Just about twen­ty years ago, on July 9, 1995, the Grate­ful Dead played their last show with Jer­ry Gar­cia. Nei­ther the fans, nor the band knew this would be so, but any­one pay­ing atten­tion could have seen it com­ing. Gar­ci­a’s cocaine and hero­in use had long dom­i­nat­ed his life; despite inter­ven­tions by his band­mates, a few stints in rehab, a dia­bet­ic coma, and the death of key­boardist Brent Myd­land, the singer and gui­tarist con­tin­ued to relapse. Exact­ly one month after that final con­cert, he died of a heart attack.

And what a poignant show it was. (See the tour poster above, hear the entire set below, and see a setlist here), open­ing with the band’s come­back hit “Touch of Grey” and clos­ing with a fire­works dis­play set to Hen­drix’s “Star Span­gled Ban­ner.”

Gar­cia sounds frail, his voice a bit thin and ragged, and the lyrics—penned by Robert Hunter—strike a painful­ly iron­ic note: “I will get by… I will sur­vive.” Just last night, twen­ty years after that moment, fans once again said good­bye to the Dead, as they played their last of three final con­certs with­out Jer­ry at Chicago’s Sol­dier’s Field, the same venue where Gar­cia last sang “Touch of Grey“ ‘s fate­ful words.

The Grate­ful Dead­’s offi­cial out­put may have been uneven at times, marred by excess and tragedy, but the band’s words remained con­sis­tent­ly inspired and inspir­ing, each song a poet­ic vignette filled with oblique ref­er­ences and wit­ty, heart­felt turns of phrase. We most­ly have Robert Hunter to thank for those hun­dreds of mem­o­rable vers­es. An accom­plished poet and trans­la­tor of Rain­er Maria Rilke’s Duino Ele­gies and Son­nets to Orpheus, Hunter served, writes Rolling Stone, as the band’s “pri­ma­ry in-house poet.” In a rare and mov­ing inter­view with the mag­a­zine, the reclu­sive writer mus­es on his for­mer role, and hedges on the mean­ing of his songs: “I’m open to ques­tions about inter­pre­ta­tion, but I gen­er­al­ly skate around my answers because I don’t want to put those songs in a box.”

Hunter’s reluc­tance to inter­pret his lyrics has­n’t stopped fans and schol­ars of the Dead from doing so. There have been uni­ver­si­ty exhibits and aca­d­e­m­ic con­fer­ences devot­ed to the Grate­ful Dead. And true stu­dents of the band can study the many lit­er­ary ref­er­ences and allu­sions in their song­writ­ing with The Anno­tat­ed Grate­ful Dead Lyrics, an online project begun in 1995 by UC San­ta Cruz Research Asso­ciate David Dodd, and turned into a book in 2005. The exten­sive hyper­text ver­sion of the project includes edi­to­r­i­al foot­notes explain­ing each song’s ref­er­ences, with sources. Also includ­ed in these gloss­es are “notes from read­ers,” who weigh in with their own spec­u­la­tions and schol­ar­ly adden­da.

If you have any doubt about just how steeped in poet­ic his­to­ry the pre-emi­nent hip­pie band’s cat­a­log is, see for exam­ple the anno­tat­ed “Ter­rapin Sta­tion,” a song that reach­es back to Homer and alludes to Lewis Car­roll, William Blake, Pla­to, and T.S. Eliot. Or, so, at least, say Dodd and his read­ers, though some of their inter­pre­ta­tions may seem a bit ten­u­ous. Hunter him­self told Rolling Stone, “peo­ple think I have a lot more inten­tion at what I do because it sounds very focused and inten­tion­al. Some­times I just write the next line that occurs to me, and then I stand back and look at it and say, ‘This looks like it works.’ ” But just because a poet isn’t con­scious­ly quot­ing Homer does­n’t mean he isn’t, espe­cial­ly a poet as dense­ly allu­sive as Robert Hunter.

Take, for exam­ple, “Uncle John’s Band,” which con­tains the line “Ain’t no time to hate.” One read­er, Aaron Bibb, points us toward these lines of Emi­ly Dick­in­son:

I had no time to Hate—
Because
The Grave would hin­der Me—
And Life was not so
Ample I
Could finish—Enmity—

Woven through­out the song are ref­er­ences to Amer­i­can poet­ry and folk music—from Robert Frost’s “Fire and Ice,” to the Gads­den Flag, to an Appalachi­an rag. Anoth­er of the band’s most pop­u­lar songs, “Friend of the Dev­il,” cribs its title and cho­rus from Amer­i­can folk singer Bill Mor­ris­sey’s song “Car and Driver”—and also ref­er­ences Don McLean’s “Amer­i­can Pie.” Draw­ing as much on the West­ern lit­er­ary canon as on the Amer­i­can song­book, Hunter’s writ­ing sit­u­ates the Dead­’s Amer­i­cana in a tra­di­tion stretch­ing over cen­turies and con­ti­nents, giv­ing their music depth and com­plex­i­ty few oth­er rock bands can claim.

