Anthem of the Sun
Encyclopedia
Anthem of the Sun is the second studio album
Album
An album is a collection of recordings, released as a single package on gramophone record, cassette, compact disc, or via digital distribution. The word derives from the Latin word for list .Vinyl LP records have two sides, each comprising one half of the album...

 by the Grateful Dead
Grateful Dead
The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock, and for live performances of long...

, released in 1968. It is the first album to feature second drummer Mickey Hart
Mickey Hart
Mickey Hart is an American percussionist and musicologist. He is best known as one of the two drummers of the rock band the Grateful Dead. He was a member of the Grateful Dead from September 1967 to February 1971, and from October 1974 to August 1995...

, who joined the band in September 1967. In 2003, the album was ranked number 287 on Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...

magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time
The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
"The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" is the title of a 2003 special issue of American magazine Rolling Stone, and a related book published in 2005.Related news articles:...

.

Making of the album

The band had entered the American Studios in North Hollywood with the same producer, David Hassinger
David Hassinger
David Hassinger was a sound engineer at RCA Studios in Los Angeles.From November 1964 until August 1966 he was the engineer for the Rolling Stones, working on all of their albums recorded in that period....

, as their eponym
Eponym
An eponym is the name of a person or thing, whether real or fictitious, after which a particular place, tribe, era, discovery, or other item is named or thought to be named...

ous debut album
The Grateful Dead (album)
The Grateful Dead is the debut album of the Grateful Dead. It was recorded by Warner Bros. Records, and was released in March 1967. According to bassist Phil Lesh in his autobiography Searching for the Sound: My Life with the Grateful Dead, the album was released as San Francisco's Grateful...

, in November 1967. However, the Dead were determined to make a more complicated recorded work than their debut release, as well as attempt to translate their live sound into the studio.

The band and Hassinger then changed locations to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 in December of that year, where they found themselves going through two other studios, Century Sound and Olmstead Studios (both "highly regarded eight-track studios"). Eventually, Hassinger grew frustrated with the group's slow recording pace and quit the project entirely while the band was at Century Sound, with only a third of the album completed so far. It has been reported that he left after Guitarist Bob Weir requested to create the illusion of "thick air" in the studio. Hassinger commented that "Nobody could sing [the new tracks recorded in NYC], and at that point they were experimenting too much in my opinion. They didn't know what the hell they were looking for." Garcia noted that "we want[ed] to learn how the studio work[ed]. We [didn't] want somebody else doing it. It's our music, we want[ed] to do it."

The band then recruited their soundman, Dan Healy
Dan Healy (soundman)
Dan Healy is an audio engineer most famous for his work with the American rock band the Grateful Dead. He succeeded Owsley "Bear" Stanley as the group's chief sound man...

, to assist them in the studio for the rest of the album and they headed back to San Francisco's Coast Recorders studio. In between the Los Angeles and New York sessions, the band began playing live dates. Lesh commented that this was in part because the songs were not "road tested." Healy, Garcia, and Lesh then took these concert tapes (encompassing two Los Angeles shows from November 1967, a tour of the Pacific Northwest in January/early-February 1968, and a California tour from mid-February to mid-March 1968) and began interlacing them with existing studio tracks. Garcia called this "mix[ing] it for the hallucinations."

Adding to the psychedelic madness on the album was Tom Constanten
Tom Constanten
Tom Constanten is an American keyboardist, best known for playing with the Grateful Dead from 1968 to 1970.-Biography:...

, a friend of bassist Phil Lesh
Phil Lesh
Phillip Chapman Lesh is a musician and a founding member of the Grateful Dead, with whom he played bass guitar throughout their 30-year career....

 who joined the band in the studio to provide piano and prepared piano
Prepared piano
A prepared piano is a piano that has had its sound altered by placing objects between or on the strings or on the hammers or dampers....

 (influenced by John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...

