Rev. Gary Davis

In a 1981 interview by Jon Sievert, Bobby dispels the myth that he took lessons from Garcia:

Jon: I read somewhere that you once a guitar student of Garcia's back in the early days.  Is that true?

Bob: No. I hung around him and picked up a thing or two, but I never really took any formal lessons from anybody except Reverend Gary Davis back in 1971. I was a longtime fan of Davis' and always really liked his approach to guitar because he played the whole instrument and only used two fingers to pick. Being blind, he didn't know what you can't do. Notes and lines just seem to come at you from all different directions, and he seemed to have a way of tying them all together. He was just about to the end of his days when I met him and took a couple of lessons from him.

...

Who were some of your major musical influences?
 Bob: Well, I mentioned Gary Davis, but I haven't really emulated anybody's guitar style in particular...

[but he did emulate McCoy Tyner]

Bobby also learned Samson & Delilah from Rev. Gary Davis. A version from 12/16/78 with some funky Jerry (whole show here).

Rev. Gary Davis' Samson and Delilah. Rev. Gary Davis' Death Don't Have No Mercy.

Bob Dylan

According to an interview with Reverb Music, Bobby first heard Bob Dylan at age 21:

'The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan’ was the first one of his I’d heard –- the one with ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ on it. That really turned my head, and it made me aware of something I had not been aware of previously – that one guy with a guitar can frame together music and poetry and present art that amounts to that.

McCoy Tyner

McCoy Tyner, John Coltrane's pianist in the John Coltrane Quartet, was a huge influence on Bob Weir. In a 2001 Guitar World interview, Bobby confesses:

my dirty little secret is that I learned by trying to imitate a piano, specifically the work of McCoy Tyner in the John Coltrane Quartet. That caught my ear and lit my flame when I was 17. I just loved what he did underneath Coltrane, so I sat with it for a long time and really tried to absorb it. Of course, Jerry was very influenced by horn players, including Coltrane, but I never really explicitly thought about that relationship, because I didn’t really ever decide to pattern myself after McCoy Tyner’s piano. It just grabbed me.

But it's not such a dirty secret. In numerous interviews, Bobby cites McCoy Tyner as his primary influence, in one 1981 interview, citing Tyner's "chording, voicing and tonalities" as particularly influential.

The Beatles

In a Reverb Music interview, Bobby says, “I loved the early Beatles records. The ‘Rubber Soul’ record was informative to me in terms of what a quartet can do musically.”

The Grateful Dead covered many Beatles tunes, especially in the final years. My top 5 (although two aren't technically Beatles tunes): "Blackbird," "Dear Prudence Jam," "Hey Jude" coming out of "Mr. Fantasy," "That Would Be Something," and "Imagine."

"Blackbird," sung by Bob and Brent, was done twice in 1988, once on 6/23/88 at Alpine and once on 7/17/88 (whole show) at the Greek in Berkeley. Both times occurred as a double encore preceding "Brokedown Palace." Alpine features Brent laughing as the vocals slip away, but still feels a little more emotional and truer than the Greek version.
The Jerry Garcia Band performed "Blackbird" on three occasions, 11/18/75 at the Keystone, 11/23/75 at the Macky Auditorium in Boulder, Colorado, and 4/26/88 (Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band, with special guests Brent and Bob) at the Veteran's Memorial Auditorium in San Rafael (if anyone has a copy of this show, please let me know!)

The GD played Day Tripper 5 times, first as an encore on 12/28/84 at the San Francisco Civic Auditorium and last on 8/24/85 at the Boreal Ride Ski Resort near Truckee, CA (although the first and last performances appeared in the encore, the other three versions were not encores).

According to DeadBase, the only "Dear Prudence Jam" occurred 3/13/82 between "The Other One" (starts at 6:34 on the linked version) and "Black Peter." Setlists and reviews on archive.org cite three other Dear Prudence Jams however:  9/19/90 (whole show) on the track Jam (Dear Prudence teased at 8:55 on this version) out of "Let It Grow," preceding "Drumz." Hornsby is playing quite beautifully here in his first week as the Dead's keyboard player after Brent passed. 12/30/91 (whole show) between "Saint of Circumstance" and "Drumz," and 6/8/92 (link to jam only) between "Corinna" and "Drumz" (whole show here). Jerry played "Dear Prudence" three times in 1979 with Reconstruction, and at least 13 times with the Jerry Garcia Band, mainly in 1981 and then again in the early nineties (searching "Dear Prudence" on www.thejerrysite.com only yields 13 results, but looking through the setlists it is clear it was played more times). Here is a YouTube version on 9/6/89 (although this version . Notably, RatDog has played "Dear Prudence" 99 times. A nice version from 9/6/03 (whole show here. I love the RD version from 11/12/05 at the Palladium in Worchester, MA, but that show is not up on the LMA. Furthur played "Dear Prudence" once 11/12/10 in Utica (whole show).

"Get Back" was played once 1/28/87 (whole show) at the SF Civic Auditorium. There is a nice Dan Healy melting voice effects on the line "but she was a man." Then come Alvin & the Chipmunks...

According to Rock Scully's book, Living with the Dead (a book hated and refuted by Deadheads and the band), the Dead played "Good Day Sunshine" at some Acid Test: "a bouncy version...with dodgy harmonies." Thanks to the Grateful Dead Lyric and Song Finder for this one.

