No Left Turn Unstoned (Cardboard Cowboy)
Lyrics and music: Phil Lesh

Reprinted with permissions: copyright Ice Nine Publishing



When the cardboard cowboy dreams and he's gonna look me up
Opens up the sky and blows my mind to the colours of
Far in far gent shine running
Beneath high trembling dove
Till you meet that six and raven in the wake of the hammer blow]

On my way out of town I stumbled on the shards of a hungry screen/beast
And further up into the backdoor circle
Where the flower and crystal seat/sea
Could this go rise by all allow brater on the strength of an anguished sigh
And a paranoid re-entry blanket flies sleeping on a sling shot ride

As my patchwork quilt unravels, I ramble much too high
From the looping antrobus with his magic meant so high/I
Shining out a masquerade from dawn to alpha plus
Watching mashed potatoes dribble in the heat of reality's earth

For the intro doom from running through him
Fall though never sung
Turns the wall into the sky above me, there is no place to run
__________________________________________________________

Note that - co-incidentally - the David Nelson Band song Fable Of A Chosen One and the Phish song NICU contain the phrase "no left turn unstoned"

Bear (Owsley Stanley) has confirmed that the song usually known as "Cardboard Cowboy" was in fact titled "No Left Turn Unstoned." It was named after a sign in front of Ken Kesey's old house in La Honda.

In an interview with Blair Jackson in Dupree's Diamond News No 28, Spring 1994, there is the following exchange:

JACKSON: Have you written lyrics before?
LESH: Only once, but this Childhood's End came out a lot better than that one.
JACKSON: Which was ...
LESH: "No Left Turn Unstoned." Laughs It was a truly awful song I wrote for the Grateful Dead during the Matrix era - I think it was '67, maybe '68. It's on a couple of tapes I think. It's so God-awful I can't even listen to it to find out what it was like. Laughs

Thankis to the Grateful Dead Lyric And Song Finder for the hard to find lyrics and additional material.

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