Patti Smith reading Dark Star as poetry, in memory of Robert Hunter, lyricist for the Grateful Dead, who passed away on September 23, 2019. This was a few days later, at an unnamed Synagogue in Brooklyn New York.
Patti Smith has often expressed a great fondness for the Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia, and Robert Hunter.
Patti Smith once performed a few songs with Robert Hunter, in 1998, at Irving Plaza in New York City, (see tracks 21 and 22 in the embedded Archive.org playlist below, New Speedway Boogie and Franklin’s Tower.)
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While the song Dark Star was often an extended musical exploration of space beyond, the lyrics are beautifully concise, conveying vast emptiness within a couple of short verses.
In the film “A Long Strange Trip: the Untold Story Of The Grateful Dead” Robert Hunter was asked by the Weirs about the songs meaning… and he recited the lyrics and then replied “What is so unclear about that? It says what it means!”
Dark Star was of the earliest Grateful Dead songs penned by Hunter, and it also in many ways was their signature tune, though they often went many years without playing it.
Here is the studio version of the Grateful Dead Dark Star, that was released on a 45/single, and is possibly the shortest complete musical version of the song:
