“The Silver Snarling Trumpet” is not your average memoir. But then, Robert Hunter was not your average writer.
He’s best known as the poetic lyricist of songs performed for decades by the legendary Grateful Dead, and still performed today. For starters, this book came from a so-called “lost manuscript” found by his widow, Maureen Hunter, in an old trunk in a storage container where it had lain for decades.
As he was writing “Trumpet,” starting at age 19, Hunter considered it a novella, though it’s really a sort of memoir. Hunter never considered it finished and never intended it to be published. But his widow had other plans. Now, the finished product includes a foreword by musician John Mayer and an introduction by historian and Grateful Dead biographer Dennis McNally who provide their own interesting takes on the material.
The tome tells the story of a brief time in history, not long after the Beat Generation had risen to prominence in San Francisco. Youthful Jerry Garcia and Hunter were so destitute that they slept on the floor of the single room of a monosyllabic benefactor, and made one cup of joe last all day between them at the local coffee shop. Until they were thrown out for good, that is.
They were often joined by Englishman Alan Trist, who at the time was taking a gap year from college. Trist returned to England, but later came back to join the Dead’s management team.
Even though LSD wasn’t available at the time and the impoverished friends were mostly getting high on coffee and wine, Hunter’s manuscript seems hallucinatory, with long (arguably overwrought) descriptions of dreams and visions, possibly foreshadowing his future experimentation with psychedelics.
Hunter was born in 1941 near San Luis Obispo, California. His alcoholic father abandoned the family, throwing it into chaos and causing him to be placed in foster care for several years. His mother remarried and was able to retrieve him, and they moved to Palo Alto and, later, to Connecticut. Despite the latter move, Hunter always remained the quintessential Californian in spirit, and returned to Palo Alto when he reached adulthood.
In 1961, at a theatrical production of “Damn Yankees,” he met a man named Jerry Garcia who would change his life, becoming his friend and collaborator until Garcia’s death in 1995.
At one point, they formed a performing duo, but it didn’t last long.
The book will be of particular interest, of course, to fans of the Grateful Dead, many of whom treasure any knowledge about the group’s background and history. Although Hunter didn’t perform on stage with the band, he was an integral part since he wrote many of the group’s original songs, in partnership with Jerry Garcia.
“He played the guitar anywhere from twenty-four to thirty-eight hours a day, which could tend to be unnerving, even if he were Segovia,” Hunter recalled about Garcia in the manuscript.
The book also serves as a historical document of sorts about the San Francisco Bay Area, during a period between the Beatnik generation and the rise of the hippies, as experienced by one of its inhabitants. Hunter’s prose veers from insightful to somewhat juvenile musings, which makes sense because he was so young at the time. Not much happens in the story. It’s generally a description of “the scene” in the impoverished artist-musician milieu in which they all dwelt at the time.
The title, “Silver Snarling Trumpet,” comes from a poem by John Keats called “The Eve of St. Agnes.” Illustrations by noted psychedelic artist Nathaniel Deas (Bourbon Sunday) add to the appeal.
The book, published in October, is described by Kirkus Reviews as “an essential document in the Deadhead library, and a pleasure to read.”
The Grateful Dead as a band was formed in 1965, four years after the time of this missive. The band broke up after Garcia’s death, but has reformed in various ways, most recently as “Dead & Company” led by frontman and Garcia colleague Bob Weir. They still frequently perform Hunter songs.
Over the years, as the group’s lyricist, Hunter co-wrote some of its most enduring and fan-beloved songs, including “Ripple,” “Box of Rain,” “St. Stephen,” “Truckin‘” and “Brokedown Palace.”
In 1982, Hunter dusted off the “Silver Trumpet” manuscript and took another look at it, before deciding to put it away again for good.
“I don’t plead the book as a piece of good writing, that is as may be, and my ego is pretty disinvolved after two decades, but as a singular curiosity whose value is wholly unintentional on the part of the writer,” he wrote in an author’s note that’s included in the book.
- The Silver Snarling Trumpet: The Birth of the Grateful Dead.
- The Lost Manuscript of Robert Hunter
- Illustrations by Nathaniel Deas
- Foreword by John Mayer. Introduction by Dennis McNally. Afterword by Brigid Meier.
- Published October 8, 2024 by Hatchette Books, New York