Lyrics: Alan and Marilyn Bergman
Music: Michel Mauleart Monton
Played by the Grateful Dead as an instrumental duet on two slide guitars during a soundcheck on 3 June 1978.
The tune was originally a Haitian song called Choucoune but is more familiar with its English lyrics, written in the 1950s:
Yellow bird, up high in banana tree
Yellow bird, you sit all alone like me
Did you lady friend leave the nest again
That is very sad, makes me feel so bad
You can fly away, in the sky away
You're more lucky than me
I also had a pretty girl, she's not with me today
They're all the same those pretty girls
Take tenderness, then they fly away
Yellow Bird, yellow bird
Did you lady friend leave the nest again
That is very sad, makes me feel so bad
You can fly away, in the sky away
You're more lucky than me
Wish that I were a yellow bird, I'd fly away with you
But I am not a yellow bird, So here I sit
Nothing I can do
Yellow bird, yellow bird