning I was watching her put on her make-up and started singing this 'Song of the Week' " I Only Want to Hold You Don't Want to Tie You Down or Fence You in the Lines I Might Have Drawn Its Just That I've Gotten used to Having You Around My Landscape Would Be Empty If You Were Gone..." and I dread the day she goes... but "Its All Right..." Those Words are So Wise and Go So Deep and Express So Well my Feelings meanwhile.... "...I will Give what Love I have to Give..."
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you know all those hours we spent in the pouring rain at Henry J waiting to get in? It's raining just like that now. Which is a good thing as long as you're not out in it. Stay safe, folks!
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...a little rain must fall...
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Here in the desert southwest bad weather equates to drought. Rain and snow are good weather. Flash floods in summer are part of the landscape. "The highway is for gamblers better use your sense". And one last thought, to the Pueblo People rain, snow and clouds represent the spirits of the ancestors visiting to provide a blessing for life. If the spirits are happy (grateful-dead)the prayers, songs and dances of the people are rewarded. Honor the cloud people.
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My favorite version for sure! Bobby and Donna at their finest!
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Yeah, I lived for those moments too. I feel blessed to have had many with the Dead, probably you and I liked your description, looking around at the other brothers and sisters, that silent acknowledgement that you and me, that other brother breaking into a smile, that lovely lass bending over to catch that rising power, knowing we were in unison driving the Bust to the edge the band seething in joy, Phil dropping the bomb, Jerry holding just long enough to drive us just to insanity and Here, indeed, it come again!!! Yeah, the weightlessness of it, the cold chill, the anticipatory timelessness.....