How to play Brokedown Palace.
“Brokedown Palace” is a song by the American rock band Grateful Dead, released as the seventh track on the band’s fifth studio album American Beauty (1970).
Robert Hunter, the band’s lyricist wrote the lyrics for “Brokedown Palace” alongside “Ripple” and “To Lay Me Down” in about two hours on his first trip to England, as he recalled: “I sat there with a case of retsina and I opened up a bottle of that stuff”, he continued by saying that “for some reason this creative energy started racing through me and I could do no wrong”. It was originally considered for included on Workingman’s Dead, but did not make the final tracklisting.
The music of “Brokedown Palace” has been described as a “simple, slow gospel-inspired blues melody” by Matthew Greenwald. Lyrically, it takes inspiration from the experiences Hunter had around the time of the album, with a hope for the future.
Fare you well my only true one
All the birds that were singing
Have flown except you alone
On my hands and my knees I will roll, roll, roll
Make myself a bed by the waterside
In my time, in my time, I will roll, roll, roll
By the waterside I will lay my head
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul
Sing me sweet and sleepy
Sing me sweet and sleepy
All the way back back home
It’s a far gone lullaby
Sung many years ago
Mama, mama, many worlds I’ve come
Since I first left home
By the waterside I will rest my bones
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul
On the banks green edge it will grow, grow, grow
Sing a lullaby beside the water
Lovers come and go, the river roll, roll, roll
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul
“Each of us is climbing a mountain called ‘Music’. The mountain remains, but the climbers are forever changed.” – Suzanne Guy
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