"Hey Jude" appeared as a Pigpen encore twice, once at the Fillmore East on 2/11/69 (early show) and once at the Fillmore West on 3/1/69. Neither version is available on the LMA, but can be found respectively on the commercial recordings Live at the Fillmore East 2-11-69 and Fillmore West 1969: Complete Recordings. The "nah nah nah Hey Jude" part appeared alongside "Mr. Fantasy" sung by Brent (who was lyrically similar to Pig in many ways). It was played once in 1985 (9/7/85 whole show link), and then 27 other times between 1988 and 1990. Check out the 10/9/89 version, at Hampton Coliseum (when the band played covertly as "Formerly the Warlocks." While "Mr. Fantasy" didn't always end with the "Hey Jude Finale," the "Hey Jude Finale" never appeared sans "Mr. Fantasy." Jerry and John Kahn also played "Hey Jude" at Wavy Gravy's 50th Birthday celebration at the Berkeley Community Theater on 5/15/86. Wavy's son would later emerge snoreling from an onstage bathtub adorning plumbers candles, filled with melted fudge, everybody singing "Happy Birthday."

"I Want to Tell You" was played 7 times in 1994 and 1995. A YouTube 10/15/94 version from MSG. Not very exciting, but given the year...it's at least cool they were trying new things.


A band called Bobby Ace and His Cards From the Bottom of the Deck played "I've Just Seen a Face" once (originally appearing on Rubber Soul), with Bobby singing, 6/11/69 at the California Hall. The band featured Weir, Garcia, Lesh, Hart and Constanten, with John Dawson and David Nelson on guitar, autoharp and vocals and with Peter Grant on pedal steel (info from Deadbase).

Vince sang "It's All Too Much" 6 times in 1995, notably 3/26/95 (whole show) at the Omni, a good show given the year. According to the GD Song and Lyric Finder, the Dead soundchecked "Paperback Writer" that night too. "It's All Too Much was also played at the final run of shows, 7/8/95 (whole show) at Soldier Field. 

The band played "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" 19 times from 1993 to 1995. Here is a YouTube from the second time played, 3/24/95 at the Dean Smith Center at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

The band played "Rain" a number of times in the final years. 3/18/95 Jerry doesn't look so good... Here at Alpine,  7/19/94 (whole show), another rain encore, fitting given the rain that day.

The band played "Revolution" 11 times between 1983 and 1990. Here is a YouTube of the second ever version, 7/2/85 from Pittsburgh Civic Arena.

The band played "Tomorrow Never Knows" 12 times, 11 times as a encore song, played out of "Baba O'Riley." Here (whole show) is a version from 6/6/92.

"Twist and Shout," written by Phil Medley and Bert Berns, later recorded by the Beatles in 1968 with additional lyrics. According to the GD Song and Lyric Finder, it "was sung by Joey Covington with the Dead and other members of the Jefferson Airplane on 7 September 1969. It segues out of a very raw version of Louie Louie...It has also been played as a jam (no lyrics) by Phil Lesh & Friends in 2002. And before that by Bob Weir with Nightfood and in a Furthur Festival jam." It's not clear which lyrical version Joey sang.

The Dead opened with "Why Don't We Do It in the Road" once, 4/7/85 at the Spectrum in Philly.

According to the GD Song and Lyric Finder, the Dead soundchecked Lennon's Watchin' the Wheels in 1995, but never played the song live.

The Dead played McCartney's That Would Be Something 17 times between 1991 and 1995. There's just something I love so much about this song. My favorite version comes up out of a nice He's Gone vocal jam just before Drumz and Space. You gotta hear the whole sequence... 4/1/94 at the Omni.

Playing with Merl Saunders in the early 70s, Jerry noodled out the Imagine melody a few times. I absolutely love the 1/19/72 version at the Lion's Share in San Anselmo. Jerry pours gold nectar out of Expressway (To Your Heart), that Imagine melody woven in so sublimely...

Igor Stravinsky

An inter-continental influence, Igor Stravinsky was born in Russia in 1882, moved to France in 1920, then to the States in 1940, where he died in 1971. His most famous 1913 composition, Rite of Spring, incited a riot at its premier.

In a Reverb Music interview, Bob Weir recounts hearing Stravinsky at age 18:

...[T]here was a classical record on CBS with Pierre Boulez conducting ‘Le sacre du printemps’ –- or ‘The Rite of Spring.’ If you ask me who the father of rock ’n’ roll is, I’ll tell you Igor Stravinsky. He wrote that in 1913, I think, and people were leaving the theater when they first performed it –- the old guys were leaving saying, ‘Stop this noise!’ But it was a ballet, and it was spectacular. It was dance music. And that rearranged my thinking, and a lot of what I wrote when I was working on the tune ‘The Other One’ I gleaned from listening to that record.

 
The Sacrificial Dance from Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. Not surprisingly, Stravinsky's work has been called Satanic, and is a favorite of Marilyn Manson. Perhaps the Grateful Dead are Freemason Satanists after all!

During the 2009-2010 Furthur New Year's countdown you can hear Stravinsky's Firebird being played over the PA while a woman (Jerry's daughter?) descends from the sky on a Terminator meets the Dead skull a la Bill Graham.