“Dark Star” by The Grateful Dead

"Dark Star" slipped out as a Grateful Dead single on Warner Bros. in April 1968, but a seven-inch was never going to hold it. Robert Hunter wrote the words and Jerry Garcia the music, though the credit sometimes stretches to take in Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan and Bob Weir.

On stage it turned into the Dead's launching pad, the tune they would push off from into long, uncharted jams, an early classic they reached for again and again whenever they wanted to stretch out. The version everybody knows is the 23-minute voyage on Live/Dead, their 1969 breakthrough. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame counts it among its 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll, and Rolling Stone ranked it number 57 among the 100 greatest guitar songs of all time.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.