The online anno­tat­ed Grate­ful Dead also includes “The­mat­ic Essays,” a bib­li­og­ra­phy and “bib­li­og­ra­phy of song­books,” films and videos, and discogra­phies for the band and each core mem­ber. There may be no more exhaus­tive a ref­er­ence for the band’s out­put con­tained all in one place, though read­ers of this post may know of com­pa­ra­ble guides in the vast sea of Grate­ful Dead com­men­tary and com­pendi­ums online, in print, and on tape. The band may have played its last show twen­ty years ago, and again just last night with­out its beloved leader, but the pro­lif­er­at­ing, seri­ous study of their songcraft and lyri­cal genius shows us that they will, indeed, sur­vive.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Grate­ful Dead’s “Rip­ple” Played by Musi­cians Around the World

10,173 Free Grate­ful Dead Con­cert Record­ings in the Inter­net Archive

The Grate­ful Dead’s “Ulti­mate Boot­leg” Now Online & Added to the Library of Con­gress’ Nation­al Record­ing Reg­istry

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Oppor­tu­ni­ties to meet one’s heroes can go any num­ber of ways. They can be under­whelm­ing and dis­ap­point­ing, embar­rass­ing and awk­ward, or—as Tom Waits found out in meet­ing Kei­th Richards and Charles Bukows­ki—com­plete­ly over­whelm­ing. Both encoun­ters became too much for Waits for the same rea­son: when you “try to match them drink for drink,” he says in an inter­view, “you’re a novice, you’re a child. You’re drink­ing with a roar­ing pirate.” Waits “wasn’t able to hang in there” with these vet­er­an imbibers—“They’re made out of dif­fer­ent stock. They’re like dock­work­ers.” But of course it was­n’t just their leg­endary drink­ing that impressed the sand­pa­per-voiced L.A. trou­ba­dour.

Waits calls both Richards and Bukows­ki artis­tic “father figures”—two of many stand-ins for his own absent father—but it’s Bukows­ki who had the most pro­found effect on the singer and song­writer. Both South­ern Cal­i­for­nia natives, both keen observers of America’s seed­i­er side, as writ­ers they share a num­ber of com­mon themes and obses­sions.

When he dis­cov­ered Bukows­ki through the poet’s “Notes of a Dirty Old Man” col­umn in the LA Free Press, Waits observed that he “seemed to be a writer of the com­mon peo­ple and street peo­ple, look­ing in the dark cor­ners where no one seems to want to go.” Waits has gone there, and always—like his lit­er­ary hero—returned with a hell of a sto­ry. His song­writ­ing voice can chan­nel “Hank,” as Bukowski’s friends knew him, and his speak­ing voice can too—with sharp glints of dry, sar­don­ic humor and sur­pris­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, though much more ragged and pitched sev­er­al octaves low­er.

Waits’ artis­tic kin­ship with Bukows­ki makes him bet­ter-suit­ed than per­haps any­one else to read the down-and-out, Dos­to­evsky-lov­ing, alcoholic’s work. At the top of the post, hear him read Bukowski’s “The Laugh­ing Heart,” a poem of weary, almost resigned exhor­ta­tion to “be on the watch / There are ways out / There is light some­where,” in the midst of life’s dark­ness. Below it, Waits reads “Nir­vana,” a poem we’ve fea­tured before in sev­er­al ren­di­tions. Here, the poet tells a story—of lone­li­ness, imper­ma­nence, and a brief moment of solace. For com­par­i­son, hear Bukows­ki him­self, in his high, nasal­ly voice, read “The Secret of My Endurance” above. Waits almost became more than just a Bukows­ki lover and read­er; he was once up for the role of Bukowski’s alter-ego Hen­ry Chi­nas­ki in Bar­bet Schroed­er’s 1987 Bukows­ki adap­ta­tion, Barfly. “I was offered a lot of mon­ey,” says Waits, “but I just couldn’t do it.” Mick­ey Rourke could, and did, but as I hear Waits read these poems, I like to imag­ine the film that would have been had he tak­en that part.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Four Charles Bukows­ki Poems Ani­mat­ed

Hear 130 Min­utes of Charles Bukowski’s First-Ever Record­ed Read­ings (1968)

Charles Bukows­ki Rails Against 9‑to‑5 Jobs in a Bru­tal­ly Hon­est Let­ter (1986)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness