Help on the Way -> Slipknot! -> Franklin’s Tower

In this post, I talk through my favorite Grateful Dead prog epic, the three-song suite of “Help on the Way,” “Slipknot!” and “Franklin’s Tower.” The Dead wrote many of these epic suites, which usually consist of a few short through-composed sections that act as anchor points within long open-ended modal jams. “Help>Slip>Frank” is the most jazz-fusion-inspired of the suites, and the middle section is the most complex thing Jerry ever wrote. Tricky though it is, the ingredients are simple: arpeggiated minor seventh and diminished chords.

Here’s the studio version of the suite from Blues for Allah, annoyingly split into two tracks.

How metal is that album cover? My older stepbrother had a bunch of Dead LPs in our closet when I was growing up, and they radiated menace. I was very surprised when I finally worked up the nerve to listen to them, and discovered how affable and laid-back they were.

If you came here hoping to learn the suite on guitar, Craig Acree’s meticulous transcription of “Slipknot!” is by far the best one out there. I interpret the time signature changes a bit differently than Craig does, but I can vouch for his accuracy.

Here’s a good guitar tutorial for “Help on the Way.”

Before we get into the analysis, here’s some enjoyable Dead lore for you.

• “Slipknot!” existed as a vaguely structured freestanding instrumental that Jerry played a few times in 1974 during jams between “Dark Star” and “Stella Blue,” between “Eyes of the World” and “China Doll”, and during “The Other One.” It was named after a lyric that got cut from “Help on the Way.”
• Apparently the similarity between “Franklin’s Tower” and the “doot doo doot” part of Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” is intentional.
• The lyrics to “Franklin’s Tower” are seemingly nonsensical, but Robert Hunter meant every line to be a specific allusion. Whatever it all means, the words have nice mouth feel.
• In the 1980s, the band simplified the twisty parts of “Slipknot!”. I grew up with the version from Without a Net. It has its MIDI-enhanced charms, but I like the original version better. Dead & Company play the 80s version, but slower, tighter, and with better singing. (John Mayer’s outfit in that video is an incredible eyesore.)

I consider the Blues for Allah version to be canonical, but for in-depth analysis, I’m going to use the version on One From The Vault instead. It’s structurally identical to the album version, but it comes as a more convenient single track. The only difference between them is that on Blues for Allah, “Franklin’s Tower” fades out at the end, while on One From The Vault they end it by repeating its intro. Here’s my transcription, with guitar tab. And here’s a visualization I did using Ableton Live.

Let’s dig in!

“Help on the Way”

The whole tune is in F Dorian mode. After an eight bar intro on Fm, there are three musically identical verses, along with a guitar solo that also uses the verse form. The form has four phrases.

• The first phrase moves from Fm7 to Cm7 to Fm7. It ends with a bass walk down the F Dorian scale from 8^ to 7^ to 6^ (F to E-flat to D) in a groovy tresillo rhythm. I guess you could also consider that last chord to be a Dø7 or Bb7/D, it’s all the same thing.
• The second phrase is the same as the first, but it ends with Fm7/Cm7/Fm7 on the tresillo rhythm.
• The third phrase is on Bb7, moving to Cm7, and ending on a very hip Bb13sus4 chord. You could also think of it as Abmaj7 with B-flat in the bass. This phrase is an extra measure long, which gives the otherwise predictable form a subtle asymmetry.
• Finally, the fourth phrase is identical to the second phrase.

“Slipknot!”

I don’t know why there’s an exclamation point in the title. Maybe it’s because this is where the real fun begins. I describe the various sections of this tune as follows: Transition 1, Maze 1, Plateau 1, the long jam section, Plateau 2, Maze 2, and Transition 2. You’ll notice that the sections form an imperfect palindrome. Pretty cool.

• First, Transition 1 continues the groove from “Help on the Way,” but with a new F Dorian riff, repeated four times. The fourth time through this riff, it ends with a bar of 7/8 time. Then the riff starts over, but it only gets through the first three eighth notes before it unexpectedly changes direction, launching into a 4/4 bar of arpeggios on C diminished. We have now entered Maze 1.
• Maze 1 continues with a similar riff to the one that ended the Transition, but this time it’s transposed up to G Dorian, and is in 9/8 instead of 4/4 and 7/8. Then there’s the same truncated version of the riff in 3/8, and then the same 4/4 bar of arpeggios on D diminished.
• Maze 1 ends with a sequence of four-note arpeggios: an ascending E minor arpeggio, 1^-3^-5^-1^, then seven descending minor seventh chords, 7^-5^-3^-1^, on Bm7, F#m7, Am7, Em7, Bm7 again, Am7 again, and Em7 again. This sequence lands on a bar of Am7.
• We are now in Plateau 1. It continues the riff from the beginning of the Maze, but rhythmically displaced in a hip way, and ending on a bar of 9/8. Then this whole phrase repeats.
• Whew! We made it to the jam. Everybody hits a big Am chord and lets it sustain. Now the band can stretch out in and around A Dorian mode. Eventually, there’s some kind of cue, and everyone starts playing a riff that includes D-sharp. At the end of this passage, the band plays two bars of D7, and they conclude with a final two bars of Am7.
• Now we’re on Plateau 2. Unlike Plateau 1, this stays in 4/4 throughout. The guitars and keyboards do a call and response with the rhythm section. (Phil’s bass playing on the studio version of this passage is the funkiest eight bars of his entire bass playing career.)
• Next we come to Maze 2. It’s the same main riff as we just heard, folded in on itself across a bar of 4/4 and a bar of 5/4. There’s a truncated 3/8 riff, and a bar of 4/4 arpeggios on D diminished.
• That whole sequence repeats identically, but this time, immediately after the D diminished arpeggios, it shifts the pattern up to E diminished. Then there’s the E minor arpeggio and the various minor seventh arpeggios, the same as at the end of Maze 1.
• Now we come to Transition 2. The mode changes to (mostly) A Mixolydian, where it will stay for the rest of the suite. There are four repeats of a nicely syncopated country-sounding riff on A, C and Em.

“Franklin’s Tower”

Finally, we can relax our minds: from here on out, it’s a simple two-bar loop in A Mixolydian mode, A to G to D to G, times infinity. The only mild complexity is the harmonic rhythm: the G chords are displaced half a beat later than you’re expecting. Jerry loved stretching out on a syncopated Mixolydian groove.

I have enjoyed this suite for thirty years now and have been curious about learning to play it for most of that time, but until recently, I would never have bothered. I could have transcribed it all into notation, but that would have been so labor-intensive as to not be worth the time. (No one is clamoring for my solo guitar arrangement of any Grateful Dead song.) But this was quick work in Ableton Live, because I could just line up the recording with the grid and annotate the audio itself, rather than having to flip back and forth between the recording and the score. This program is such a gift to aural learners like me.

While I had the tune all neatly lined up in Ableton, I decided to remix it. Enjoy!

My co-author Will described this track as sounding “like Massive Attack, but happy.” I’ll take it.