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Internet Message Format | 1991-12-20 | 6KB

From disney!mojo!mimsy!haven.umd.edu!udel!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!att!ucbvax![e-mail] Wed May 15 15:56:32 EDT 1991
Article: 44095 of rec.music.gdead:
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From: [e-mail] (Phil Spector)
Newsgroups: rec.music.gdead
Subject: Robert Hunter article in Marin Independent Journal
Keywords: Hunter
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 15 May 91 16:38:16 GMT
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Organization: Dept. of Statistics, U. C. Berkeley
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(Reprinted without permission from the May 14, 1991 Marin Independent Journal)

A FATHER SURVIVES HIS GRIEF: Time heals pain for poet behind the Grateful Dead
By Paul Liberatore, IJ senior features writer

  "I will get by. I will survive."
  Robert Hunter wrote those lines in "Touch of Grey," the Grateful Dead's
biggest hit.  And sure enough, Hunter, the band's principal lyricist for
the past 20 years, has survived.
  As he prepares to turn 50, he's getting by pretty well, too, considering
the pain and sorrow he's endured.
  "I've had a tough couple of years to pull out of," he says, sitting behind
a desk one afternoon in the Grateful Dead's office in San Rafael, where he
also lives.  "I had a tragedy that threw me for a loop for a couple of years."
  The tragedy Hunter speaks of is every parent's worst nightmare:  the death
of a child.  He lost his teen-age son unexpectedly four years ago, and the
grinding sorrow that has consumed him has only now begun to subside.
  "I'm as recovered as you can get after four years," he says.  "When it
happened, I called (Ken) Kesey.  He'd lost his son, too.  I asked him what
to do.  He said to give it time.  It will heal over."
  So Hunter gave it time.
  "I didn't do any drugs," he says.  "I took tranquilizers for a couple of
days, but after that, nothing.  I tried to face it.  It's like AA.  It's one
day at a time, and it does work if you want to survive.  I didn't want to
slam the door (on my emotions).  These things come out.  They'll break you.
They'll give you diseases."
  The heartbreaking episode, Hunter says, "threw me into an introverted
place.  It made me think about life and my philosophy.  You have to have a
great deal of faith that time is a healer.  There was nothing I wanted more
than to have years pass.  Now I can look at pictures and videos.  The healing
has happened."
  While in mourning, Hunter says, "I did the only thing I knew how to do.  I
wrote."
  Over the past two-plus decades, he has written the words to classic songs
like "Friend of the Devil," "Uncle John's Band," "Ripple" and "Dark Star".
  But he hasn't written a song in years.  Instead, almost as a form of creative
therapy, he wrote a collection of poems, titled "Night Cadre," that has just
been published by Viking.
  "It does tend to be dark, with edges of hopefulness," he says of the book.
"The examinations are about as close to the bone as poetry gets."
  Hunter brightens when he mentions a favorable review in the Library Journal.
"They didn't knock it," he says.  "They said it might even be interesting to
a general poetry audience."
  A literary bent runs in his family.  His father, Norman M. Hunter, of Novato,
who just celebrated his 86th birthday, is a former editor for Harcourt, Brace
and McGraw Hill.
  Hunter will read from "Night Cadre" and sign books on June 22 at Cody's
Books in Berkeley.  Viking has also recently published "A Box of Rain," an
anthology of lyrics that Hunter wrote for the Dead, the New Riders, the
Jefferson Starship, Bob Dylan and others.
  As a tribute to him as much as anyone else in the Grateful Dead family,
Arista Records has just released "Deadicated," interpretations of the band's
songs by musicians as diverse as Elvis Costello ("Ship of Fools"), Dwight
Yoakum ("Truckin'") and Dr. John ("Deal").
  "Before this, I always wondered why other people didn't cover Grateful Dead
songs," he says.  "I guess they had that Grateful Dead freak stigma.  I
wondered about that.  I thought I was being singled out."
  Over the years, Hunter has had lucrative offers to use his songs in
commercials, but, with one exception, he's turned them down.
  "I don't know how many offers I've had for 'Truckin,'" he says. "Not to be
too proud, I let Datsun use it in Canada.  But I turned down Levi's.  They
were offering a wastebasket full of money, like a half a million.  But I
wanted to keep the product clean in that way."
  Hunter, a singer and guitarist in his own right, has also revived his
performing career and is playing gigs with experimental pianist Tom
Constanten, who played with the Grateful Dead from 1968 to 1970.
  "I went on the road last December," he says.  "That was my announcement that
my mourning period was over.  I'm going to go out again.  I'll do a short tour
every year."
  Rykodisk, the specialty record label, has recently re-released two of
Hunter's album, "Tiger Rose" and "Tales of the Great Rum Runners," on compact
disc.
  Hunter is also anxious to start writing songs again for the Grateful Dead
with Jerry Garcia, his longtime collaborator.  The two of them go way back to
their folkie-jug band days in Palo Alto in the early '60s.
  Hunter seems to have his old energy back.  Maybe it's because he and wife
Maureen have something new in their lives, a 2 1/2-year-old daughter.  "I'll
be 50 in June, so it's kind of hard to keep up with a 2 1/2-year-old," he says.
"What a treasure she is, such a beautiful little girl.  She's made life
possible again."