) tracks; Constanten would formally join the band in November 1968. His contributions to the band's sound were always much more evident in the studio than in their live shows, and Anthem of the Sun was no exception. Constanten made it so that the piano pieces seemed like three gamelan
Gamelan
A gamelan is a musical ensemble from Indonesia, typically from the islands of Bali or Java, featuring a variety of instruments such as metallophones, xylophones, drums and gongs; bamboo flutes, bowed and plucked strings. Vocalists may also be included....

 orchestras were playing all at once. He even went so far as to use a gyroscope
Gyroscope
A gyroscope is a device for measuring or maintaining orientation, based on the principles of angular momentum. In essence, a mechanical gyroscope is a spinning wheel or disk whose axle is free to take any orientation...

 set spinning on the piano soundboard. All in all, the album turned out as psychedelic as intended. The band used a large assortment of instruments in the studio to augment the live tracks that were the base of each song, including kazoos, crotales
Crotales
thumb|right|Crotales are often used with other mallet percussionCrotales , sometimes called antique cymbals, are percussion instruments consisting of small, tuned bronze or brass disks. Each is about 4 inches in diameter with a flat top surface and a nipple on the base. They are commonly...

, a harpsichord
Harpsichord
A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by plucking a string when a key is pressed.In the narrow sense, "harpsichord" designates only the large wing-shaped instruments in which the strings are perpendicular to the keyboard...

, timpani
Timpani
Timpani, or kettledrums, are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum, they consist of a skin called a head stretched over a large bowl traditionally made of copper. They are played by striking the head with a specialized drum stick called a timpani stick or timpani mallet...

, guiro
Güiro
The güiro is a Latin-American percussion instrument consisting of an open-ended, hollow gourd with parallel notches cut in one side. It is played by rubbing a stick or tines along the notches to produce a ratchet-like sound. The güiro is commonly used in Latin-American music, and plays a key role...

, and a trumpet. Garcia commented that parts of the album were "far out, even too far out ... We weren't making a record in the normal sense; we were making a collage." In order to get more publishing royalty points on the album, the opening track "That's It For The Other One" was artificially divided into four other "songs" by the band. Robert Hunter
Robert Hunter (lyricist)
Robert C. Hunter is an American lyricist, singer-songwriter, translator, and poet, best known for his association with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead.-Biography:He was born Robert Burns in San Luis Obispo, California...

, a longtime friend and then-future songwriting collaborator of Jerry Garcia
Jerry Garcia
Jerome John "Jerry" Garcia was an American musician best known for his lead guitar work, singing and songwriting with the band the Grateful Dead...

, made his first lyrical contributions to the band, providing Lesh and Pigpen with the words to "Alligator".

Joe Smith, president of Warner Bros. at the time, was noted as calling Anthem of the Sun as "the most unreasonable project with which we have ever involved ourselves."

Early pressings of the album include the phrase "The faster we go, the rounder we get" inscribed on the vinyl in the matrix around the label area. This was the inspiration for Rounder Records
Rounder Records
Rounder Records, originally of Cambridge, Massachusetts, but now based in Burlington, Massachusetts, is a record label founded in 1970 by Ken Irwin, Bill Nowlin and Marian Leighton-Levy, while all three were still university students...

 name.

A remixed version of Anthem of the Sun was issued in 1972 (with the same product number, #WS-1749), and can be identified by the letters RE after the master numbers.

Although the chaos of the final product makes it difficult to tell where many of the live excerpts used in the creation of Anthem Of The Sun actually ended up, significant fragments of "Alligator" (e.g. the post-vocals "jam section") known to hail from a show at San Francisco's Carousel Ballroom on 2/14/68. Also the "Alligator" vocal reprise is taken from 11/10/67 at the Shine Exposition Center. Similarly, the skeletal framework of "Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks)" dates from the Los Angeles Shrine Auditorium show on 11/10/67 and at the Carousel Ballroom on March 31, 1968. Extended excerpts from two shows at Kings Beach Bowl in Lake Tahoe, CA on 2/23-24/68 that provided music for the album (most notably the car horn heard at the end of "Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks)") were later released on the live archival recording Dick's Picks Volume 22
Dick's Picks Volume 22
Dick's Picks Volume 22 is a two-CD album by the rock group the Grateful Dead, the twenty-second installment of the live archival release series. It documents portions of the concerts on February 23 and 24, 1968 at the Kings Beach Bowl in Kings Beach, California...

