Cream Puff War

Album: Grateful Dead (1967)
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Songfacts®:

  • This is the only song on the Grateful Dead's self-titled debut album credited solely to Dead frontman Jerry Garcia. Along with "The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion)," which is credited to the Grateful Dead as a whole, it's also one of only two original songs to appear on the album - the rest are all covers.
  • In a 1967 interview with Larry Miller, Jerry Garcia said the title came after he wrote the song itself. During the interview, Garcia remembered Ron "Pigpen" McKernan coming up wiht the title while Bob Weir chimed in that he came up with it. They could agree that the title doesn't mean anything.

    "'Cream Puff War' is the name of that song just because it was a name that happened to be around," Garcia said. "Then later on I happened to work it into the lyric as the last line."

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