“Standing on the Moon”

Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter wrote this gentle ballad, and it came out on Built to Last in 1989, the Grateful Dead’s final studio album. Hunter said the whole picture came to him at once, with nothing to change. Garcia wanted a song people would get the first time they heard it. The band first played it on February 5, 1989, in Oakland, months before the album appeared, and kept it in the show until 1995. Garcia and Hunter each named it among their favorites of all the songs they wrote together. Rolling Stone later counted it among Garcia’s greatest songs, praising one of his finest late vocals, and it has been a fan favorite ever since.