Workingman’s Dead 50, Episode 4: New Speedway Boogie

Rich Mahan (0:05)

The Good Ol Grateful Deadcast, the official podcast of the Grateful Dead. I'm Rich Mahan with Jesse Jarnow, exploring the music and legacy of the Grateful Dead for the Committed And The Curious.

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2020 finds us celebrating the 50th anniversary of Workingman's Dead, and we are deep diving into this classic Grateful Dead studio album, taking it track by track, getting down to the real nitty gritty. Be sure to treat yourself to the expertly remastered re-release of the album, which is out now, and also includes an epic show from February 21st, 1971 at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, mixed by Jeffrey Norman from the original 16-track analog reel-to-reel tapes over at Bob Weir's TRI Studios in Marin County. dead.net has all the info on this release and its various configurations. Well, in this episode, we sink our teeth into the final track on side one, New Speedway Boogie. I can't believe we're already halfway through Workingman's Dead after this episode. I've always dug Jerry's killer tone on this song. It cuts like a hot knife through Bakersfield butter. All right, folks, let's get this party started. We're going to hand it off to my co-host, Jesse Jarnow.

Jesse Jarnow (1:45)

Closing side one of Workingman's Dead was yet another song unlike the others. To go along with the vibratory calypso of Uncle John's band, the tenderness of high time, and the doomed fable of the dire wolf, now there came the dark slink of New Speedway Boogie. It was the album's hardest hitting song yet. The Grateful Dead were notorious for having two drummers, but this boogie didn't have drums at all, and it was hot off the press.

The Grateful Dead appeared at many of the biggest festivals, freakouts and happenings of the 60s, including the Tripp's Festival, The Human Bein, Monterey Pop and Woodstock. Not to mention countless free shows, which dead scholars are still working on, but the Grateful Dead were the first to make it to the big screen, and the Grateful Dead were the first to make it to the big screen, and the Grateful Dead were the first to make it to the big screen, and the Grateful Dead were the first to make it to the big screen, and the Grateful Dead were the first to make it to the big screen, at many of the biggest festivals, freakouts, and happenings of the 60s, including the Tripp's Festival, The Human Being, Monterrey Pop, and Woodstock.

But they were supposed to. The concert now known as Altamont wouldn't have happened without the Grateful Dead. Headlined by the Rolling Stones, the show featured Jefferson Airplane, Santana, Cross B. Stills Nash and Young, and the Flying Burrito Brothers. A truly stacked lineup and an event that went horribly wrong. Captured in the Maisel Brothers classic documentary, Gimmie Shelter, the day culminated in the death of a black man named Meredith Hunter, stabbed and beaten to death by Hell's Angels while the Rolling Stones played. Two weeks later, the Grateful Dead debuted New Speedway Boogie, a new song by Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter. Tales from the Golden Road co-host Gary Lambert.

Gary Lambert (3:32)

It was the closest that Hunter ever got to sort of topical songwriting. It was like musical journalism.

It was not a response to Altamont so much as it was a response to the reaction to Altamont. You know, right after Altamont, there was a lot of finger pointing and a lot of accusation and assignment of blame.

They blamed the Grateful Dead. Others blamed the Rolling Stones. Others blamed the film company that wanted to make a movie of their own. There was finger pointing on every end. And of course, the Hell's Angels, you know, were called into account as well they should have been. But Hunter just wanted to sum up the uselessness of all that blame and all that finger pointing. And he did it beautifully. But again, even though he wrote it to a specific subject, which was rare for him, it became universal. And that refrain at the end can address whichever darkness is prevailing in the world at any given moment.

Buzz Poole (4:27)

One way or another.

Jesse Jarnow (4:42)

A timeless mantra. New Speedway Boogie was a topical song, definitely, but it was also deeply philosophical, written in parables that bordered on biblical. While it may have grown from Altamont, New Speedway Boogie was also in some way about the Grateful Dead themselves and what they'd been through over the past half decade as perhaps the foremost band of a countercultural underground.