By David Dodd
Here’s the plan—each week, I will blog about a different song, focusing, usually, on the lyrics, but also on some other aspects of the song, including its overall impact—a truly subjective thing. Therefore, the best part, I would hope, would not be anything in particular that I might have to say, but rather, the conversation that may happen via the comments over the course of time—and since all the posts will stay up, you can feel free to weigh in any time on any of the songs! With Grateful Dead lyrics, there’s always a new and different take on what they bring up for each listener, it seems. (I’ll consider requests for particular songs—just private message me!)
A generation was defined by knowing where they were, what they were doing, at the moment they learned of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I have had a similar experience of the “generation” of Deadheads, over the years, talking with fellow Deadheads about August 9, 1995, the day we learned that Jerry Garcia had died.
I was at work, at the Kraemer Family Library at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. The campus is situated high on a bluff overlooking the city of Colorado Springs, with a view to the west of Pike’s Peak, surely one of the most impressive views I have ever spent time with on a regular basis. When a co-worker came to ask if I had heard the news, I first spent a little time online, making sure that it was indeed true, then I had to leave my desk, leave the building, and go for a long walk. I headed for the open space on the bluff above the campus buildings, where you could go and get a long view, and walked for about an hour, I think. My eyes blurred with tears, and the view shimmered.
“Days Between” has come to be an anthem that makes us remember Garcia in a particular way, and, in particular, the days between his birth date of August 1 and his death date of August 9. It’s a fitting song for such thoughts, with its big sweeping chords and its lyrics heavy with nostalgia and longing.
There’s a word in German, sehnsucht, that lacks a proper emotional counterpart in English, but which means, roughly, “longing.” It carries a sense of wishing you could see something—see something again, see something at all—that something is missing from your eyes and from your presence. I find that “Days Between” belongs with a raft of songs that induce this feeling in me.
“Days Between,” a late song in the Robert Hunter / Jerry Garcia songbook, was perhaps their last collaboration on a big, significant song, one that ranks with “Dark Star” and “Terrapin Station” as ambitious and intentionally grand. (I was talking the other day with a friend, about Garcia’s playing and songwriting, and the thought came up that Garcia, like few others, was unafraid of grandeur, and could successfully pull it off. Same with Hunter.)
It was first performed on February 22, 1993, at the Oakland Coliseum Arena, the middle show of a three-night run. The night before, they had premiered three other new songs: “Eternity,” “Lazy River Road,” and “Liberty.” Its final performance was on June 24, 1995, at RFK Stadium in Washington, DC. During its relatively short time in the live repertoire, they played it 41 times, always in the second set, and fairly frequently rising out of the Drums.
It appeared like the ghostly ships it describes, as if gradually from a fog and only slowly revealing itself as something very big, towering above everything around. It’s hard to say it any better than Phil Lesh did in his autobiography, Searching for the Sound:
“Achingly nostalgic, ‘Days Between’ evokes the past. The music climbs laboriously out of shadows, growing and peaking with each verse, only to fall back each time in hopeless resignation. When Jerry sings the line ‘when all we ever wanted / was to learn and love and grow’ or ‘gave the best we had to give / how much we’ll never know,’ I am immediately transported decades back in time, to a beautiful spring morning with Jerry, Hunter, Barbara Meier, and Alan Trist—all of us goofing on the sheer exhilaration of being alive. I don’t know whether to weep with joy at the beauty of the vision or with sadness at the impassable chasm of time between the golden past and the often painful present.”
Each verse in the song contains fourteen lines, and each evokes a different season of the year, although not in sequence. The first verse contains the lines “Summer flies and August dies / the world grows dark and mean.” I can’t hear that line without thinking about August West, in Wharf Rat, and, by extension, Garcia himself. “The singing man is at his song / the holy on their knees.” Who is the singing man, if not Garcia, when it comes to Hunter and his words?
There is something wave-like in the repetition Hunter employs with several key phrases: “There were days, and there were days, and there were days between…” like the waves upon the sand. And “when phantom ships with phantom sails set to sea on phantom tides.”
This is a song in which Hunter leaves wide open the individual assignment of meaning, as with many of his lyrics. But there is something so tender in his evocation of the past—of each of our pasts—that I really hesitate to say anything that could possibly put any of that into my own personal box of meaning. So I am going to err, possibly, on the side of not writing enough about this song, in hopes that I might not say too much.
I still miss Jerry. Where were you on August 9, 1995?
dead comment
Driving In My Car
At work
I didn't go to the office that morning
as for the song
One of his greatest songs...
Thank you
Phantom Ships
so much love
Aug.8,1995
Where were you when you heard...
The Days Between
I've always loved this song
8/9/1995
With my Grandmother...
in the car
I remember it clearly...
in my office
When the Sad News Came Through
Very moving stories
we all take lines from songs...
Black Muddy River
A Different "Days Between"
the best he had to give, how much we will never know
Where/When I was when I heard the news.
"horrible jokes"
Days Between
53
8/9/95
How I learned of jerry's death
august 9, '95
Seasons
this reminds me
Days Between
At work as a gardener at SF State
Sitting on a customers couch
so tender young and green
But there is something so tender in his evocation of the past—of each of our pasts—that I really hesitate to say anything that could possibly put any of that into my own personal box of meaning.
