• https://www.dead.net/features/greatest-stories-ever-told/greatest-stories-ever-told-franklins-tower
    Greatest Stories Ever Told - "Franklin's Tower"

    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!)

    “Franklin's Tower”

    I can’t resist proceeding on to complete the “Help / Slip / Frank” trilogy with this week’s post.

    “Franklin’s Tower” is the most memorable song from my very first Grateful Dead concert, on October 9, 1976 at the Oakland Coliseum, when the Dead opened for The Who. At that point, I was pretty much completely unfamiliar with the songs—as far as I was concerned, we were going to a Who concert, and the Dead were just the openers. They opened, all right. They opened my ears wide open. And although I knew hardly any of the words at that point, I had the distinct feeling that there was something big going on with the way the music and the words worked together.

    At the point in the show when they launched into “Franklin’s Tower,” (following, I see in retrospect, an interesting chain from Help to Slip to Drums to to Samson to Slip to Franklin’s), the band played with the Oakland Coliseum in a way that I can still hear, if I close my eyes. They timed the echo off the stadium’s far wall so that it seemed in perfect synch with the song: “Roll away (away….away…) the dew (the dew, the dew, the dew…).” That was my first experience with the phenomenon I’m sure a lot of us have experienced, which is the way the band played the space they were in, as part of the music. If there was a bad echo, they would somehow make it play to the music’s advantage. If it was hot and dusty, or cold and rainy, or whatever—those factors became part of the music for that performance, and it was, somehow, just exactly perfect.

    A lot of ink has been spilled on the topic of “Franklin’s Tower.” I’m guilty myself.

    But I have found that the most rewarding writing about the song consists of two completely divergent pieces.

    The first is by Andrew Shalit, and I was happy to be given permission to point to it from my “Franklin’s Tower” page on the Annotated Lyrics website. Written as a mock-scholarly essay entitled “Roll Away the Dew: An Exegesis of Robert Hunter’s ‘Franklin’s Tower’,” the piece goes into wonderful detail describing Ben Franklin’s supposed process for casting bells, involving a process called “dewing” the bell.

    “Franklin postulated that a process which he called ‘dewing’ could be used to improve the production process of large bells. Dewing basically involves exposing the freshly cast bell to large quantities of steam while the bell is still hot. The steam causes a rapid cooling, producing droplet of 'dew' on the bell. After the dew is formed, the bell is rolled between large cotton sheets. He described this process as ‘rolling away the dew.’

    “Unfortunately, Franklin's contemporaries had a very hard time understanding his technology. He showed them sample bells, asking him to simply look at the results without trying to understand the process. This was when he uttered the now famous quote, ‘if you get confused, listen to the music play.’”

    Worth reading all the way through, definitely. Even more entertaining than the essay itself, perhaps, is the chain of email queries and responses to and from Shalit, in which he continues to develop the ruse. Wonderful!

    The second piece about the song is by Hunter himself. He wrote it in response to a piece I posted on my site, written by Jurgen Fauth, entitled “The Fractals of Familiarity and Innovation: Robert Hunter and the Grateful Dead concert experience.” In the Fauth essay, the author refers to some of Hunter’s lyrics as lacking in meaning, using the word “nonsensical.”

    Hunter responded with an essay entitled “Fractures of Unfamiliarity & Circumvention in Pursuit of a Nice Time.” In the essay, Hunter addresses Fauth directly:

    “Since the concluding remark of your essay stated that the Grateful Dead songs are "meaningless" I choose to reply by explicating one of your examples: "Franklin's Tower." I do this reluctantly because I feel that a straightforward statement of my original intent robs the listener of personal associations and replaces them with my own. I may know where they come from, but I don't know where they've been. My allusions are, admittedly, often not immediately accessible to those whose literary resources are broadly different than my own, but I wouldn't want my listeners' trust to be shaken by an acceptance of the category "meaningless" attached to a bundle of justified signifiers whose sources happen to escape the scope of simplistic reference.” [italics mine.]

    He then proceeds to give a line-by-line explication of the lyric. To quote from his essay briefly, here is the first verse:

    In another time's forgotten space
    your eyes looked through your mother's face
    Wildflower seed on the sand and stone
    may the four winds blow you safely home.


