Comments: 9

• Bill From The Sticks from NyI have it on good authority that "Uncle John" was John Cohen of the Lost City Ramblers, that Jerry knew and would go to see his concerts. This was in Jerry's fairly early days when he first explored Banjo and Appalachian music.
  
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  "Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter of the Grateful Dead were among those listening to old-time music in the 1960s. "The Story That the Crow Told Me" and "Buckdancer's Choice," heard here, are mentioned in the lyrics to their anthem "Uncle John's Band." "If I wasn't specifically thinking of you personally when I wrote 'Uncle John's Band'," Robert Hunter told John, "It might as well have been; you fill the bill."
  
  We miss you, John.
• Steve Flinn from San FranciscoThere was for sure a hippie musician named Uncle John that Hunter or someone crossed paths with. And that's all great. Even John Muir is a fine take on it.
  
  But I refuse to hear this lyric as anything other than being about the black&white** surface lyrics. John Paul Jones (founder, USN and then USMC). Their walls are built of cannonballs their motto is "don't tread on me" (legendarily the first marines flew that snake flag but the flag really came from an Army outfit, kind of a self-organized militia in the old sense of the word, from one of the southrun states.
  
  THAT is what this tune is about because when I was struggling I asked the band what I needed to do. And they played UJB; I had to join up and be remade. So I toodled down and enlisted. Allowed myself to see Uncle Sam as prophet, lent him my Unlimited Devotion like I had with Jerry Ninefingers. Figured Uncle John needed one of *us* to see that things didn't get out of control.
  
  And it worked for me; I got my stuff straight in the Navy. The first days were surely the hardest days and "cocky" is the tiger trap. Went from Wharf Rat to The Wheel. [Don't laugh, some of you heads put on orange robes and tambourined around singing Hare Hare Krisna Krisna!]
  
  You know, they never could wring the tie-dyed colors out of me, they could only cover them up with denim and sweat.
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  **No head is properly nourished before it has read the thin little book called The Game Of Black & White by Alan Watts
• Big Darryl from Bloomington InHmm, I thought Uncle John was Rolling Thunder! His real name was John.
• Andrew Z from Southwest ColoradoSome years back I found a few more verses, allegedly from an acoustic solo performance that Jerry did. One of the verses - "Why wait in the dark for dawn while the sun's still going down. Maybe I'll dust off your chair if you say you're comin' round. Keep your place in line, all things come in time. Woh-oh all I need to know, why/how(?) do these coals glow?" Has anyone come across this recording or these verses?
• Ray from HereUncle John is a real person, alive today. He does have a 'band' and yes he is angry, and yes he has 'come to take his children home'. Jerry may be dead but his song is plenty living.
• Dougie Connor from Edinburgh ScotlanfI have had a view for many years now that Uncle John is quite possibly based on John Muir, the great Scottish environmentalist who was very active in California and in many parts of the USA and Canada
• Wayne Dooley from Florida, UsaJust a correction to the main comments: "this was the first time the epithet "God Damn" had been heard in a commercially released song." Not really. On Steppenwolf's first ("Born to be Wild") album of 1968, they included a song written by Hoyt Axton, called "The Pusher", which features the expression prominently in the repeated chorus. This was a major release, and had schoolboys justifying using the epithet with "but they sing it on this record!". Nothing against this Dead song, though, it's really a classic. UJB was used as the theme music for the TV series knockoff of the film "The Paper Chase". Certainly in law school, the first days are the hardest days. [Good catch. We updated that to reflect the song being the first Hot 100 hit to use the phrase - editor]
• Rotunda from Tulsa, OkOh yes, I remember it well. It's just amazing that I can recall anything from that year though!!! Haaaa! I was in college at the University of Kansas and when the album came out it was popular with the hippy culture around there. I was caught up in all the hub-bub of all that near KU. The Dead Heads, the hippies, the druggies, mercy! Loved the song. So laid back and mellow. Back then, I read a magazine that speculated it was about Mississippi John Hurt. Coulda been. What cool times & what strange people I met back then.
• Nate from New York, NyLove this song!

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