Dead Songs in Depth

    
Amazing about dead.net. I thought they used your site exclusively for
lyric transcriptions, Alex!
  

    
Enlightenment can be elusive.
  

    

"It was all night pouring but not a drop on me." = guy ducks into a bar but
can't get a drink.
  

    
Hence his self-confidence in saying "Test me, test me!" -- he knows he
will pass because he hasn't gotten a drink all night.
  

    
I see the bar as a protective place manifested through magic or providence.
  

    
Another take on the electric fan story, from the same Robert Hunter
1978 interview that I referenced on the Sugar Magnolia thread:

Interviewer: What about Bertha? Is it true she was a fan? An
electrical fan?

RH: No, this was after the fact.I don't know where that story ... I
think they started calling this fan in the office that would run around
and try and catch everyone and cut their fingers off. They started
calling it Bertha. But no, this is not true. Bertha, I think, is
probably some vaguer connotation of birth, death and reincarnation.
Cycle of existences, some kind of such nonsense like that. I wouldn't
be surprised, but then again, it might not be. I don't remember.
  

    
Oh, good. That "fan" story always seemed bogus to me.
  

    
Yes, I thought it was a cover story.

A very strange idea just popped into my head - Birther. 
  

    

As in "Birther don't you come around here any more"?

Hear, hear!
  

    
Right.
  

    
Thank you, Alex!
  

    
Could the fan story be cover for a song about a fan? That is what I
have long thought to be the case.
  

    
Aha. Very good, Robin!
  

    


Dear all.

Somehow yesterday I found myself reading a discussion that took place back in
September of 2003 on Dead lyrics that had been translated into Japanese and
then back into English.  There is a decent Dead cover band here in Tokyo
where I have been living the past seven years or so called The Warlocks.
They do most songs in English, but now and then they will do the lyrics in
Japanese.  One night a couple of years ago I was watching them play Bertha,
switching back and forth between English and Japanese, when I realized that
the double meanings and subtleties Hunter composed just do not translate.  I
think it was the verse "Ran into a rainstorm, ducked back into a bar door.
It was all night pouring, but not a drop on me..."  In English all night
pouring can be taken two ways, as in rain, or as in drinks.  I do not recall
now how the words were translated, but the double meaning was lost.

As for the Well, that was my source for tour info back in the 80s.  How
things have changed since then, or then again not.

Cheers,

Dave Conklin
  

    
I thought I read once that the name of the skeleton on he cover if
Skullfuck was Bertha, and it was a picture of thier "first" fan.
  

    
The image on the cover of Skullfuck predates the band and its fans by
quite a bit:

<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edmund_J_Sullivan_Illustrations_to_The_
Rubaiyat_of_Omar_Khayyam_First_Version_Quatrain-026.jpg>
  

    
Holy shit, I never realized that!
  

    
Thanks for that great cross-cultural reference. 
  

    
I just noticed Scott McDougall perpetuated the fan story with one of
his covers from the Europe 72 box set...

http://scottmcdougall.net/grateful-dead-art/europe-72-boxed-set/amsterdam-5107
2

 
  

    
never caught that "pouring" thing before but that's vintage Hunter.

Also "went down unto the sea" which most people naturally hear as
"under the sea"
  

    

I always think if of it in the drink sense when I'm singing the song.
  

    
Typically, David Hernandez sings it "all night pourin', pourin' rain" 
which always seemed to me a minor misstep.  The "all night pourin' 
[liquor] but not a drop on me" reading leads directly to "test me, 
why don't you arrest me?"
  

    
You mean Hidalgo?
  

    
Thank you... yes, that's who I meant.
  

    
A correspondent emailed me:

"about Bertha,    that it may in part be about Sam Cooke,  who was
murdered by Bertha Franklin, the manager of the Hacienda Motel in
Los Angeles.  he also had a song on his last album called "You gotta
move"    also "running wild"      when I fall in love      maybe
more"

I imagine this is just a coincidence, but am posting it here for the
record.