“You told me goodbye, how was I to know/You didn’t mean goodbye, you meant please don’t let me go?” Well. It’s the age of nostalgia, so it feels just about right to reminisce about an old staple on the pitfalls of miscommunication.
High Time is the second track on Workingman’s Dead, which was, in fact, not only The Grateful Dead’s first proper commercial breakthrough, but also a change in direction and a clear foray into nostalgia: folk tunes with a dash of psychedelia. In the words of bassist Phil Lesh: “The song lyrics reflected an ‘old, weird’ America that perhaps never was (…).The almost miraculous appearance of these new songs would also generate a massive paradigm shift in our group mind: from the mind-munching frenzy of a seven-headed fire-breathing dragon to the warmth and serenity of a choir of chanting cherubim“.
Strong words. Evocative, which I suppose is what you’d expect from The Grateful Dead, or just about anyone who’s ever fire-breathed with a group of friendly cherubim at the back of a bogged down love bus. As it happens, the band weren’t quite having a high time at the time of the recording. Management issues, a recent drug bust. Mixed feelings that, one way or another, came together in this track about two people that can’t quite synchronise their wristwatches. Exhibit two:
“I’m having a hard time, living the good life, well I know/I was losing time, I had nothing to do/No one to fight, I came to you“.
This is a cherub out for trouble, or running away from it with one hand tied to the radiator. And the song’s slow, pedal-steel psychedelia has the appeal of something fleeting, just about to escape: a summer day drawing to a close, a regret, a sense of an ending that lends the high time its bittersweetness. And yet, an apparent refusal to allow that ending to colour the high time:
“Nothing’s for certain, it could always go wrong/Come in when it’s raining, go on out when it’s gone/We could have us a high time, living the good life, well I know“.
Ah, but the pedal-steel doesn’t lie: that sense of an ending rears its head right in the middle of anything ephemeral. And just who was it that wanted that goodbye, in the end? Maybe our cherub.It’s all part of the high time.
