Lyrics: Robert Hunter
Music: Robert Hunter
A suite of songs written by Robert Hunter for the Grateful Dead but never used:
This saga was written in 1968-1969, a pet project of mine intended for setting and performance by the Grateful Dead. In retrospect, it was too ambitious a lyric project for practical consideration. The direction we took with Workingman's Dead was more to the point. However, the warm reception given by audiences to Terrapin station, a similarly outré oeuvre concerning some of the same characters, shows that the boundaries of rock can be succesfully stretched more than is commonly conceded - unless, of course, one is seeking a "hit," in which case more normative rules probably apply. Eagle Mall recounts the trials of a nomadic people and embraces the notion of eternal recurrence. The concluding parts of the reprise are intended to be sung simultaneously as a kind of "round."In a letter written on the first anniversary of Jerry Garcia's death, Hunter wrote:
You had to say to me one day, after I'd handed over the Eagle Mall suite, "Look, Hunter - we're a goddamn dance band, for Christ's sake! At least write something with a beat!"In a 1991 interview with Hunter and Garcia, Blair Jackson asked about the Eagle Mall Suite:
{Jackson] How fully realised was the "Eagle Mall" suite of songs? I know they were intended to be tackled by the Dead around the time of Aoxomoxoa, and I see what seems to be complete versions of the songs in Box of Rain, but did the group ever actually work on any of them?In Dennis McNally's book of interviews with Jerry Garcia, "Jerry on Jerry" he reproduces a manuscript page with some Jerry doodles and what is described as a 'setlist':
[Garcia] No, we never got to 'em
[Hunter] I started writing that thing when we were down there [in Los Angeles] recording Anthem of the Sun, and it was more a personal project: I had eyes for the band doing it, but then I was informed by my colleague here, "Listen, basically we're a dance band and there's no way in the world people will be able to dance to this sort of thing." I saw his point, I finished it off, and I've performed the whole suite myself.
[Garcia] I remember we did actually take a few cracks at trying to set some of it, but I couldn't come up with anything that didn't sound very hackneyed.
[Hunter] It almost had to have an old English flavor, and that wasn't really where the Grateful Dead was going then.
[Garcia] I said, "What we need is the New York Pro Musica to make this sound the way it's supposed to go, with the bells and recorders and viola da gambas and all that stuff."
This looks odd for a setlist - much more like a tracklist for an album. But it indicates that Jerry was thinking about playing or recording Eagle Mall then.
Dark Star Clementine St Stephen What's Become Of The Baby 11 Dum De Doodly Do (presumably Cosmic Charley) China Cat Sunflower Impatient Man Cortical 5 Eagle Mall