.
A further show from this period further reveals portions used for the album such as the verse(s) section of "The Other One" portion of "That's It For The Other One" as well as the first half of the "New Potato Caboose" jam (after the vocals) were used on Anthem Of The Sun, hailing from 3/17/68, was released as the Grateful Dead Download Series Volume 6
Grateful Dead Download Series Volume 6
Volume 6 is the sixth in a series of live digital downloads of the band the Grateful Dead released by The Grateful Dead Productions. It was released on October 4, 2005 and is a single disc featuring some of the band performing on March 17, 1968 at the Carousel Ballroom in San Francisco, CA...

.

Anthem to Beauty

The making of Anthem of the Sun, Aoxomoxoa
Aoxomoxoa
Aoxomoxoa is the third studio album by the Grateful Dead. It was originally titled Earthquake Country. Many Deadheads consider this era of the Dead to be the experimental apex of the band's history. It is also the first album with Tom Constanten as an official member of the band...

, Workingman's Dead
Workingman's Dead
Workingman's Dead is the fourth studio album by the Grateful Dead. It was recorded in February 1970 and originally released on June 14, 1970....

, and American Beauty
American Beauty (album)
American Beauty is the fifth album by the Grateful Dead. It was recorded between August and September 1970 and originally released in November 1970 by Warner Bros. Records...

are described by former members and associates of the Grateful Dead in the 1997 Classic Albums
Classic Albums
Classic Albums is a documentary series about pop and rock albums that are considered the best or most distinctive of a well-known band or musician or that exemplify a stage in the history of music.-Format:...

documentary Anthem to Beauty.

While "Alligator" was Robert Hunter's first songwriting credit on a Grateful Dead album, it was not the first lyric he penned for the group. Both "China Cat Sunflower
China Cat Sunflower
"China Cat Sunflower" is a song performed by the Grateful Dead which was first recorded for their third studio album Aoxomoxoa. The lyrics were written by Robert Hunter and the music composed by Jerry Garcia. The song is typically sung by Jerry Garcia. The first live recording of this song...

" and "The Eleven" pre-dated "Alligator" in the band's repertoire.

Side one

  1. "That's It for the Other One" – 7:40
    • I. "Cryptical Envelopment" (Garcia
      Jerry Garcia
      Jerome John "Jerry" Garcia was an American musician best known for his lead guitar work, singing and songwriting with the band the Grateful Dead...

      )
    • II. "Quadlibet
      Quodlibet
      A quodlibet is a piece of music combining several different melodies, usually popular tunes, in counterpoint and often a light-hearted, humorous manner...

       for Tenderfeet" (Garcia, Kreutzmann
      Bill Kreutzmann
      Bill Kreutzmann is an American drummer who played with the rock band the Grateful Dead for their entire thirty-year career...

      , Lesh
      Phil Lesh
      Phillip Chapman Lesh is a musician and a founding member of the Grateful Dead, with whom he played bass guitar throughout their 30-year career....

      , McKernan, Weir
      Bob Weir
      Bob Weir is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist, most recognized as a founding member of the Grateful Dead. After the Grateful Dead disbanded in 1995, Weir performed with The Other Ones, later known as The Dead, together with other former members of the Grateful Dead...

      )
    • III. "The Faster We Go, The Rounder We Get" (Kreutzmann, Weir)
    • IV. "We Leave the Castle" (Constanten
      Tom Constanten
      Tom Constanten is an American keyboardist, best known for playing with the Grateful Dead from 1968 to 1970.-Biography:...

      )
  2. "New Potato Caboose" (Lesh, Robert Petersen) – 8:26
  3. "Born Cross-Eyed
    Born Cross-Eyed
    Born Cross-Eyed is an original composition by the San Francisco, CA Psychedelic rock group the Grateful Dead. It was written by rhythm guitarist Bob Weir during the band's sessions creating the album Anthem of the Sun, produced by David Hassinger, in 1968...

    " (Weir) – 2:04

Side two

  1. "Alligator" (Lesh, McKernan, Hunter
    Robert Hunter (lyricist)
    Robert C. Hunter is an American lyricist, singer-songwriter, translator, and poet, best known for his association with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead.-Biography:He was born Robert Burns in San Luis Obispo, California...

