The Silver Snarling Trumpet
The Birth of the Grateful Dead—The Lost Manuscript of Robert Hunter
-
-
3.9 • 11 Ratings
-
-
- $16.99
Publisher Description
Discovered at last, the legendary lost manuscript of Grateful Dead co-founder and primary lyricist Robert Hunter, written in the early 1960s—a wry, richly observed, and enlightening remembrance of “the scene” in Palo Alto that gave rise to an incredible partnership of Hunter and Jerry Garcia, and then to the Grateful Dead itself—with a Foreword by John Mayer, an Introduction by Dennis McNally, and an Afterword by Brigid Meier.
“Strange to think back on those days when it was perfectly natural that we all slept on the floor in one small room.... These were the days before practical considerations, matters of ‘importance,’ began to eat our minds. We were all poets and philosophers then, until we began to wonder why we had so few concrete worries and went out to look for some.”
So wrote Robert Hunter in The Silver Snarling Trumpet, both a novelistic singular work of art and the missing piece of the Grateful Dead origin story. In these pages, readers are privy to the early days of Hunter, Garcia, and their cohorts, who sit at coffee shops passing around a single cup of bottomless coffee because they lacked the funds for more than one. Follow these truth-seeking souls into the stacks at Kepler’s Books, renting instruments at Swain’s House of Music, and through the countryside on mind-expanding road trips. Witness impromptu jams, inspired intellectual pranks, and a dialogue that is, by turns, amusing and brilliant and outrageous. Hunter shares his impressions of his first gig with Garcia for a college audience, along with descriptions of his most intense dreams and psychedelic explorations. All of it, enlivened by Hunter’s visionary spirit and profound ideas about creativity and collaboration.
The lost manuscript is augmented with a Foreword by John Mayer, an Introduction by Dennis McNally, and an Afterword by Brigid Meier, who was part of their scene in the San Francisco Bay Area that served as a bridge from the beatniks to the hippies. Also included is Hunter’s own 1982 assessment of his work—about how he shared it with close confidants but then decided to leave it unpublished. Five years after Hunter’s death, the text has been found, so readers and fans of Hunter’s indelible poetry and song can explore the origin of his genius and his craft.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this hit-or-miss memoir—written in the early 1960s and unearthed 60 years later by Hunter's widow and literary executor—the late Grateful Dead lyricist recalls his early relationship with future band leader Jerry Garcia. The narrative unfolds in Menlo Park, Calif., where the aimless, college-age Hunter and Garcia soak in "the scene" at the local coffeehouse, go to parties, and regale each other with half-baked philosophizing ("You're saying that the ultimate goal in life is to find another goal.... What happens when there are no more goals?"). Scattershot attempts are made to harness the scene's energy: a friend tries to organize a commune called the Co-op, which fizzles before it starts; Garcia and Hunter form a folk-guitar duo that soon founders due to artistic differences. Hunter's fond snapshot of an embryonic counterculture is richly observed and rife with vibrant character sketches, though retellings of his hallucinatory dreams and meandering prose ("There is waiting; waiting for you know not what... never certain that it will come, but waiting against the day when it might") can slow the proceedings to a crawl. Deadheads will drink this in, but more casual fans may lack the patience.
