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Genesis of the song This was the last song written together by Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia. The song looks back to the days and attitudes of the formative period (1960/61) in their lives that eventually gave rise to the Grateful Dead; There were daysHunter discussed the genesis of the song in an interview; I wrote a verse while Jerry was working out something on piano. I gave it to him, he said he liked the rhyme scheme and idea, and began working out the melody. As he was doing that I wrote the rest of the verses. An hour's work.In an interview in 1993 Garcia referred to Days Between whilst talking about working with Hunter; ... I feel like I can discuss anything with Hunter, any idea, without any difficulty at all. And we are both very comfortable with each other on the level of changing stuff. Sometimes I insist that he do something over and over ..... One of the songs we wrote recently was The Days Between. I had an idea there - it had to do with the length of the phrases and how I wanted the phrases to work. I had a hard time communicating it. But with Hunter it's a matter of finding the key. I'll sort of scat sing the way I want it to work.Later in the interview he discusses the repetition of words in the song; The phantom thing was funny, because the first line went, When ships with phantom sails set to sea on phantom tides. I said that I wanted it to be 'When something ships with phantom sails set to sea on phantom tides. I want another two syllables.' So Hunter came up with a bunch of things, but then he said, 'What about phantom, use phantom again.' Yeah, right, When phantom ships with phantom sails set to sea on phantom tides. It worked perfectly. It has this ghostly, hollow quality - it's skeletal. So singing that song is like, ooh, it works for me. I get chills. It's that happy marriage of setting and sense. Hunter - he's so good at that. We're really hitting some nice spaces lately. |
Grateful Dead
The Dead
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Ratdog
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