I’m not exactly a Grateful Dead fan, although I came to appreciate much of their music through the interest of my college roommate in the early 1970s. He actually took me to see the Dead at one of their legendary concerts, maybe at Manhattan Center in 1971. I remember only the wall-to-wall people standing in the large venue.
In any case, in my quest to record covers of songs that were influential in my musical development, in more-or-less chronological order, I found myself in need of a song from 1987 from a group or individual that I hadn’t yet recorded (this is one of my somewhat arbitrary rules for this project). However, it turns out that I entered into a kind of musical desert in 1987, having quit my job in New York, gotten married, and driven with my pregnant wife to California — all of which distracted me from my prior listening routines. So when it came time to select a song from 1987, I reviewed the list of top-100 hits from that year and came up with a blank. In fact, I remained pretty much unaware of what was happening in pop music into the 1990s, when my son grew old enough to start bringing his music into the house.
I noticed that The Grateful Dead had a song — in fact, their only top 10 hit on the Billboard top 100 — but I had never heard it. So I gave it a few listens, learned it, and recorded it, albeit with more of a half-time feel. I also played the low melodic guitar hook that shows up in the chorus on the piano. And I based my cover on the official Dead video, which is a shortened version of the original recording (although I sing it in a different key).
Some technical details: I recorded the song at home in April 2026 on Logic Pro X, singing the vocals and backup vocals, playing acoustic and electric guitars, and simulating drums, bass, piano, and organ as “software instruments” played live on my midi keyboard.
I made the video using Final Cut Pro. It consists of lots of iPhone photos taken around my house, on which is superimposed an iPhone green-screened video of me singing the song. I also spent a bit of time creating fake shadows for my superimposed image that are layered into the Final Cut mix. I produced the lyrics in PhotoShop rather than in Final Cut Pro, because I found it easier to distort them into an appropriate perspectival form, consistent with the underlying images.
Check out all my original music and covers!
