Alabama Getaway by The Grateful Dead

The most popular song from the Grateful Dead’s most controversial album, 1980’s Go to Heaven left a mixed impression on fans, partly because the sound was more commercial than usual, but mostly because the cover showed the unthinkable: the Grateful Dead in white disco suits. Not everybody got the joke.

It also didn’t help that Jerry Garcia, usually the band’s guiding light, sang only three songs on the album and wrote only two. One of Garcia’s tracks, “Alabama Getaway,” was the most old-school, Dead-sounding song on the album, and a frequent concert-opener during the '80s.

But the lukewarm reception of Go to Heaven prompted the Dead to concentrate on what they did best—live shows—and not to make another studio album for seven years. Ironically, they’d have the biggest-selling album of their career (In the Dark) when they did.

While the Grateful Dead covered many Bob Dylan songs, “Alabama Getaway” is one of the few Dead songs that was covered by Dylan.

Don’t forget that the Grateful Dead had two drummers, so the drum part can be tricky.

During the main riff that recurs throughout the song, one drummer keeps a straight beat while the other plays a tom-tom fill. You’ll be doing the fills, so don’t key into the straight beat.

On guitar, Garcia was prone to free-form soloing even during a straight-ahead song like this one, so the guitar part is practically a solo throughout. The parts are all eighth notes that move up and down the neck, not too hard to follow but requiring skill to keep up with.

Group split into pieces after Garcia’s passing, but have come together in different combinations since then. Plan to reunite for political benefits in 2008—Can “Obama Getaway” be far behind?