People claimed to hear full-length novels implied in his songs. (They admit people couldn't actually hear the words on their original records!) Robert Hunter was a real poet (he wrote books of poetry that weren't lyrics, too). I never listened to this band at all picked up their collected lyrics out of curiosity and was amazed by how well written the lyrics were. But I am glad I purchased it, because I do see the value of this book always being used as a reference. Reading it through straight wasn't as satisfying as I thought it would have been, though. It includes a foreword an a afterword by Hunter and Barlow, and it just is generally a beautiful book. This was a pretty large volume, around 500 pages, with a lot of good artwork. Although, most of these quotes were lifted from other books. These came from the source, so these I put more credit in. The best parts were when someone like Phil Lesh or Robert Hunter explained what a certain part of the song meant. In general it was helpful, but a lot of it was filler, like going on for three paragraphs about a certain bird that was named in a song. This book tries to give meaning to the lyrics, by explaining what a certain reference, or lyric might mean. A few covers are also included, but only about 3% of the covers are included. The best thing about this book is, that it has all the lyrics to the Grateful Dead compositions.
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