    [You have your mother's eyes, child, the very shape, color and intensity of the eyes that looked through her face so long ago. Borne on the varied winds of chance and change, like a dandelion seed, you may find yourself deposited on barren soil. My wish for you is that the forces that brought you there may sweep you up again and bear you to fertile ground.]


    "In another time's forgotten space
    your eyes looked through your mother's face."
    [Relative immortality of the human species is realized through reproduction. Dominant traits inherited from an ancestor, the lyric suggests, share more than mere similarity with those of the forebear, but are an identity, endlessly reproducible. In other words, when someone says "You have your mother's eyes" they are not speaking in simile nor would it be incorrect to say that "your mother has your eyes," if, in fact, possessiveness is an appropriate term in the context. Poetic license will assume it is, if only for the sake of moving on to the next couplet.]

    Beautiful, indeed. And in reading this essay then and now, a couple of things came clearer to me. First, my initial take on the lyrics, namely, that interpretation was not necessarily something to be valued, had implications for my own consideration of the lyrics that stays with me today: I will not say what the lyrics mean. I can say what they’ve meant to me, but to try to be definitive about it misses the point of being a listener. Second, one should never underestimate Robert Hunter.

    I love this song. I love the chorus, and, as I have said, I still hear it in my mind as the first time, complete with echo off the back wall of the Coliseum. I love the imagery and the allusions contained in the song (hounds, towers, winds, sand, wildflowers….). I love the simplicity of the music, which makes for such endless jamming possibilities in the hands of Garcia or the large number of inventive guitarists who have had fun with this song. I love the reassuring line: “if you get confused, listen to the music play.” That has come in extremely handy on a number of occasions.

    And I am well over my usual self-imposed length limit for these posts. Your turn!

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  • sailbystars
    10 years 1 month ago
    Indeed, yours was a heady version, David.
    http://headyversion.com/song/96/grateful-dead/franklins-tower/
  • Underthevolcano
    10 years 1 month ago
    a favorite of mine
    very uplifting message-affirmation, optimism, reassurance-acknowlege the struggle but hold the fort. my favorite version of this song is whichever one I'm hearing at the moment!
  • Default Avatar
    Bach 2 Bach
    10 years 1 month ago
    Your eyes looked from your mother's face
    Up until about a year ago, I was living in the house that my mother grew up in. The line "In another time's forgotten space/ your eyes looked from your mother's face" came to me one day- like a bolt out of the blue- as I stood in what had once been her bedroom, looking out the window at the road. I was trying to imagine her as a teenager, standing in that spot some 60 years before, watching for my father as he hiked up the road to visit her. Dad once told me that he wished he had a nickel for every time he climbed that hill. Today would have been their 61st wedding anniversary.
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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!)

“Franklin's Tower”

I can’t resist proceeding on to complete the “Help / Slip / Frank” trilogy with this week’s post.

“Franklin’s Tower” is the most memorable song from my very first Grateful Dead concert, on October 9, 1976 at the Oakland Coliseum, when the Dead opened for The Who. At that point, I was pretty much completely unfamiliar with the songs—as far as I was concerned, we were going to a Who concert, and the Dead were just the openers. They opened, all right. They opened my ears wide open. And although I knew hardly any of the words at that point, I had the distinct feeling that there was something big going on with the way the music and the words worked together.

At the point in the show when they launched into “Franklin’s Tower,” (following, I see in retrospect, an interesting chain from Help to Slip to Drums to to Samson to Slip to Franklin’s), the band played with the Oakland Coliseum in a way that I can still hear, if I close my eyes. They timed the echo off the stadium’s far wall so that it seemed in perfect synch with the song: “Roll away (away….away…) the dew (the dew, the dew, the dew…).” That was my first experience with the phenomenon I’m sure a lot of us have experienced, which is the way the band played the space they were in, as part of the music. If there was a bad echo, they would somehow make it play to the music’s advantage. If it was hot and dusty, or cold and rainy, or whatever—those factors became part of the music for that performance, and it was, somehow, just exactly perfect.

A lot of ink has been spilled on the topic of “Franklin’s Tower.” I’m guilty myself.

But I have found that the most rewarding writing about the song consists of two completely divergent pieces.

The first is by Andrew Shalit, and I was happy to be given permission to point to it from my “Franklin’s Tower” page on the Annotated Lyrics website. Written as a mock-scholarly essay entitled “Roll Away the Dew: An Exegesis of Robert Hunter’s ‘Franklin’s Tower’,” the piece goes into wonderful detail describing Ben Franklin’s supposed process for casting bells, involving a process called “dewing” the bell.

