Lyrics: Rober Hunter
Music: Bob Weir
The Grateful Dead may have rehearsed/recorded this when considering songs for "Built To Last." According to the entry for Shit Happens in Steve Silberman's Skeleton Key:
An outtake from the Built To Last sessions that may have become an anthem of the Deadhead fraternity, but never made it out of the studio. A studio rehearsal tape has a take of "Shit Happens" between a slow, fragile version of "Blow Away" and a drum-machine-driven "Foolish Heart." The song's chorus, "Shit happens - that's all we know! Shit happens, and awa-a-yy we go ...," glides on a irrestible hook, and verses are swapped by Weir, Mydland and Lesh, who sings in a barbershop basso.The lyrics quoted come from "Tough Changes", included in Robert Hunter's book "Box Of Rain", from which the full lyrics below are taken. Hunter lists Bob Weir as having set it to music. But an alternative story is that what the Dead recorded is fragments from a John Perry Barlow song It Doesn't Matter.
Could be heaven hanging low
Now or never, who's to know?
Patience is a rich man's game
Backed up honking in your lane
Climb the ladder but like I said
Don't leave footprints on my head
Come down lightly when you tread
One man's gutter is another man's bed
Eeny-meeny-miney-mo
Could be the weather, I don't know
Tough changes and the winds do blow
Shit happens and away we go
All the textbooks had to say
The rest of your life begins today
I don't care who gets the blame
Children are crying all the same
Tough changes in the parking lot
A broken bottle, a pistol shot
When the curtain falls this time
It falls on yours, it falls on mine
Shit happens, that's all we know
Shit happens and away we go
Tough changes - wo-oah
You told me so, I guess you know
Standing on the trapdoor spring
Hard to think about other things
Provocation from every side
Love, the law, and each other besides
Some of these days don't seem to end
Meet yourself comin' round the bend
Shake your hand and slap your face
Keep your guard up just in case
Tough changes, look out below
Shit happens and away we go
Tough changes and the wind do blow
You told me so I guess you know
Keep it clean or keep it hid
Others fall for what you did
A hundred years on down the line
Will any part of our lovelight shine?
Tough changes, look out below
Shit happens and away we go
Tough changes and the wind do blow
Could be the weather, I don't know