New Speedway Boogie

Lyrics: Robert Hunter
Music: Jerry Garcia

Recorded on Workingman's Dead. The only dated tracking sheet from the Workingman's Dead sessions that survives shows the Grateful Dead working on this song, then labelled “New Speedway Blues” at Pacific High Recording on March 3rd, 1970.

Please don't dominate the rap, Jack
If you got nothing new to say
If you please, don't back up the track
This train's got to run today

I spent a little time in the mountain
Spent a little time on the hill
I heard some say "better run away"
Others say "better stand still"

Now I don't know but I've been told
It's hard to run with the weight of gold
Other hand I heard it said
It's just as hard with the weight of lead

Who can deny? Who can deny?
It's not just a change in style
One step done and another begun
In I wonder how many miles?

I spent a little time on the mountain
Spent a little time on the hill
Things went down we don't understand
But I think in time we will

Now I don't know but I was told
In the heat of the sun a man died of cold
Do we keep on coming or stand and wait
With the sun so dark and the hour so late?

You can't overlook the lack Jack
Of any other highway to ride
It's got no signs or dividing lines
And very few rules to guide

I spent a little time on the mountain
Spent a little time on the hill
I saw things getting out of hand
I guess they always will

Now, I don't know but I've been told
If the horse don't pull, you got to carry the load
I don't know whose back's that strong
Maybe find out before too long

One way or another (note a)
One way or another
One way or another
This darkness got to give
[etc]

"Why did Jagger and Cutler put the Angels with a truck load of free beer in charge of stage security? Why did the Grateful Dead people and other locals involved go along with the idea? Why Saturdays episode? I suspect it is because, just as their parents 25 years ago thought America was full of Comanches scalping stagecoach riders and Capone gangsters shooting passers-by on Chicago streets, Jagger and Cutler think San Francisco is the Hells Angels and the Pranksters since those are the ones who went to London last year and first broached the idea of the Stones playing free here.

"Now it has ended in murder. And that was a murder, not just a death like the drowning or the hit-and-run victims. Someone stabbed that man five times in the back. Overkill, like Pinkville. Like a Chicago cops reaction to long hair.

"Is this the new community? Is this what Woodstock promised? Gathered together as a tribe, what happened? Brutality, murder, despoliation, you name it. The name of the game is money, power and ego, and money is first and it brings power."