“New Speedway Boogie” by The Grateful Dead

"New Speedway Boogie" is the Grateful Dead's answer to Altamont, and it sits fourth on Workingman's Dead, their fourth studio album, from 1970. The Dead had been booked to play before the Rolling Stones at that disastrous free concert, and Robert Hunter later wrote, in his book A Box of Rain, that his lyric was a reply to the critic Ralph J. Gleason, who had condemned the whole affair.

Jerry Garcia wrote the music and sings lead, with Bob Weir on guitar, Phil Lesh on bass, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan on keyboards and harmonica, and Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann on drums. AllMusic's Matthew Greenwald called it one of the album's heavier songs, a loose blues boogie with a pointed message for the Stones, and the author Buzz Poole reckoned it may be the best known of the Dead's rare topical songs.

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