A Hunter/Garcia Masterpiece
I was fortunate enough to be present for the first playing of The Days Between. I recall that Jerry had a small music stand on stage and was glancing at the lyrics. I also recall a few days later playing an audience recording over and over so that I could learn the lyrics. It's a beautiful piece, one of Hunter's last great efforts. It can bring me to tears and it can make me realize how fortunate I was to discover this band all those decades ago.
Days Between
Hey Now, Yes,, the very first time I heard Jerry play "Days Between" I definitely remember being in tears at the beauty of the song & the words. I think the first time I heard it was at the Omni in Atlanta although I could easily be mistaken it's been so long ago. This past Friday July 26,2024 I was looking for it on the Internet Archive but couldn't find it at first & for some reason I just "Googled" the lyrics. And once I started reading the lyrics to this song that I haven't heard in years I was in tears all over again as if I were reading them for the first time. And being a rather strong minded male experiencing something SO BEAUTIFUL that I'm not only in tears but almost sobbing from the emotion idk but to me it must be the ULTIMATE COMPLIMENT that you could ever give to a songs writer! And for me, it's not just "Days Between" that has made me feel that way although the lyrics still do it without the music. But many times in concert have I felt this huge rush of emotions emminate from Jerry's guitar & the leads that he would be playing. And it wasn't just a certain feeling or emotion but A HUGE RANGE of emotions throughout a concert. But I mostly found myself in tears NOT BECAUSE OF SADNESS BUT BECAUSE OF HOW BEAUTIFUL IT WAS, and in some ways the tears make me feel small, but at the same time make me proud to be able to know & appreciate something like that because it seems to me that it was a rare feat that very few musicians could accomplish!!!
aug 9 1995
I was getting a haircut after work and the stylist asked me, "Do you know who Jerry Garcia was?" I immediately asked , "WAS?". She told me he died today.
I was stunned.
Part of me said it would not really affect me: I did not personally know him; his music would live forever on tape or CDs; the Grateful Dead would "survive"; etc.
It was not for a couple of days before it hit me and I intensely grieved as if a dear friend or family member had passed. To some extent, I'm still grieving.
But I do "rejoice he was here; don't rue that he's gone".
Another "days between", another circle around the sun...
Where was I? I had taken my children (ages 11 and 8 at the time) to visit my parents. My younger daughter says it was one of only two times she ever saw me cry, the other being the death of my father a few years later, but I don't even recall doing that. I just remember feeling numb. I still miss Jerry all these years later.
Days Between
I lived in San Rafael, CA. Ironically, I was driving on the GG bridge and started hearing Dead songs on every radio station. I was driving to work at SONY Electronics in San Jose. Many of my colleagues began their careers in the music business (some even worked on their tours), so you could hear the entire building filled with Dead songs. Such a sad day, but we all had each other to share in the grief.
Greatest stories ever told Days Between
Where was I when I heard of Jerry's passing...?
I was with my wife and two children shopping for a dress for my then 14 yr old daughter. I heard the news come over the Speakers in the store. Stunned doesn't do justice to my state of mind. My wife, not a Deadhead, didn't hear it being preoccupied with my girl so I marshalled my faculties and whispered into her ear what I just heard and told her I needed to step outside for a minute. She understood and got my ten yr old son's attention as I split.
Outside I lit a cigarette and wept. More than I am at this writing. I can't think of that day without shedding a drop or two.
After a bit my family emerged and all saw I was hurting. They hugged me and that was a tremendous help.
I admit to being furious at Jerry for being a junkie. For allowing dope to remove him from us. I had met him twice in my life, brief encounters, once Outside Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, and once opposite Carnegie Hall where we talked for 5 minutes, a real sweetheart.
It is safe to say the Grateful Dead's music changed my life. No, I didn't run off and join the circus, but I got on the bus. Now that I'm twenty years older than Jerry was at his passing the song Days Between (as does So Many Roads) eases my soul.
But I miss him and think of him almost every day still.
Where was I when I heard of Jerry's passing...?
I was with my wife and two children shopping for a dress for my then 14 yr old daughter. I heard the news come over the Speakers in the store. Stunned doesn't do justice to my state of mind. My wife, not a Deadhead, didn't hear it being preoccupied with my girl so I marshalled my faculties and whispered into her ear what I just heard and told her I needed to step outside for a minute. She understood and got my ten yr old son's attention as I split.
Outside I lit a cigarette and wept. More than I am at this writing. I can't think of that day without shedding a drop or two.
After a bit my family emerged and all saw I was hurting. They hugged me and that was a tremendous help.
I admit to being furious at Jerry for being a junkie. For allowing dope to remove him from us. I had met him twice in my life, brief encounters, once Outside Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, and once opposite Carnegie Hall where we talked for 5 minutes, a real sweetheart.
It is safe to say the Grateful Dead's music changed my life. No, I didn't run off and join the circus, but I got on the bus. Now that I'm twenty years older than Jerry was at his passing the song Days Between (as does So Many Roads) eases my soul.
But I miss him and think of him almost every day still.
I lived in San Rafael, CA. Ironically, I was driving on the GG bridge and started hearing Dead songs on every radio station. I was driving to work at SONY Electronics in San Jose. Many of my colleagues began their careers in the music business (some even worked on their tours), so you could hear the entire building filled with Dead songs. Such a sad day, but we all had each other to share in the grief.
Where was I? I had taken my children (ages 11 and 8 at the time) to visit my parents. My younger daughter says it was one of only two times she ever saw me cry, the other being the death of my father a few years later, but I don't even recall doing that. I just remember feeling numb. I still miss Jerry all these years later.