“Brokedown Palace” by The Grateful Dead

"Brokedown Palace" sits second on side two of American Beauty, the Grateful Dead's fifth album, from 1970, and it's a slow, sweet benediction, the Dead at their most unguarded. Robert Hunter wrote the words on his first trip to England, knocking this one out together with "Ripple" and "To Lay Me Down" in a couple of hours with a case of retsina for company, and he poured what he was living through at the time into it, along with a hope for what came next. Jerry Garcia set it to music.

It was in the running for Workingman's Dead and missed the cut, which turned out to be American Beauty's gain. One writer heard a simple, unhurried blues melody with gospel in its bones, and plenty of heads count it among the band's finest ballads. The Dead produced it themselves, with Stephen Barncard as co-producer.

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