“Franklin postulated that a process which he called ‘dewing’ could be used to improve the production process of large bells. Dewing basically involves exposing the freshly cast bell to large quantities of steam while the bell is still hot. The steam causes a rapid cooling, producing droplet of 'dew' on the bell. After the dew is formed, the bell is rolled between large cotton sheets. He described this process as ‘rolling away the dew.’

“Unfortunately, Franklin's contemporaries had a very hard time understanding his technology. He showed them sample bells, asking him to simply look at the results without trying to understand the process. This was when he uttered the now famous quote, ‘if you get confused, listen to the music play.’”

Worth reading all the way through, definitely. Even more entertaining than the essay itself, perhaps, is the chain of email queries and responses to and from Shalit, in which he continues to develop the ruse. Wonderful!

The second piece about the song is by Hunter himself. He wrote it in response to a piece I posted on my site, written by Jurgen Fauth, entitled “The Fractals of Familiarity and Innovation: Robert Hunter and the Grateful Dead concert experience.” In the Fauth essay, the author refers to some of Hunter’s lyrics as lacking in meaning, using the word “nonsensical.”

Hunter responded with an essay entitled “Fractures of Unfamiliarity & Circumvention in Pursuit of a Nice Time.” In the essay, Hunter addresses Fauth directly:

“Since the concluding remark of your essay stated that the Grateful Dead songs are "meaningless" I choose to reply by explicating one of your examples: "Franklin's Tower." I do this reluctantly because I feel that a straightforward statement of my original intent robs the listener of personal associations and replaces them with my own. I may know where they come from, but I don't know where they've been. My allusions are, admittedly, often not immediately accessible to those whose literary resources are broadly different than my own, but I wouldn't want my listeners' trust to be shaken by an acceptance of the category "meaningless" attached to a bundle of justified signifiers whose sources happen to escape the scope of simplistic reference.” [italics mine.]

He then proceeds to give a line-by-line explication of the lyric. To quote from his essay briefly, here is the first verse:

In another time's forgotten space
your eyes looked through your mother's face
Wildflower seed on the sand and stone
may the four winds blow you safely home.


[You have your mother's eyes, child, the very shape, color and intensity of the eyes that looked through her face so long ago. Borne on the varied winds of chance and change, like a dandelion seed, you may find yourself deposited on barren soil. My wish for you is that the forces that brought you there may sweep you up again and bear you to fertile ground.]


"In another time's forgotten space
your eyes looked through your mother's face."
[Relative immortality of the human species is realized through reproduction. Dominant traits inherited from an ancestor, the lyric suggests, share more than mere similarity with those of the forebear, but are an identity, endlessly reproducible. In other words, when someone says "You have your mother's eyes" they are not speaking in simile nor would it be incorrect to say that "your mother has your eyes," if, in fact, possessiveness is an appropriate term in the context. Poetic license will assume it is, if only for the sake of moving on to the next couplet.]

Beautiful, indeed. And in reading this essay then and now, a couple of things came clearer to me. First, my initial take on the lyrics, namely, that interpretation was not necessarily something to be valued, had implications for my own consideration of the lyrics that stays with me today: I will not say what the lyrics mean. I can say what they’ve meant to me, but to try to be definitive about it misses the point of being a listener. Second, one should never underestimate Robert Hunter.

I love this song. I love the chorus, and, as I have said, I still hear it in my mind as the first time, complete with echo off the back wall of the Coliseum. I love the imagery and the allusions contained in the song (hounds, towers, winds, sand, wildflowers….). I love the simplicity of the music, which makes for such endless jamming possibilities in the hands of Garcia or the large number of inventive guitarists who have had fun with this song. I love the reassuring line: “if you get confused, listen to the music play.” That has come in extremely handy on a number of occasions.

And I am well over my usual self-imposed length limit for these posts. Your turn!

