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From: jws@dartvax.UUCP (John W. Scott)
Newsgroups: net.music.gdead
Subject: Re: Are they political? (New Speedway Boogie)
Message-ID: <2986@dartvax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 29-Apr-85 08:42:01 EDT
Article-I.D.: dartvax.2986
Posted: Mon Apr 29 08:42:01 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 1-May-85 06:29:06 EDT
References: <518@syteka.UUCP> <1161@opus.UUCP>
Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
Lines: 36

> > "New Speedway Boogie" always seemed to me to be the epitome
> > of the Dead's political stance...
> > ... "Speedway", to me, clearly defines the
> > Dead's political interests to lie in that netherworld once
> > called the "counter-culture", the real world where mind-set
> > is more important than income and life-style dominates to an
> > extent paralleled only by the starving artist community.
> 
> My understanding of New Speedway Boogie is that it was written because of,
> and about, the Altamont concert--where the Hell's Angels did the security.
> It seems to me that it concerns the end of a certain counter-culture phase,
> when "flower children" started to fade before a much nastier element.
> 
> The song certainly contains moral judgments, but I'm not convinced that
> there's all that much political in it...or am I reading it entirely wrong?
> -- 
> Dick Dunn	{hao,ucbvax,allegra}!nbires!rcd		(303)444-5710 x3086
>    ...Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.


I read an interview with Robert Hunter where he described the song pretty much
like the above.  The song is indeed about Altamont.  It is not a particularly
political song, just trying to come to terms with the changing times.  Although
much of the song is devoted to the "wilting" of the years of the flower children,
it also points out that there is a spring ahead (to follow the metaphore).  OOne
One way or another this darkness got to give.  NSB is not just about Altamont,
but rather a change that had been coming for a while that was dramatized by
the concert in question.  The rise of the me generation, an egocentricity
that had been creeping into the hippie culture (Please don't dominate the rap jp
Jack) was the demise.  Nice guys finish last...  Hunter usually doesn't like
to talk about the specifics of his lyrics.  It is a pity because I appreciated
NSB much more once I "understood" it.

  "I don't know, but I've been told, if the horse you don't pull, you got
   to carry the load..."
                               John