He's Gone

Jerry's Garcia hides some odd formal choices under an amiably rambling tune

Back in the twentieth century, there was no easy way to find out what a song was about unless its lyrics were self-explanatory. Grateful Dead lyrics are rarely self-explanatory. I always enjoyed "He's Gone", but had the feeling that it was a bunch of inside references that I wasn't privy to. I turn out to have been right. 

I now know that the song is about Mickey Hart's dad, who managed the Grateful Dead for a few years until it was discovered that he had embezzled $155,000 from them, at which point he skipped town. This led to Mickey quitting the band for a few years out of embarrassment. Robert Hunter used Lenny Hart as a jumping-off point for a more open-ended lyric that could support all kinds of different interpretations. The Deadheads have tended to hear the song as being about Pigpen's death, even though he was still alive when it was written. Even knowing the backstory, I still hear the song as being more of a backwoodsy mood piece than a specific narrative.

The version on Europe ’72 was recorded on 5/10/72 in Amsterdam. The band subsequently rerecorded the vocals in the studio, and rightly so; the original performance has a nice groove, but the singing is terrible. For the studio version, Jerry, Bobby and Phil layered on some extra backing vocals, and they also added the lovely “Oooh, nothing’s gonna bring him back” coda at the end. The recording is mastered a little fast, so it's tuned about 30 cents sharp. This makes it extremely annoying to play along with unless you pitch it down in your DAW.