New Speedway Boogie - 2013 Remaster

"New Speedway Boogie" was written about the disaster at the Altamont Speedway concert in 1969 when the Rolling Stones hired the Hells Angels to work security. The lyric: "In the heat of the sun, a man died of cold" refers to Meredith Hunter, an audience member who was killed by the Hells Angels. Garcia referred to the concert as "...a nice day in HELL."

In his book of collected lyrics (A Box Of Rain), Dead lyricist Robert Hunter wrote that he penned "New Speedway Boogie" in reply to "an indictment of the Altamont affair" by rock critic Ralph J. Gleason, hence the lead-in lyrics, "Please don't dominate the rap Jack, if you've got nothing new to say." The "Altamont affair" in question was the Altamont Free Concert held on December 6, 1969. Intended to be a west coast version of the Woodstock musical festival, it ended up going terribly sideways, full of bad drugs and violence that left a young man Meredith Hunter dead. Gleason wrote a few things about the concert, but the one that riled Hunter up is probably a piece titled Aquarius Wept, published in Esquire in 1970, in which Gleason lances everyone involved in Altamont for their (in his perspective) greed, haste, and incompetence. Hunter likely took this personally because the Dead were instrumental in organizing Altamont. They were the driving force behind the concert, though they didn't play because they'd heard about the violence before it was their time to take the stage.

The "new" part of title of this song is reminisicnet of the Dead's "New, New Minglewood Blues," but there's no obvious connection beyond that, and it's unclear why Hunter chose to called it the "new" Speedway Boogie. "New, New Minglewood Blues" was a play on a song titled "New Minglewood Blues," which was itself an updated version of "Minglewood Blues." There is not original "Speedway Boogie" that we know of.