    ) – 11:20
  2. "Caution (Do Not Stop on Tracks)" (Garcia, Kreutzmann, Lesh, McKernan, Weir) – 9:37

2003 Reissue Bonus Tracks

  1. "Alligator" (live) (Lesh, McKernan, Hunter) – 18:43
  2. "Caution (Do Not Stop on Tracks)" (live) (Garcia, Kreutzmann, Lesh, McKernan, Weir) - 11:38
  3. "Feedback" (live) (Grateful Dead) – 6:58
  4. "Born Cross-Eyed" (single version) (Weir) – 2:55 [Unlisted Bonus Track]

Musical personnel

  • Jerry Garcia
    Jerry Garcia
    Jerome John "Jerry" Garcia was an American musician best known for his lead guitar work, singing and songwriting with the band the Grateful Dead...

     - lead guitar
    Guitar
    The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...

    , acoustic guitar
    Acoustic guitar
    An acoustic guitar is a guitar that uses only an acoustic sound board. The air in this cavity resonates with the vibrational modes of the string and at low frequencies, which depend on the size of the box, the chamber acts like a Helmholtz resonator, increasing or decreasing the volume of the sound...

    , kazoo
    Kazoo
    The kazoo is a wind instrument which adds a "buzzing" timbral quality to a player's voice when the player vocalizes into it. The kazoo is a type of mirliton, which is a membranophone, a device which modifies the sound of a person's voice by way of a vibrating membrane."Kazoo" was the name given by...

    , vibraslap
    Vibraslap
    A vibraslap is a percussion instrument consisting of a piece of stiff wire connecting a wood ball to a hollow box of wood with metal “teeth” inside. The percussionist holds the metal wire in one hand and strikes the ball...

    , vocals
  • Bob Weir
    Bob Weir
    Bob Weir is an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist, most recognized as a founding member of the Grateful Dead. After the Grateful Dead disbanded in 1995, Weir performed with The Other Ones, later known as The Dead, together with other former members of the Grateful Dead...

     - rhythm guitar, 12-string guitar, acoustic guitar, kazoo, vocals
  • Ron "Pigpen" McKernan - organ
    Organ (music)
    The organ , is a keyboard instrument of one or more divisions, each played with its own keyboard operated either with the hands or with the feet. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria who is credited with...

    , celesta
    Celesta
    The celesta or celeste is a struck idiophone operated by a keyboard. Its appearance is similar to that of an upright piano or of a large wooden music box . The keys are connected to hammers which strike a graduated set of metal plates suspended over wooden resonators...

    , claves
    Claves
    Claves are a percussion instrument , consisting of a pair of short Claves (Anglicized pronunciation: clah-vays, IPA:[ˈklαves]) are a percussion instrument (idiophone), consisting of a pair of short Claves (Anglicized pronunciation: clah-vays, IPA:[ˈklαves]) are a percussion instrument (idiophone),...

    , vocals
  • Phil Lesh
    Phil Lesh
    Phillip Chapman Lesh is a musician and a founding member of the Grateful Dead, with whom he played bass guitar throughout their 30-year career....

     - bass
    Bass guitar
    The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....

    , trumpet
    Trumpet
    The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...

    , harpsichord
    Harpsichord
    A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by plucking a string when a key is pressed.In the narrow sense, "harpsichord" designates only the large wing-shaped instruments in which the strings are perpendicular to the keyboard...

    , kazoo, piano
    Piano
    The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

    , timpani
    Timpani
    Timpani, or kettledrums, are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum, they consist of a skin called a head stretched over a large bowl traditionally made of copper. They are played by striking the head with a specialized drum stick called a timpani stick or timpani mallet...

    , vocals
  • Bill Kreutzmann
    Bill Kreutzmann
    Bill Kreutzmann is an American drummer who played with the rock band the Grateful Dead for their entire thirty-year career...

     - drums, orchestra bells, gong
    Gong
    A gong is an East and South East Asian musical percussion instrument that takes the form of a flat metal disc which is hit with a mallet....

