“Playing in the Band”

Bob Weir wrote the music, with help from drummer Mickey Hart, and Robert Hunter wrote the words. The Grateful Dead first played the finished song on February 18, 1971, at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, New York. Later that year it came out on the live album known as Skull & Roses, and the next year Weir cut a polished studio take for his first solo album, Ace. Onstage it became a launching pad, opening into long, unplanned jams, sometimes twenty minutes or more, before finding its way home. In Seattle on May 21, 1974, one version ran about 46 minutes, the Dead’s longest single song without a break. In all, they played it 581 times.