Terrapin Station
| Terrapin Station | ||||
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| Studio album by Grateful Dead | ||||
| Released | July 27, 1977 | |||
| Recorded |
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| Genre | ||||
| Length | 35:38 | |||
| Label | Arista | |||
| Producer | Keith Olsen | |||
| Grateful Dead chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |
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| Robert Christgau | B |
| Rolling Stone |
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Terrapin Station is a studio album by the Grateful Dead, released July 27, 1977. It was the first Grateful Dead album on Arista Records and the first studio album after the band returned to live touring, following a nearly two year hiatus.
The album reached #28 on the Billboard Album Chart and achieved Gold Album status following the release of 1987's In the Dark. It was released on CD in 1987 by Arista Records. Terrapin Station was remastered and expanded for the Beyond Description (1973–1989) box set in October 2004.
With the folding of their own record label and a change in management, the Grateful Dead signed with recently founded Arista Records. Label head Clive Davis had been interested in working with the band since his time at Columbia Records and had previously signed their colleagues New Riders of the Purple Sage. He added the Dead to the label with the agreement that they work under an outside producer – something they had not tried on a studio album since 1968's Anthem of the Sun (though 1970's American Beauty had been co-produced by Stephen Barncard). Keith Olsen was chosen to produce and the band temporarily moved to Los Angeles, as he preferred to work at Sound City, where he had recently achieved success producing Fleetwood Mac's 1975 comeback album.
Lyricist Robert Hunter wrote the "Terrapin Station Part 1" lyrics in a single sitting, during a rare Bay Area lightning storm. On the same day, driving across the Richmond–San Rafael Bridge, lead guitarist Jerry Garcia was struck by the idea for a singular melodic line. He turned his car around and hurried home to set it down in notation before it escaped him. Hunter said "When we met the next day, I showed him the words and he said, 'I've got the music.' They dovetailed perfectly and Terrapin edged into this dimension." He based the lyrics for the "Lady with a Fan" section on a traditional English folk song known variously as "The Lady of Carlisle", "The Bold Lieutenant" and "The Lion's Den". The ballad is #396 on the Roud Folk Song Index. It is also O 25 on the Laws list, which synopsizes "The lady decides to choose between two brothers who love her by determining which is braver. She tosses her fan into a lion's den and asks them to retrieve it." Hunter, who was also influenced by Sir Walter Scott, had composed "Terrapin Station" in two parts, the second never recorded or performed by the Grateful Dead. Drummer Bill Kreutzmann ironed the arrangement, explaining "We sat down and mapped it out. I said, 'This is how the song goes.' I showed [Mickey] all the parts that I felt worked really well, he added a couple, and that’s what the song is today. We went back into the studio the next night and got it right. With the drum parts worked out, everything else snapped together like puzzle pieces."
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