The Grateful Dead’s 20 Best Versions of ‘Dark Star’

“Dark Star” was the song that sums up everything the Grateful Dead ever set out to be. “If it were possible for us to be able to survive playing music that was as potentially free and open as ‘Dark Star,’ it’s likely that we would do that,” Jerry Garcia told Rolling Stone in 1971. “We’re trying to guide ourselves into a place where we can become more music, where we can play more music and have it get to higher places and express finer and subtler things.” Robert Hunter wrote the poetry, and the untamed minds of the Grateful Dead turned it into a long-running conversation that they stretched out for 25 years, from the Sixties to the Nineties. They began playing it at the end of 1967, and kept at it until 1994, with long stretches of time where they didn’t go near it at all.

So let’s celebrate “Dark Star,” the whole long strange journey of this song. It’s an improvisational vehicle that became a lifetime companion for these musicians — and for so many of the rest of us, which is why this song lives on long after many of its creators have rambled on. Obviously, nobody’s claiming there’s any such thing as an objectively “best” “Dark Star.” Everybody who loves the Dead has their favorite “Dark Star,” and everybody loves to argue about it. Every fan would compile a different list of favorites — and then probably compile a totally different list the next day. That’s the point. So this is a totally subjective, passionate, opinionated, irresponsible, indefensible tribute to “Dark Star,” and all the different places this song has traveled over the years. As Garcia said, “There’s a lot of gradations in there, and it has to do with not being the same all the time.” “Dark Star” forever.