Althea, Upon Scrutiny



Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter’s tune Althea is a deceptively simple song, giving rise to more questions than answers if you pause long enough to give it a close listen. (That is to say, if you go down one of those particular rabbit holes available in seemingly infinite form to diehard Heads and do as I did recently: listen to every version of Althea you can get your hands on and parse the lyric line by line.)

In the end, more than anything else, the exercise had me learning (speculating?) a thing or two about how Hunter and Garcia worked together to create songs — while developing some theories about the tune along the way. Make what you will:

For such a short lyric, Althea in final form has a pretty complicated narrative structure, giving rise to questions of point of view.



Who is speaking, when, and to whom?



For such a cryptic little tale the answer to that question (which arises frequently) is a little too complicated to make total sense.

At the start, it’s simple enough: “I told Althea I was feeling lost…” If you listen to any of the live versions of this little masterpiece, it’s easy to imagine our narrator standing alone on an empty stage and, with a certain amount of resignation, recounting his exchange with Althea. In the here-and-now present tense of the song, there’s only one person speaking (the “I”) and he’s reporting on a conversation that already took place. Simple enough, right? But who is he talking to? Is it our luck to overhear him talking to himself (in other words: it’s a soliloquy)? Or are we being addressed directly here?

Given the number of references to Hamlet, and especially to Hamlet’s famous soliloquy (“To be or not to be…"“…sleeping and perchance to dream”) there’s a strong argument to be made that that’s exactly what it is. We are not being addressed directly. We are overhearing something much more private. It also fits, ironically, for this to be a soliloquy, as Garcia retreated from the affable guy everyone loved to a junkie with his back to the world (the ultimate subject of the song, I think). Regardless:

I told Althea I was feeling lost Lacking in some direction Althea told me upon scrutiny That my back might need protection

I told Althea that treachery Was tearing me limb from limb Althea told me, now cool down boy Settle back easy, Jim.

Simple enough. A world-weary troubadour sings of his interesting relationship to the mysterious Althea, whose name evokes a sense of “healer” from the ancient Greek root of the word.



I’ve always thought those opening lines tracked Garcia’s escalating relationship to heroin. And I still do think that’s how to read it. Late seventies, this song was written at a time when Hunter was providing quite a few lyrics filled with such ominous caution (“Maybe you had too much to fast…” “…the sunny side of the street is dark” “…maybe the dark is from your eyes…” - just to quote one song from roughly the same period).

Also I say “escalating” because in those opening lines the narrator goes from “feeling lost” to describing“treachery tearing me limb from limb” while Althea goes from suggesting he might “need protection” to saying “cool down boy/ settle back easy, Jim.” To me it reads like an escalation. Like heroin. However you read the meaning - and set that aside for now - the real question becomes: who is talking in the next many lines, and to whom are they talking?

You may be Saturday’s child all grown Moving with a pinch of grace You may be a clown in the burying ground Or just another pretty face You may be the fate of Ophelia Sleeping and perchance to dream Honest to the point of recklessness Self-centered to the extreme

Ain’t nobody messin’ with you but you Your friends are getting most concerned Loose with the truth, maybe its your fire Baby I hope you don’t get burned

So far, in a song purportedly about Althea and her relationship to this singer, eight lines report clearly on dialogue between the two. The next twelve — interesting, ominous, but really vague in terms of understanding the narrator and their point of view. Who is talking here? It’s just not as obvious as you’d think.



I embedded a version of the song above. Listen to these lines as you read along (Weir plays amazing rhythm in this version BTW; lovely, fat, weird slide guitar). At the end of the first section there’s a distinct break in the singing as Garcia plays his first solo. However, when he returns to singing (“You may be Saturday’s child”), he plays it pretty much as he had it in the first two verses. In other words, the music offers no clue regarding p.o.v shift.

However, in language, the shift is dramatic. Now, the voice of the singer is addressing someone directly. As we all know, Hunter was a pretty literary guy. Yes, a self-described rebel — excellent at breaking most rules thrown his way — but his songs are filled with literary allusion and convention and the man who loves Rilke would know what he was doing. I think it absolutely fair to say that it’s a dramatic shift in point of view to go from “I told Althea, and Althea told me” type reporting to addressing someone (who?) directly, line after line. “You may be… or you may be… or you may be… and BTW your friends are getting most concerned.” In this short song, it’s a little out of left field to have that in there, almost like a … a … a soliloquy? Or actually, like a Greek chorus, delivering the point - wise in the ways of the world and good with the truth.



For a while, I imagined in this section the arrival of another voice - another troubadour; perhaps Hunter himself standing on that imaginary stage next Garcia - and this was Hunter singing directly to Garcia. Actually, over Garcia, to us. What started with one person on stage telling a tale now sees the arrival of another voice, this one more omniscient, who is able to talk from a wider perspective. Which explains the shift.

You may be…



Another option, the simplest perhaps and one I like the most right now as I write this: it’s a continuation of Althea talking to our singer. He is inside her voice. Recounting more fully all the things she said to him.

Lastly, it could be our original singer (the “I” at the start) singing to us — bringing us into the song, a word of caution to us directly (“Ain’t nobody messing’ with you but you”)… I think this is unlikely, but it’s the only other option.



What gives this shift weight: it’s not just a different perspective, a different voice … it’s a voice that focuses throughout so heavily on “you.” These are words of caution, but to whom?



