The Grateful Dead sold a lot of concert tickets and a respectable number of albums, but it took them more than twenty years to have a top ten hit. When “Touch of Grey” broke out, it inspired a debate among the Deadheads: on the one hand, its popularity ruined the experience of going to shows, but on the other hand, it’s an absolute banger, and the video is fun too.
The problem with the single version is that it omits Jerry’s exquisite guitar solo. The album version is the one I grew up on.
Here’s my transcription, including the tabbed-out solo.
I imagine that this song is super fun to play in front of a crowd, and Jerry confirms it.
Robert Hunter wrote the lyrics, but also a full melody and chords. Here’s his version.
I learned from an obituary of Hunter that the lyrics were inspired by a cocaine hangover. This is not a very uplifting origin for the Dead’s most relatable singalong chorus. You can see unused alternate lyrics and extra verses here.
With due respect to Hunter’s lyrics, the song’s real appeal is in the music. Jerry rewrote Hunter’s melody, and the band put together what might be their tightest and most satisfying arrangement. Aside from the vocal melody, the sound that jumps out at you is Brent Mydland’s synth line after each “I will get by” in the chorus: dink dink dink dink dink. It’s annoying, but also undeniably catchy. Jerry’s country-flavored guitar countermelody underneath isn’t annoying at all, but it also doesn’t stick in your memory the way the dinky synth does.
This is an atypical Dead tune in its almost total lack of blues influence. It has that characteristic Jerry blend of straight major and Mixolydian mode, but major predominates, and there are more V-I cadences than you would expect in a rock song.
The intro uses the same rhythm and alternating major and sus4 chord vibe as “Bertha”. It’s a funny beginning to a pop hit; it sounds like Phil Lesh started the take before everyone else was ready, and they all stumble into place behind him.
In the verses, there’s a nice call and response to the chords: I-V-I in B, then I-IV-I in E. The vocal melody is hiply end-accented, to use David Temperley‘s term. Usually, each phrase in a rock melody starts on the beginning of a hypermeasure. It’s less common for phrases to end on a hypermetrical border. In the “Touch of Grey” verses, each phrase starts on beat two and then anticipates the next downbeat, ending on the “and” of four (give or take a few syllables here and there.) This jazzy phrasing over brightly primary-colored chords is in direct contrast to the bleak lyrics. This is how you keep a song interesting after many listens.
The chorus has simpler harmonic rhythm but the chords are placed oddly: F# is on the hyperdownbeat, while B is halfway through the hypermeasure, a weaker location. Then there’s an entire hypermeasure of E. So which of these chords is the stable and resolved one? The harmony is telling you one thing, but the metrical placement of the chords is telling you something different. On the third line, the “I will get by-y-y”, the “by-y-y” goes over some nice backcycling chords: A to E to F#, bVII to IV to V in B major. It doesn’t resolve after that, either, it repeats the intro groove for four bars: E to A to E, then F# to B to F#, before finally resolving properly to B on the next verse. None of this is particularly far out, but it’s just surprising enough.
The bridge gets more harmonically adventurous, with lots of secondary dominants. While the melody here is not quite as rock solid as the rest of the tune, it does trace a satisfying descending line through the changes. The section starts on C#m, the ii chord in B. Then it goes to C#7, the V/V, which resolves to F#. That all happens again, and then it goes to G#m, the vi chord in B. This is followed by D#7, V/vi, but that doesn’t resolve. Instead, it slides down in parallel to C#7, V/V again, resolving not to F# but to F#7. That resolves to B7, the V/IV, which in turn resolves to E. Finally, there’s the end of the intro figure, F# to B to F#, and then back to the verse.
Jerry’s solo runs through a verse and a chorus. Even though he’s mixed undemonstratively against a busy background, his tone still cuts through like a sunbeam through treetops. He navigates changes with more intention and awareness than rock guitarists usually do. He knows where the chord tones are and how to voice lead, and he can string arpeggios together to sound like a coherent melody rather than just a bunch of patterns. At 2:29, there’s a classic Jerry-ism, a triplet pulloff from F-sharp down to E over the E chord. At 2:39, there’s a rising country riff in sixths. Over the chorus changes, Jerry quotes the synth riff, giving it an organic warmth. The magic here is not just in his note choices, but in his droll and conversational touch. Listen to the pair of high E’s at 2:45 and 2:51. He plays the first one loud and clear, but then swallows the second one so it sounds almost sheepish. This is not an adjective you would apply to most rock guitar solos.
“Touch of Grey” has not had much of a cultural footprint beyond the Dead’s recording. Like many Dead songs, it’s a little too complicated for a casual cover band. It’s also not a good tune to jam over; it doesn’t work unless you are playing with precision. War on Drugs covered it for the Day of the Dead compilation, and their version does nothing for me at all. I guess I do prefer their synth sound to Brent’s 80s chime.
I wasn’t all that enraptured by Day of the Dead generally, but I do think it’s remarkable how completely the indie rock hipster world has embraced the Dead. Back in high school, cool people despised them.
Last thing. Whenever I do one of these Dead posts, I like to look for interviews with or about Jerry, since they are vastly more available now than they were when I was a teenage Deadhead. It’s always inspiring to learn about Jerry’s musical process and his larger social and cultural insights, he was an extraordinarily sharp and witty conversationalist. But then I quickly come to some mention of him smoking crack alone in his car, or nodding out from heroin while his cigarettes burned holes in his furniture. The Dead are full of contradictions like this. You see the band name, the skeleton imagery and the gothic lettering, and it makes you expect death metal. Then you hear this cheerful, burbling jazzy country hippie rock. And then you dig into the frontman’s psychology and he’s a depressed, self-loathing addict. It’s a lot, but I can see why teenaged me was so fascinated by the whole thing.