Former Daily Campus writer, Grateful Dead lyricist dies at 78

By: Antho­ny Zepperi 
Octo­ber 3, 2019
The Dai­ly Campus 

Robert Hunter, a for­mer Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut stu­dent, Dai­ly Cam­pus writer and lyri­cist for the band “The Grate­ful Dead,” died on Sept. 23 at age 78. 

Hunter attend­ed UConn for a year, accord­ing to the Stam­ford Advo­cate. At that time, he was pres­i­dent of the Folk Music Club and lived in Bat­ter­son Hall in the North­west res­i­dence area.  After UConn, as lyri­cist for The Grate­ful Dead, he helped cre­ate hits like “Rip­ple” and “Friend of the Devil.” 

Matthew Light, a mem­ber of UConn Class of 1978, said he remem­bers Hunter sit­ting for an inter­view with him in a dress­ing room. 

“My most vivid mem­o­ry of him is prob­a­bly when he sat with me for an inter­view in his dress­ing room at Sha­boo, a pop­u­lar night­club waysta­tion for trav­el­ing musi­cians off 195 en route to Willi­man­tic,” Light said. “Turned out, Hunter had slept in that sparse­ly fur­nished, almost bare room: A sin­gle bed, a table, some gear tucked into a cor­ner, but a pret­ty bare room.” 

Light said Hunter was pas­sion­ate about his music-making. 

“See­ing that shab­by lit­tle room was the first time it occurred to me how exhaust­ing and depress­ing a long tour could be for a sen­si­tive folk-rock poet,” Light said. “He tried to rock up his music with a key­board play­er and a phase-shifter on his gui­tar, but he was a folkie at heart.” 

Light said Hunter’s lega­cy will live on in Connecticut. 

“His songs are vibrant­ly alive today in Con­necti­cut, and Con­necti­cut alone has a cou­ple of dozen Grate­ful Dead trib­ute bands,” Light said. “Hunter’s lyrics are per­haps the most sung by live musi­cians in America.”