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I can’t resist proceeding on to complete the “Help / Slip / Frank” trilogy with this week’s post. “Franklin’s Tower” is the most memorable song from my very first Grateful Dead concert, on October 9, 1976 at the Oakland Coliseum, when the Dead opened for The Who.
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Greatest Stories Ever Told - "Franklin's Tower"
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I can’t resist proceeding on to complete the “Help / Slip / Frank” trilogy with this week’s post. “Franklin’s Tower” is the most memorable song from my very first Grateful Dead concert, on October 9, 1976 at the Oakland Coliseum, when the Dead opened for The Who.
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I can’t resist proceeding on to complete the “Help / Slip / Frank” trilogy with this week’s post. “Franklin’s Tower” is the most memorable song from my very first Grateful Dead concert, on October 9, 1976 at the Oakland Coliseum, when the Dead opened for The Who.

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This song was my next choice as well, after a quick revisit with Dark Star. Probably the most Taoist of all their songs, I often hear it as: "Roll away the do."
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My favorite was when Jerry paired 1/2 step with Franklin's but they definitely did Feel Like a Franklin's much more. Nonsensical lyrics, quite a statement, I would add that Fauth has very little sense of imagination making a comment like that. If everything was supposed to make sense there probably would have never been the Grateful Dead. Some come to laugh their past away Some come to make it just one more day Whichever way your pleasure tends If you plant ice, you're gonna harvest wind A cold icy wind blows in the North East today - Spring is 3 weeks away, enjoy all.
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Up until about a year ago, I was living in the house that my mother grew up in. The line "In another time's forgotten space/ your eyes looked from your mother's face" came to me one day- like a bolt out of the blue- as I stood in what had once been her bedroom, looking out the window at the road. I was trying to imagine her as a teenager, standing in that spot some 60 years before, watching for my father as he hiked up the road to visit her. Dad once told me that he wished he had a nickel for every time he climbed that hill. Today would have been their 61st wedding anniversary.
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very uplifting message-affirmation, optimism, reassurance-acknowlege the struggle but hold the fort. my favorite version of this song is whichever one I'm hearing at the moment!
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I mentioned in my [first] post on Help On the Way that I'd always heard that song, Slipknot! and Franklin's as a continuous narrative. To put it simply, they fall in love/lust in Help, shit happens in Slipknot!, and they’re raising a baby in Franklin's, giving him/her advice, and imagining a fulfilling life for the child. There’s my exegesis. There are many things I've pondered on in this marvelous, multi-faceted song, and one is the meaning of the uplifting, cathartic chorus. As an extension of the metaphor of the song, it's telling the child to concentrate on rolling away the confusion that assails you throughout life and focus on the true aspects of it. But this is a great example of a lyric that takes on immediate meanings rather than being locked into one metaphor. I've been standing in the middle of thousands of people singing Roll Away the Dew many times, and I want to do that more. We’re singing about the "dew" that afflicts us at that moment. In NH last summer, the day before the Boston shows (Furthur 2013-07-16), it was about the fear of terrorism. At other times it's been about wars, politics, social idiocies, or intense personal conflict. But is "dew" an overly gentle word for a symbol of what we want to avoid? Maybe rolling away the dew is better seen as gently pushing back on the internal things that are obscuring our focus (as opposed to external evils) and so achieving greater clarity incrementally. These are just a few of the meanings I hear in this song. The most important meaning though, is that it makes me happy.
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the space between the end of a sometimes cacophonous slipknot! jam and the start of franklin's tower is one of the joys of dead music. those few seconds, ending with the bouncy opening chords, make me dance in my seat (if i'm sitting) every time if that cant make you move, nothing can
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I always thought that the line "if you plant ice you're gonna harvest wind" was an unveiled response to the conclusion of Kurt Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle, in which a substance known as Ice-Nine, a newly engineered form of ice that had a melting point of 114.4° F, is introduced into the ocean, whereupon "there was a sound like that of the gentle closing of a portal as big as the sky, the great door of heaven being closed softly. It was a grand AH-WHOOM. I opened my eyes—and the sea was all ice-nine. The moist green earth was a blue-white pearl. The sky darkened. Borasisi, the sun, became a sickly yellow ball, tiny and cruel. The sky was filled with worms. The worms were tornadoes." If you plant ice, you're gonna harvest wind: simple.
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I wonder if I'm the only one ever, who originally heard it as: "If you play dice, you're gonna harvest wind" ?