As I’d read before and was reminded, Garcia liked to fuck with Hunter’s lyrics - move things around - and that would make sense from a psychedelic troubadour. Why go with normal when, with a tweak here and a re-do there, you can go with weird? In this context, maybe my questions don’t matter?



Either way, after a loooong departure form the original p.o.v., the last line of caution (“Baby I hope you don’t get burned”) becomes a tight segue back into a report on what Althea said to him, our original singer:

When the smoke has cleared, she said That’s what she said to me You’re gonna want a bed to lay your head And a little sympathy

She being Althea.

However, after those scant few lines, and after another solo, we go right back to the other voice — in my view, different from the original voice because of its more omniscient point of view. It knows more - and the words of caution are heavy, and directed - and musically, there’s a change (you can hear it in all versions), like a bridge:

There are things you can replace And others you cannot The time has come to weigh those things This space is gettin’ hot You know this space is gettin’ hot

Again, who is this? Talking to whom? Clear to you? From here, back to the conversation with Althea:

I told Althea, I’m a roving sign That I was born to be a bachelor Althea told me, OK that’s fine So now I’m trying to catch her

There’s a finality to this that suggests the other, more omniscient lines don’t belong to Althea, especially considering that after the image of “trying to catch her” the songs ends with the other voice coming back— saying, specifically:

Can’t talk to you without talking to me We’re guilty of the same old things Thinking a lot about less and less And forgetting the love we bring

This is a summing up. The point. The moral of the tale. These are the lines that had me believing this “second voice” was Hunter’s - standing on stage side by side with Garcia.



And it’s his ultimate point about that scene they’d created, and the deep peril of it. (“Can’t talk to you without talking to me/ We’re guilty of the same old things…”) No one band member could rescue the other from their addiction, because they were all spiraling out in their own way(s). They were all guilty of the same old things, which is: growing old, growing weary, licking their wounds, thinking a lot about less and less, forgetting the love they bring.

In other words: for whatever reason, they’d lost touch with the dream.



It’s a dark, dark song. In my view (and many others agree, I am sure) what made the whole Dead scene forget the love, what took the train off the tracks, away from the original vision to move humankind a step forward (as Garcia so famously said) was addiction, heroin. It fucked it all up. And I think this is what Hunter is trying to capture here, in all of its complication.

I recently listened to a 1981 interview with Garcia in which he talked about Althea as one of his favorite songs, although he was never able to nail it the way he wanted to whenever he played it. So, he always came back to it - with the hope of getting it right the next time. That observation by Garcia, along with all of the shifts in point of view I describe above, has me believing this, finally:

Althea is probably just an incomplete song. I also suspect that Hunter wrote the Althea lines with one thing in mind, and the “other” lines maybe for a different idea of his. In fact, the other lines read as an open letter to his old dear friend; see below where I have them separated in full.



At some point, I suspect Hunter might have realized the different parts work together pretty well — so he combined them. True or not, the song was almost complete. It needed something else to nail it. Garcia felt this and so he tried to shift things around. Plenty of other Dead tunes that are slight, mood pieces, vignettes – the problem here is that these lines are, as I’ve said already, filled with such dark caution.



Garcia gave the song what it needed: mystery. I know this to be true because here, below, is an early version of the song (if not the first time played, definitely the second) from August 5th, 1979 - and the order of verses is completely different. The opening:

I told Althea I was feeling lost Lacking in some direction Althea told me upon scrutiny That my back might need protection You may be the fate of Ophelia Sleeping and perchance to dream Honest to the point of innocence Self-centered to the extreme

It goes on, same lines, but ordered very differently. I suspect this was the shape of the song when Hunter handed the lyrics to Garcia. In this (original?) version, what Althea says creates a much more solid thread throughout the song and the addressing of a larger, unknown “You” tends to be balanced against reporting of the Althea conversation. It’s Hunter’s original balance, replaced by Garcia’s desire to mess with the order — for whatever reason he had.

All of this to say: the structure of the song might not tell us anything, exactly, about the meaning. Garcia’s changes feel arbitrary. It definitely creates a more mysterious song and that’s great; but it’s arbitrary.

What we can learn from the song will always come from individual lines, standing alone, no matter where they appear in the larger order. And, in that context, I stick with my original view. This is Hunter writing to and through his dear friend about the worst kind of addiction.

What we can learn from the song will also always come from how the band played it – and, sadly, as great as the song is … it forever reminds me of listening to Billie Holiday singing a tune like Strange Fruit at the height of her addiction to heroin. You can hear Garcia’s addiction soaked in every line of Althea, floating on the music, like a dream. Which makes it so powerful and sad all at once.



That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.

Here are the non-Althea lines, from start to finish. If this doesn’t read like an open letter to Jerry from one of his oldest dearest friends, I don’t know what does:

You may be Saturday’s child all grown

Moving with a pinch of grace

You may be a clown in the burying ground

Or just another pretty face

You may be the fate of Ophelia

Sleeping and perchance to dream

Honest to the point of recklessness

Self-centred to the extreme

Ain’t nobody messin’ with you but you

Your friends are getting most concerned

Loose with the truth, maybe its your fire

Baby I hope you don’t get burned

There are things you can replace

And others you cannot

The time has come to weigh those things

This space is gettin’ hot

You know this space is gettin’ hot

Can’t talk to you without talking to me

We’re guilty of the same old things

Thinking a lot about less and less

And forgetting the love we bring

