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Like Kesey, Hunter was a volunteer for government experiments with psychedelic drugs and he turned his experiences into poetry and song lyrics. Some of Hunter’s early lyrics for the Dead were, unsurprisingly, influenced by the band’s experimentation with LSD and the famous acid tests hosted by writer Ken Kesey.

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From Garcia, he learned a lot of traditional songs from the bluegrass and jug band genres and he knew how to structure his lyrics to fit these musical forms. He could be inspired by American roots music and old English ballads or he could open with a Homeric entreaty: “ Let my inspiration flow/in token rhymes suggesting rhythm.”īut Robert Hunter was not just a poet ( he translated Rilke’s Duino Elegies) and lyricist he was genuinely steeped in traditional American folk music and he and Jerry Garcia were playing the cafe scene together before there even was a Grateful Dead.

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By the same token, he could create a fantasy world that was both futuristic and mystical and at the same time full of down-home wisdom. Reputed to have been the great-grandson of Scottish poet Robert Burns, he had an ability to use words in ways that could suggest a sepia-toned era without filling in too many details. Sinfield with King Crimson and Taupin with Elton John were more than songwriting partners or lyricists–when Crimson or John was up on stage performing, Sinfield and Taupin were right up there with them, a part of the band. He joins Peter Sinfield, Hal David, and Bernie Taupin in a select group of non-performing ’70s lyricists whose work was indispensable in creating the identity of the musical composers with whom they worked. Robert Hunter was a poet who scored the best gig ever. As they evolved and became more well known their fans became more and more devoted to their music, their lifestyle, and the sense of Tao, of wholeness, imbued with a sense of mysticism and magic that hung over the music. His recent death is another layer of mist that shrouds the hippie Avalon that once was deeper into memory and farther from the world we all continue to live in.Īt first, the Dead was their audience, literally a part of the party at Ken Kesey’s acid tests. As much as the visual imagery associated with the band, as much as the parking lot with its perpetual circus of food, drugs, ticket hawking, guitar playing and just hanging out. Robert Hunter was as much responsible for the overall image of the Grateful Dead as any performing member of the band.