Time Capsule: Grateful Dead, 'Terrapin Station'

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After the June 1974 release of From the Mars Hotel, the Grateful Dead quit touring. The hiatus didn’t last too long, though, as the band made Blues for Allah in September 1975 and were back on the road by the next summer. But around that time, the Dead watched their record label fold. They inked a deal with Arista, on account of Clive Davis’ longtime interest in the band. Davis, who had previously worked with New Riders of the Purple Sage, had a stipulation for the Dead: They would have to work with an outside producer on their next album, something they’d only done once in the seven years prior (Stephen Barncard co-produced American Beauty in 1970). They obliged, of course, bringing in Keith Olsen and briefly relocating to Los Angeles so they could work out of Olsen’s homebase, Sound City Studios, where he’d recently co-produced Fleetwood Mac.

Terrapin Station was an outlier upon arrival, despite it being the best effort from the Grateful Dead’s middle years. Stuck between the so-so From the Mars Hotel and the lopsided Shakedown Street, Terrapin Station sounds like a wobbly-but-widescreen hodge-podge bookended by two of the best songs you’ve ever heard. But I love every second of it, warts and all; the album is ambitious, even for the always-nimble and always-expansive Dead. The six songs that define the band’s ninth album fail to lock into each other, but the variety suggests that Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Keith and Donna Jean Godchaux, Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, and the late Phil Lesh were durable enough to take Davis’ ludicrous provisos and make some lemonade out of them. In the context of Terrapin Station, there is space for richness and blemishing. 22 of its 36 minutes make for a radically nebulous cache of rock and roll perfection on par with anything from American Beauty or Workingman’s Dead.

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I’ll wager that “Estimated Prophet” is one of the best opening tracks in rock history. Weir wrote the song in septuple time with John Barlow and sang lead on it, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t highlight its harmonies, which are just euphoric and shine bright as Donna’s double-tracked voice pierces through a montage of backing voices. “California, a prophet on the burning shore. California, I’ll be knocking on the golden door,” Weir sings. “Like an angel standing in a shaft of light, rising up to paradise, I know I’m gonna shine.”

The band, playing the track’s swing in 14/8 after Kreutzmann combined two fast sevens and played over it in half-time, conjures the African spiritual “Ezekiel Saw the Wheel,” and all-time great horn player Tom Scott joins in on the action with a jaw-dropping saxophone and lyricon performance (in 1977 alone, Scott played sax on both this and Steely Dan’s Aja; are you kidding me?). Here, the Dead embrace their collage of prog-rock, psychedelia and jazz-rock. Here, the Dead move at a methodical pace yet coax bursts of prismatic, enduring potency out of every instrument.

With Donna on lead vocal, the Dead cover Martha & the Vandellas’ “Dancing in the Street,” smattering a funk guitar over a four-on-the-floor rhythm and Paul Buckmaster’s horn arrangements. It’s more Chic than Blue Cheer or Hawkwind, best signaling the band’s pivot away from their psychedelic roots towards a proggier din. In a live capacity, “Dancing in the Street” is a sensible inclusion in the Dead’s repertoire. In the immediate aftermath of an original composition like “Estimated Prophet,” its appearance is divergent, perhaps a smidge antagonistic. “Passenger,” Lesh’s undercooked, raw-hemmed blues-rock scorcher, makes for a necessary, middle-bloc freakout on a grab-bag record like Terrapin Station. The layering of Donna’s vocals, which overpower Weir’s, mirror those of a backing choir and crimson in the depths of Garcia’s escalating lead guitar chain.

Two years removed from her and Keith’s only solo album together (Keith & Donna), Donna brought her songwriting chops to the Grateful Dead for the first time, crafting the penultimate, studio-orchestrated “Sunrise” in honor of the band’s late road manager, Rex Jackson. “When he is gone, I want to know him better” punches with vacancy, while Garcia’s taut guitar moves offer a luxurious, sprawling, and grieving contrast to Weir’s interpretation of the Biblical “Samson & Delilah,” which he learned from Reverend Gary Davis. “Samson & Delilah” entered the Dead’s setlists in 1976 and, in the studio recording, gets rambunctious in the balance of Keith’s synthesizers and Lesh’s bass notes. The track is half-baked and muddied by a loose guitar boogie, yet it’s nearly saved by a double-dipped backup vocal from both Godchauxs.

Whether you call it “Terrapin Station Medley” or “Terrapin Part 1,” it’s the greatest Grateful Dead track ever. Like the Beatles’ “Abbey Road Medley,” there is just something unbeatable in the formula. Mash a bunch of tracks together in a symphony of perfect songwriting and world-building and you’ll have an irreplaceable mark of modern music in the palm of your hand. The medley is comprised of “Lady with a Fan,” “Terrapin Station,” “Terrapin,” “Terrapin Transit,” “At a Siding,” “Terrapin Flyer,” and “Refrain,” all of which were written by either Garcia, Hart, or Kreutzmann (with Hunter, of course). In the original concept for the suite, Hart fashioned a timbale part to compliment Garcia’s guitar interplay in “Terrapin Transit,” but Olsen removed it entirely, replacing the passage of toms with a string arrangement instead. Kreutzmann once said, “It sounds really grandiose, like somebody’s ego is playing those strings.” Weir also disliked the orchestration, once mentioning that the Dead “negotiated” for a more “reasonable perspective” of instrumentation on the track. But I dunno, I’d reckon the more verbose voyages during “Terrapin Station,” like the triad of voices flushing Garcia’s during the titular section, are what makes the construction so cardinal to begin with.

Hunter penned the first part of the “Terrapin Station” suite during a lightning storm in San Francisco, a rarity. When Garcia was driving across the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, a lone melodic line germinated within him. Legend goes that he turned his car around quickly, went home, and, like a groggy mind trying to remember a morning dream, jotted the line down in notation before it left him for good. “When we met the next day, I showed him the words and he said, ‘I’ve got the music,’” Hunter said. “They dovetailed perfectly and ‘Terrapin’ edged into this dimension.” Influenced by Sir Walter Scott, the skeleton of Hunter’s lyrics for “Lady with a Fan” were taken from a folk song named “The Lady of Carlisle” (and “The Bold Lieutenant” and “The Lion’s Den”). The “At a Siding” tangent features Garcia and the band careening directly into a symphonic movement apt for a B-level action movie chase sequence, but in the kookiness it flourishes.

Three of the seven parts in “Terrapin Station Medley” are instrumental, and “Refrain” is sung by the English Choral, but what a moving 16 minutes of music it all is. “While the firelight’s aglow, strange shadows from the flames will grow ‘til things we’ve never seen will seem familiar” remains such a quintessential line, and—as it turns out—the Grateful Dead doing their best Beatles-but-prog impression makes for some of the best prog-rock of all time. Not too shabby for a bunch of psych-rockers who godfathered the jam band era and have reached astral planes the rest of us could only dream of ever meeting. So bring forth the dancing turtles: Terrapin Station remains a nifty, measured document of a band not only zigging and zagging together through transition, but “light[ing] the song with sense and color.”

Matt Mitchell is Paste’s music editor, reporting from their home in Northeast Ohio.

Time Capsule: Grateful Dead, Terrapin Station

In the context of the Bay Area heroes’ ninth album, there is space for richness and blemishing. 22 of its 36 minutes make for a radically nebulous cache of rock and roll perfection on par with anything from American Beauty or Workingman’s Dead.