Songfacts®:

• Jerry Garcia commented that this song was heavily influenced by the death of his mother, much in the same way the impending passing of Phil Lesh's father was the inspiration for "Box Of Rain," the lead track on the album.
• The harmony vocals on this song, courtesy of Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir and Phil Lesh, were the result of the Dead hanging out with Crosby, Stills and Nash and deciding they wanted to improve on their ensemble vocal chops. As a result, many of the songs on American Beauty have exquisite sounding harmonies, especially for the Dead. >>>

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  kevin - Reading, PA, for above 2
• Robert Hunter wrote the lyric on his first trip to England in a very productive, and slightly inebriated, songwriting session. "It was the second day I was there, and everybody went and left me alone with a case of Retsina," he said in a documentary. "I realized, here I was in London, the city I'd always dreamed of going to, and I was very very happy. I felt like I'd come home to some psychic place, maybe the home of Robin Hood and Peter Pan. I'd only drank half a bottle of this Retsina but it was having the whole case there that was important. I sat down and wrote 'Ripple,' 'To Lay Me Down' and 'Brokedown Palace' that afternoon. It was a magic day. I knew I was writing stuff that would live forever."
  
  Hunter was at the home of Dead extended "family" member Alan Trist. He had been jotting down dozens of bad songs (by his own estimation) when these three came to him.