#Dire wolf grateful dead serial#
#Dire wolf grateful dead tv#

On the other hand, you’ll see that this song isn’t faking it. It’s clear then this is no traditional murder ballad, at least in the sense that it didn’t come into being for any of the standard reasons we can identify with such music. I think I managed to capture the quality of the dream by writing it down before I was wide awake.” I woke up and grabbed a pencil before I was entirely awake and wrote the whole song down. In a 1986 interview for Relix magazine, Hunter also spoke about the ballad… As I remember, I wrote the words quickly the next morning upon waking, in that hypnogogic state where deep rooted associations meld together with no effort.

But the idea of a great big wolf named Dire was enough to trigger a lyric. Extinct now, it turns out they were quite small and ran in packs. We were speculating on what the ghostly hound might turn out to be, and somehow the idea that maybe it was a Dire Wolf came up… We thought Dire Wolves were great big beasts.

#Dire wolf grateful dead tv#

The song “Dire Wolf” was inspired, at least in name, by watching the Hound of the Baskervilles on TV with Garcia. Robert Hunter, in a journal entry from Jthat is no longer available online but is cited here, confirmed that the inspiration for “Dire Wolf” was not tied to any historical act of violence –ĭire Wolf card back – Kristina Layton – used by permission of the artist We’ll get to that bit in the next section. Lyrics for the Grateful Dead’s “Dire Wolf” “I sat down to my supper…”ĭespite what I said in the introduction, it would be a mistake to tie the song’s inspiration to The Zodiac Killer. It may not be a perfect fit, but you get to judge that for yourself… Our aim today is only to place the song gently in the living playlist we at Murder Ballad Monday hold dear.

#Dire wolf grateful dead serial#

As art, it was born in a glorious blaze of light during one of the Grateful Dead’s most creative periods, and it hit the smoky concert halls and hungry turntables of post-Summer-of-Love America while a serial killer stalked the Bay Area’s nighttime streets.įolks say much online and in print about the song and the band during this period, and we don’t propose to repeat all that here.

“Dire Wolf” is an unabashedly happy song in the voice of the ghost of a man murdered by a six hundred pound predator. Today’s murder ballad dances merrily along borderlines with which we’ve become familiar in this blog boundaries between celebration and fear, civilization and savagery, traditional and post-modern balladry – and of course that inscrutable passage between life and death. When I Awoke – Kristina Layton – used by kind permission of the artist – Check out her other artwork at Wagon Wheel Illustration! “In the Timbers of Fennario…”