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For a while I thought the lyrics were," Roll away with you." I thought "you" referred to the band, the crowd, a friend or a lover. As long as the dew is rolling away i suppose it doesn't matter who you are with!
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jbxpro that post is pretty deep,and well written. Very thought provoking,interesting bits about Robert Hunter. Listen to the music. I think the chords are A to D. For the longest I always played an A major at the fifth fret to G major then the D major. Another player played it at "home" A to D. I hear a G between the A and D.. The marriage of words and music is magical. I find the Dead's system of songwriting very unique to say the least.Fun song to jam to for sure. God save the child that rings that bell....Another example of why I will play dead til the day I die......Roll awaaay
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is also the name of the Dead's publishing company, and yeah, I think those guys know their Vonnegut. The list of bad things about losing Jerry is quite long, but I've always been especially bummed that the prospects of a Sirens of Titan movie more or less died with him. No idea who wound up with the screenplay rights after he passed.
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marye, I remember reading at some point that JG was developing Sirens of Titan for the big screen with Tom Davis, but then I also more recently read, in Rhoney Gissen Stanley's memoir Owsley and Me, that it was Davis who first turned JG onto Persian, so their collaboration on that project might well have been doomed from the start.
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You always hear about about the 4 (strong?) winds blowing *to* somewhere. To think about where they dwell and where they sleep is mind-expansive. And I love the mash-up with the Ben Franklin legend. The Liberty Bell had one good ring and then cracked, which perhaps immortalized that ring/ringer.
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I believe this might be the only song that Lou Reed helped inspire. In Blair Jackson's Garcia bio he mentions that Garcia was inspired by the melody of the line "and the colored girls sing..." from Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side" for this song. I guess sometimes you do get shown the light in the strangest places..
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David...I think your self imposed length limits can be disregarded whenever you like.Its OK with me!! Franklins Tower is one of those which seems to be Inexhaustibly full of Precious Gems! The first time I heard the song I could tell there was Much More to It than I could Comprehend. It never even Occurred to me that it was about Ben Franklin and the Liberty Bell ... So Amazing It has the sense of Ancient Resonance in the Here and Now. I recall Garcia calling it a song of Redemption. How it gets Unleashed from the Slipknot and Bounces into a Vibrant New Lease on Life. You can't help but Leap for Joy!! "Roll Away the Dew" !!! ....I don't even Know what that Means ??? ...but I just Gotta Wanna Roll Away with the Dew Apparently this will keep me from Cracking UP!! Its like a Trippy Dream...in the "Forgotten Space" ...what an Image! Where your Eyes are suddenly on your Mothers Face and the Four Winds are Lean Hounds Living in a Tower with a Bell that turns to Fire and then the Tower becomes a Lighthouse. with One Good Ring that turns the Night into Day ...but What Could Possibly Happen if there's a Second Ring...Hmmmm....maybe We'd find ourselves in a entirely Different Forgotten Space The Sound of the Bell and the Light of the Fire are a Beacon for One and All We are like the Wild Flower Seeds blowing Around and Around like Dust and Wind and Hopefully will find our Way "Safely Home Again"
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The 8/3/82 Starlight Theatre show from KC has the best version of Franklin's Tower out there. The transition from Half Step is one for the ages. Now to just find a source that tracked them as one track on their CD. The whole first set just sparkles.
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I play it with an f-major chord shape at the 5th fret - 3rd fret, then D major, producing A maj G maj D maj, or like you said A to D with a little G in between (=
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As a nod to today's 30 days of the dead pairing of 1/2 step w/ frank... anyone know why they changed it up and stopped using the help/slip for a while?also dates of the last help/slip/frank before hiatus and first one when it came back? I already found today's answer, so diving deep to try and find those versions. In NOV it is great to be a dead head
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In various sources, I've seen Bill K receive music credit along with Garcia for Franklin's Tower, but in The Complete Annotated GD Lyrics, only Garcia is listed. Did Bill help write the music for it?

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I never over-thought this lyric. It seems like it's just karma. What happens if you "plant" ice? Nothing....ice melts and gets the soil wet. So, you harvest...nothing...the wind is fleeting and not usable UNLESS you're using something besides "ice" to harvest it.
Maybe I'm too literal and simplistic?

P.S. : I fell for the Liberty Bell /Ben Franklin ruse and believed it was a very cool retelling of a segment of US history, especially since it came out around the bicentennial year. The vague allusion to the Paul Revere poem (one of land, two if by sea) seemed to confirm the ruse, since the incidents would have been contemporary.

Most importantly to me: it's just a great jam! Very lively.