Grateful Dead 15: Terrapin Station

It had seemingly been an eternity since the last Dead album, and now they’d signed with Clive Davis’ new Arista label, which had already scooped up such daring legacy artists as the Kinks, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, and Barry Manilow. They were also tasked with using an outside producer, which is how Terrapin Station ended up with Keith Olsen in the booth, on his way from Fleetwood Mac to Foreigner.

Bob Weir dominates side one, beginning with the confusing time signature on the mildly reggaefied “Estimated Prophet”, unfortunately featuring the ubiquitious Tom Scott on sax. While the band had played “Dancin’ In The Streets” at several points in their career thus far, the disco arrangement of it here is just plain horrible. Bob and Donna Godchaux get a better chance to shine harmonically on Phil Lesh’s “Passenger”, which injects some needed rock and roll into the proceedings, particularly when followed by another disco mistake, this time on the traditional “Samson & Delilah”. Then Donna takes center stage for “Sunrise”, which she wrote all by herself. Between her performance and the orchestration, this could have been a very well received adult contemporary hit; it just doesn’t sound like the Dead at all.

The centerpiece of the album, of course, was the entirety of side two, entitled “Terrapin Part 1”. (The Dead apparently never completed music for Part 2, although lyricist Robert Hunter played portions of it over the years.) Besides presenting Jerry Garcia on vocals for the first time on the album, it challenges the listener not merely because it’s a multipart suite, but because it incorporates orchestration by Paul Buckmaster, and even the English Choral choir.

It starts innocently enough with “Lady With A Fan”, which evokes an image of scarlet begonias and such, but takes a minor key turn before morphing to “Terrapin Station” proper. The “Terrapin” theme is based around a not-too-intricate guitar part, part riffing and part chords, that is unfortunately matched and ultimately overshadowed by the orchestration. Following a crescendo, “Terrapin Transit”, credited to the two drummers in the band, recalls some of the Eastern influences of the “Blues For Allah” suite, and nicely folds into the “At A Siding” vocal portion, which features an uncredited trumpet a la Miles Davis. The drummers also drive “Terrapin Flyer” and its quickly syncopated beats under Jerry’s high-speed (sped up?) soloing, though the orchestration veers dangerously close to calypso. After another crescendo, the main theme returns as “Refrain”, this time with the choir intoning the title with different affectation.

Despite the overall success of the suite, the dated production as well as the clunkers on side one do not serve Terrapin Station well, rendering it sub-par. Luckily, there are better versions of these songs in the Dead archives, which continues to expand in general availability. (The cover has its charm, too.)

The eventual expanded CD would have been a perfect opportunity to concoct a stripped-back mix of the “Terrapin” suite, but apparently nobody thought of that. Still, it did offer some interesting rarities, including the otherwise unrecorded Lesh track “Equinox”, a Dead rendition of “Catfish John”, which had already appeared on Jerry’s most recent solo album, an early studio take of “Fire On The Mountain”, and a lengthy “Dancin’ In The Street” from their fan-favorite 1977 show at Cornell University.

Grateful Dead Terrapin Station (1977)—2½
2006 expanded CD: same as 1977, plus 6 extra tracks