Warren Haynes on 5 Grateful Dead Classics
Warren Haynes spent the summer playing Grateful Dead favorites with symphony orchestras all over the country. We spoke to the Gov’t Mule frontman and former Allman Brothers Band guitarist to get his picks for five classic tracks from the Dead’s sprawling catalog.
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“Terrapin Station”
It's such a unique song, since it has a lot of elements from different genres mixed together, like classical and prog. I like songs with lots of moving parts, and this is one of them.
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“Blues for Allah”
This is completely different than anything else in their catalog, since it utilizes Eastern music. It's very complex musically, but beautiful to the ear.
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“Slipknot”
They really went out on a limb with this. It's one of the most jazzy pieces that they did, very intricate and hard to perform. The show got really exciting whenever they did it.
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“Estimated Prophet”
This is my favorite Bob [Weir] song. The lyrics are cool, and it feels so good to play reggae in an odd time signature. I always find my head bobbing along with it.
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“Unbroken Chain”
One of Phil [Lesh]'s best pieces. It's kind of classical-meets-Americana, and then it goes into a jazz-fusion section. It just all works beautifully.