Discovered at last the legendary lost manuscript of Grateful Dead co-founder and primary
lyricist Robert Hunter written in the early 1960s-a wry richly observed and enlightening
remembrance of 'the scene' in Palo Alto that gave rise to an incredible partnership of Hunter
and Jerry Garcia and then to the Grateful Dead itself-with a Foreword by John Mayer an
Introduction by Dennis McNally and an Afterword by Brigid Meier. 'Strange to think back on
those days when it was perfectly natural that we all slept on the floor in one small room . . .
These were the days before practical considerations matters of "importance" began to eat our
minds. We were all poets and philosophers then until we began to wonder why we had so few
concrete worries and went out to look for some.'So wrote Robert Hunter in The Silver Snarling
Trumpet both a novelistic singular work of art and the missing piece of the Grateful Dead
origin story. In these pages readers are privy to the early days of Hunter Garcia and their
cohorts who sit at coffee shops passing around a single cup of bottomless coffee because they
lacked the funds for more than one. Follow these truth-seeking souls into the stacks at
Kepler's Books renting instruments at Swain's House of Music and through the countryside on
mind-expanding road trips. Witness impromptu jams inspired intellectual pranks and a dialogue
that is by turns amusing and brilliant and outrageous. Hunter shares his impressions of his
first gig with Garcia for a college audience along with descriptions of his most intense
dreams and psychedelic explorations. All of it enlivened by Hunter's visionary spirit and
profound ideas about creativity and collaboration. The lost manuscript is augmented with a
Foreword by John Mayer an Introduction by Dennis McNally and an Afterword by Brigid Meier
who was part of their scene in the San Francisco Bay Area that served as a bridge from the
beatniks to the hippies. Also included is Hunter's own 1982 assessment of his work-about how he
shared it with close confidants but then decided to leave it unpublished. Five years after
Hunter's death the text has been found so readers and fans of Hunter's indelible poetry and
song will see the origin of his genius and his craft.
