“Throwing Stones” by The Grateful Dead

Bob Weir wrote the music and John Perry Barlow the words for "Throwing Stones", and by the time it landed on the Grateful Dead's 1987 album In the Dark it had been in the band's sets since its live debut on September 17, 1982, in Portland, Maine. Onstage it often rose out of one of Jerry Garcia's slower ballads and rolled straight into "Not Fade Away".

It's a dense political song. CultureSonar's Jim Allen heard it taking stock of American society, knocking the establishment and its rebels alike while fretting over the world being left to the next generation, and David Dodd, writing on the band's website, reckons the title is biblical or a nod to the old saw about glass houses. Garcia produced the studio cut with John Cutler, and it came out as a single backed with "When Push Comes to Shove".

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