Photo by Susana Millman
Roy Kepler and the staff at his bookstore in Menlo Park allowed us to exist in an intellectual atmosphere with a built-in library. People heard there was a scene and fell by; the periphery of our social life extended to hundreds of bright, interesting folks from Stanford, the surrounding community, and the flowering local electronics industry.
So wrote Robert Hunter, the Grateful Dead's lyricist, in the introduction to The Silver Snarling Trumpet, which is being published for the first time this October.
In these pages, readers are privy to the early days of Robert Hunter, Jerry Garcia, and their cohorts, who sit at coffee shops passing around a single cup of bottomless coffee because they lack the funds for more than one. Follow these truth-seeking souls into the stacks at Kepler’s Books, renting instruments at Swain’s House of Music, and through the countryside on mind-expanding road trips. Witness impromptu jams, inspired intellectual pranks, and a dialogue that is, by turns, amusing and brilliant and outrageous. Hunter shares his impressions of his first gig with Garcia, along with descriptions of his most intense dreams and psychedelic explorations. All of it is enlivened by Hunter’s visionary spirit and profound ideas about creativity and collaboration.
The lost manuscript is augmented with a foreword by John Mayer, an introduction by Dennis McNally, and an afterword by Brigid Meier, who was part of their scene in the San Francisco Bay Area that served as a bridge from the Beatniks to the hippies. Five years after Hunter’s death, readers and fans of Hunter’s indelible poetry and song can explore the origin of his genius and his craft.
About the Author
Dennis McNally is an author, historian, and music publicist. His books include On Highway 61: Music, Race and the Evolution of Cultural Freedom, A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead, and Desolate Angel: Jack Kerouac, The Beat Generation & America. He lives in San Francisco.
About the Moderator
David Gans has been curating Grateful Dead music on the radio since 1985 as the producer and host of the nationally syndicated Grateful Dead Hour. Since 2008, he has been a co-host of Tales from the Golden Road, a two-hour weekly talk show on SiriusXM’s Grateful Dead Channel. Gans is the author of five books about the Grateful Dead. He has also produced several boxed sets and compilation albums of Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia music.
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