Dark Star
Lyrics: Robert Hunter
Music: Grateful Dead
Reprinted with permissions: copyright Ice Nine Publishing
Dark star crashes
Pouring its light into ashes
Reason tatters
The forces tear loose from the axis
Searchlight casting
For faults in the clouds of delusion
Shall we go, you and I, while we can?
Through the transitive nightfall of diamonds
Mirror shatters
In formless reflections of matter
Glass hand dissolving
To ice petal flowers revolving
Lady in velvet
Recedes in the nights of goodbye
Shall we go, you and I, while we can
Through the transitive nightfall of diamonds?
-----------------------------------------
Robert Hunter wrote the following ending to the lyrics.
You can hear it being spoken at the end of the single version of "Dark Star"
- available on the compilation CD "What A Long Strange Trip."
Spinning a set the stars through which the tattered tales of axis roll
About the waxen wind of never set to motion in the unbecoming
Round about the reason hardly matters nor the wise through which
The stars were set in spin
Recordings
Grateful Dead & Related Recordings
studio 1967 What A Long Strange Trip It's Been
16 Mar 1968 So Many Roads (1965-1995)
24 Aug 1968 Two From The Vault
11 Feb 1969 Fillmore East 2-11-69
27 Feb 1969 Live/Dead
8 Nov 1969 Dick's Picks Vol 16
28 Apr 1971 Ladies And Gentlemen ... The Grateful Dead
8 Apr 1972 Glastonbury Fayre (note 1)
(1) the Dead apparently gave permission for this "Dark Star" to be included on the box set of LPs issued to raise money for this (British) festival.
-------------------------------------------------
Other Recordings
Date - Album - Recorded By
1989 Fresh Tracks In Real Time - Tom Constanten
1989 Those Who Know History Are Doomed To Repeat It - Henry Kaiser
1990 Heart's Desire - Henry Kaiser
1993 A Historical Retrospective - Solar Circus
1993 Dead Ringers - Dead Ringers
1996 Dark Star: The Music Of The Grateful Dead - David Murray Octet
1997 Space Debris - Space Debris
1997 Pickin' On The Grateful Dead - David West et al
1998 Realms - Jamie Janover (instrumental)
1998 Blue Light Rain - Jazz Is Dead
1998 Welcome To Our World (For Members Only) - JGB
1998 Live With His Funky Friends - Merl Saunders
2000 Stolen Roses - David Grisman Quintet
2000 Struggling Man - Merl Saunders
2000 Search For Intelligent Life - Dose Hermanos
--------------------------------------------
"Dark Star" was included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, on their list of the 500 most influential songs in rock and rollit was placed there by Jim Henke, chief curator of the R&R Hall of Fame.
Dark Star is the prototypical Grateful Dead song, providing the band with a vehicle for countless hours of improvisation. Hunter writes in Box of Rain that "Dark Star" was the first song he wrote in the company of the band other earlier lyrics were written and mailed to them.
----------------------------------------------------------
Books, films, and songs using "Dark Star" in their titles:
Books:
Fiction and drama:
Moyra Caldecott . Child of the Dark Star. 1984.
Robert William Chambers . The Dark Star. 1929.
March Cost. The Dark Star. 1940.
Hugh Caswell Tremenheere Dowding . The Dark Star. 1951.
Allen Furst. Dark Star. 1991.
Dilys Gater . The Dark Star. 1981.
Pamela Hill . A Dark Star Passing. 1990.
Nerina Hilliard . Dark Star. 1968. (A Harlequin romance)
Florence Ring Kahn . Dark Star, a Drama in One Act. 1950.
Brigid Knight . Dark Star. 1965.
Hugh Lloyd . The Mystery at the Dark Star Ranch. 1934.
Anne Maybury . Dark Star. 1977.
Lorna Moon . Dark Star. 1929.
Marcia Muller . Dark Star. 1989.
Robert Silverberg . To the Dark Star. Short story,
Biographies: (this seems to be a popular subtitle for biographies):
Ellis Amburn . Dark Star: the Roy Orbison Story. 1990.
Robin Bates . The Dinosaurs and the Dark Star. 1986.
Fountain, Leatrice. Dark Star. (A biography of the actor John Gilbert.) 1985.
Dylan Jones . Jim Morrison, Dark Star. 1992.
Nonfiction:
Ronnie Dugger, . Dark Star: Hiroshima Reconsidered in the Life of Claude Eatherly. 1967.
Fiona MacLeod, . The Dominion of Dreams: Under the Dark Star. 1910.
Robert Wolfe . Dark Star. 1984.
Films:
Dark Star. 1974. (A sci fi feature film).
Nancy Holt . Art in the Public Eye: the Making of Dark Star Park. 1988.
Recordings:
Mike Oldfield . Dark Star. Track on Tubular Bells 2. 1992.
Steven Stills . Dark Star."Track on CSN.
-------------------------------->>>>>
The list of media with Dark Star in the title and the list of artists who have covered Dark Star was taken from David Dodd's Annotated Grateful Dead lyrics web site:
http://arts.ucsc.edu/gdead/agdl/
althorrat says that Dark Star is also (1) the name of a Marvel comics character (a Soviet agent who can fly and project force fields), and an game for the old ZX Spectrum - a
vector-based spaceflight simulator.