Mr. Hunter was one of the Grateful Dead's most important collaborators,
remaining in the background while writing lyrics to the band's best-known
songs,including "Truckin'," "Touch of Gray" and "Dark Star." Apart from the
band, he wrote books (the latest, a poetry anthology, "Glass Lunch," is due this month from Viking), translated the poetry of Rilke, put together a comic
book and was one of the few lyricists to write for Bob Dylan. But at his shows,
he said in an interview on Monday, his audience remains just a subsection of
Deadheads. Does he wish he spoke to a larger audience? "I'm only human," he replied.
At the same time, Mr. Hunter relishes his Grateful Dead audience.
Before the interview, he was loading recent snapshots he had taken onto the
Grateful Dead Web site (www.dead.net), his favorite being a photo of a
homeless man to whom he had just given a $100 bill. For the past year, Mr. Hunter
has faithfully kept a journal, corresponded with psychedelic luminaries like Terence
McKenna and transferred his writings onto the Dead Web site. Backstage at concerts
on his current tour, he has spent time getting to know friends he has made
through the Internet. Never has Mr. Hunter been so accessible to Grateful
Dead fans.
On Sunday and Monday at Town Hall, he is to perform his first
concerts in NewYork City since the late 80's, when he said he hung up his
guitar because he felt "redundant."
"There was no real reason for me to be out there," said Mr. Hunter,
who is 55. "Now there's no one else out there carrying the torch of the
music.If I didn't do it, I'd just be getting older and fatter. I spent the whole
oflast year looking at a computer screen. But now I realize this is life; the
other thing is half-life. My wife was worried about me touring because of
my health. But I feel 10 years younger."
Though he has been writing a lot of new songs, Mr. Hunter said the
concert would be mostly Grateful Dead tunes. But expect them to be
different from the familiar versions: Mr. Hunter has added an extra verse to
"Truckin'," which was originally supposed to be a continuing chronicle of major events
in the Grateful Dead's "long, strange trip" (one of Mr. Hunter's phrases).
And unlike Jerry Garcia, Mr. Hunter doesn't just start mumbling when he forgets
the words to a song. He makes up new verses until he recalls the original ones.
As for why Mr. Hunter never seized the opportunity to perform with the Grateful Dead (even though he was invited to join an early incarnation of the band), he said, "I always thought of the stage as having a ring of fire around it, and to cross it would have upset the band's balance and mine."
