The Deadcast examines how Franklin’s Tower bucked every trend on Blues For Allah to become one of the Dead’s all-time classics, including a tape of its studio creation, a look into the multi-tracks, & a rare line-by-line breakdown by lyricist Robert Hunter himself.
Blues For Allah 50: Franklin’s Tower supplementary notes
by Jesse Jarnow
One of the great jewels of the early World Wide Web, David Dodd’s now-departed Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics site spawned both the essential Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics collection, as well one of the most unexpected appearances by Grateful Dead Robert Hunter.
When young grad student Jürgen Fauth posted his essay, “The Fractals of Familiarity and Innovation: Robert Hunter and the Grateful Dead concert experience,” Hunter felt compelled to respond, posting his own essay, “Fractures of Unfamiliarity & Circumvention in Pursuit of a Nice Time,” in which the lyricist broke down the song “Franklin’s Tower” verse by verse, something he never did with a song before or after.
The late photographer and journalist Peter Simon conducted a long interview with Jerry Garcia in late March 1975, published in part in New Age, which we’ve been drawing on this season. Musicologist Melvin Backstrom approached the full “Help on the Way”/”Slipknot!”/”Franklin’s Tower” song-suite in “‘Spring from Night into the Sun’: Metaphors of Dark and Light in the Music of the Grateful Dead,” published in Grateful Dead Studies, as well as this period at large (and much else!) in his thesis, “The Grateful Dead and their world: popular music and the avant-garde in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1965-1975.”
Comment
Goosebump $
Loved your comment at the end... Feels Like to Franklin on Dead Set IS THE BEST!
Please keep up the good vibes and amazing show!
Soukous version of Franklins
Can’t post links here, but I recommend y’all listen to Afro Dead’s version of Franklin’s Tower (soukous version) on Youtube.
Enjoy!
Very well done!
Can we talk about Franklin's tower for an hour.... yes we can! Very engaging. Was super excited to hear robert hunters one and only time talking about his lyrics! I also have not listened to too many of these podcasts and I was very pleasantly surprised to see you bring in audience recordings for most everything after 1978. The one soundboard from 1979, you cannot hear bobby at all. Wich unfortunately, is typical for almost everything that dan healy recorded. Aside from multi track recording of tours and radio broadcasts, it seems that every official release from when brent started has the keyboards Way too loud and often, you cannot hear bobby. Every time I see those words, recorded by dan healy I cringe. It breaks my heart because my first show was 1982 and I saw a lot of brent shows, but I can only turn to the audience recordings. Because if I can't hear Weir, it is not the grateful dead. And when brent is louder than jerry, well we have a problem...