    , chimes, crotales
    Crotales
    thumb|right|Crotales are often used with other mallet percussionCrotales , sometimes called antique cymbals, are percussion instruments consisting of small, tuned bronze or brass disks. Each is about 4 inches in diameter with a flat top surface and a nipple on the base. They are commonly...

    , prepared piano
    Prepared piano
    A prepared piano is a piano that has had its sound altered by placing objects between or on the strings or on the hammers or dampers....

    , finger cymbals
  • Mickey Hart
    Mickey Hart
    Mickey Hart is an American percussionist and musicologist. He is best known as one of the two drummers of the rock band the Grateful Dead. He was a member of the Grateful Dead from September 1967 to February 1971, and from October 1974 to August 1995...

     - drums, orchestra bells, gong, chimes, crotales, prepared piano, finger cymbals
  • Tom Constanten
    Tom Constanten
    Tom Constanten is an American keyboardist, best known for playing with the Grateful Dead from 1968 to 1970.-Biography:...

     - prepared piano
    Prepared piano
    A prepared piano is a piano that has had its sound altered by placing objects between or on the strings or on the hammers or dampers....

    , piano, electronic tape

Production personnel

  • Grateful Dead
    Grateful Dead
    The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The band was known for its unique and eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, reggae, country, improvisational jazz, psychedelia, and space rock, and for live performances of long...

     - producers, arrangers
  • David Hassinger
    David Hassinger
    David Hassinger was a sound engineer at RCA Studios in Los Angeles.From November 1964 until August 1966 he was the engineer for the Rolling Stones, working on all of their albums recorded in that period....

     - co-producer
  • Dan Healy
    Dan Healy (soundman)
    Dan Healy is an audio engineer most famous for his work with the American rock band the Grateful Dead. He succeeded Owsley "Bear" Stanley as the group's chief sound man...

     - executive engineer
  • Bob Matthews - assistant engineer

Studio tracks

  • RCA Victor Studio A, Hollywood, CA, September 1967
  • American Recording Company, Studio City, CA, October, 1967
  • Century Sound Studio, New York, NY, December, 1967
  • Olmstead Sound Studios, New York, NY, December, 1967

Live tracks

  • Shrine Exposition Center, Los Angeles, California
    Los Angeles, California
    Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...

    , November 10–11, 1967
  • Eureka Municipal Auditorium, Eureka, California
    Eureka, California
    Eureka is the principal city and the county seat of Humboldt County, California, United States. Its population was 27,191 at the 2010 census, up from 26,128 at the 2000 census....

    , January 20, 1968
  • Eagles Auditorium, Seattle, Washington, January 26–27, 1968
  • Crystal Ballroom
    Crystal Ballroom (Portland, Oregon)
    Crystal Ballroom, originally built as Cotillion Hall, is a historic building in Portland, Oregon, United States. Cotillion Hall was built in 1914 as a ballroom, and dance revivals were held there through the Great Depression...

    , Portland, Oregon
    Portland, Oregon
    Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...

    , February 2–3, 1968
  • Carousel Ballroom, San Francisco, California
    San Francisco, California
    San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...

    , February 14, March 15–17, March 29–31, 1968
  • Kings Beach Bowl, Lake Tahoe, California, February 22–24, 1968

It is believed that the majority of the live music on the finished record is from the February 14th Carousel Ballroom date. Bonus tracks 6-8 on the 2003 reissue were recorded live at Shrine Exposition Center on August 23, 1968.

Reissue production credits

  • James Austin and David Lemieux - reissue producers
  • Peter McQuaid - executive producer
    Executive producer
    An executive producer is a producer who is not involved in any technical aspects of the film making or music process, but who is still responsible for the overall production...

    , Grateful Dead Productions
  • Michael Wesley Johnson - associate producer, research coordination
  • Eileen Law - archival research, Grateful Dead Archives
  • Cassidy Law - project coordination, Grateful Dead Archives
  • Jeffrey Norman - additional mixing on bonus tracks
  • Joe Gastwirt - mastering, production consultant

Charts

Album - Billboard
Chart Peak Position
Pop Albums 87
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