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The Silver Snarling Trumpet

The Birth of the Grateful Dead—The Lost Manuscript of Robert Hunter

The Silver Snarling Trumpet Open the full-size image

Contributors

By Robert Hunter

Foreword by John Mayer

Introduction by Dennis McNally

Afterword by Brigid Meier

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On Sale
Oct 8, 2024
Page Count
256 pages
Publisher
Da Capo
ISBN-13
9780306835155

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.

Genre:

  • “Very touching and endearing, The Silver Snarling Trumpet is a Menlo Park version of Withnail & I. It reads like a duck down a Roman alleyway, taking in all the graffiti and movie posters, as it embraces the panic and curious certainty of youth, the flights and fancies of friends, even the butts of a few discarded jokes—all before first light dawns on Robert Hunter's intricate, lyrical dream of America.”
    Elvis Costello
  • “This is a gift—a rare, special, and important hand-drawn blueprint by the architect of the dream himself. Discovering just a page of this book would have been enough to rejoice over. That we have hundreds is a reality I’m still trying to get my head around. Time itself has revealed something truly magnificent, and there is beauty to be found on every page.”
    John Mayer, from the Foreword
  • “An essential document in the Deadhead library, and a pleasure to read.”
    Kirkus Reviews
  • "The Silver Snarling Trumpet unfolds in Menlo Park, California, where the aimless college-age Hunter and Jerry Garcia soak in ‘the scene’...and form a folk-guitar duo. Hunter's fond snapshot of an embryonic counterculture is richly observed and rife with vibrant character sketches…. Deadheads will drink this in…"
    Publishers Weekly
  • "The Silver Snarling Trumpet, shelved for years by the band’s lyricist Robert Hunter, is a dreamy elegy for a 1960s Californian youth. ...you can see, too, the seeds of Hunter’s particular talent for images, the inklings of the mind that will one day write 'words from out a silk trombone', and place 'a wishing well with a golden bell / and a bucket hanging clear to Hell' into the lyrics of some of the Dead’s best songs. ... [The book] captures something about youth, what youth feels like and especially felt like then."
    Daily Telegraph

Formats and Prices

Price

$32.00

Price

$41.00 CAD

Format

Format:

  1. Hardcover $32.00 $41.00 CAD
  2. ebook $16.99 $21.99 CAD
  3. Audiobook Download (Unabridged) $24.99

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Robert Hunter

About the Author

Robert Hunter was an American lyricist, singer-songwriter, translator, and poet, best known for his work with the Grateful Dead. As a young man in Palo Alto, he met Jerry Garcia, and the two embarked on a lifelong collaboration. Hunter wrote many of the Dead’s most enduring songs, including “Dark Star,” “Ripple,” and “Terrapin Station.” He is a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Americana Music Association. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along with the Grateful Dead in 1994.

Learn more about this author