The wheel is turning and you can't slow down,
You can't let go and you can't hold on,
You can't go back and you can't stand still,
If the thunder don't get you then the lightning will.
Small wheel turn by the fire and rod,
Big wheel turn by the grace of God,
Every time that wheel turn 'round,
Bound to cover just a little more ground.-- from "The Wheel"; lyrics and music by Jerry Garcia, Robert Hunter and Bill Kreutzmann
The Grateful Dead Family Discography site has an interesting bit about the creation of this song:
The Wheel was composed spontaneously in the studio during the recording of the second side of Garcia's first solo LP.
Garcia spoke about it in an interview:
...that side was really almost one continuous performance, pretty much. When a song would come up in there, or just a progression, we'd play with it and work it through a few more times. And The Wheel came out of that. It wasn't written, I didn't have anything in mind, I hadn't sketched it out.
The engineer on the recording session, Bob Matthews, spoke in an interview about the addition of the lyrics:
As we were playing it back and doing some of the overdubs, Hunter was there and he had a big piece of paper and he was writing on it up on the wall. He was writing words while we were listening to one of the playbacks and it turned out to be perfect. It was The Wheel. That song came from nowhere and just happened like that.
"The Wheel" was first performed in public by the Dead on June 3, 1976, at the Paramount Theatre in Portland, Oregon.
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