Up until November 1977, Robert Hunter said that nobody ever asked him about the meaning of this song. Excluding drums and space music only 6 songs were played more times than ‘China Cat Sunflower’, those being ‘Playing in the Band’, ‘Not Fade Away’, ‘Me and My Uncle’, ‘Sugar Magnolia’, ‘I Know You Rider’ and ‘The Other One’. The two songs segued together perfectly, with ‘China Cat Sunflower’ almost always preceding ‘I Know You Rider’ and the Grateful Dead performed this combination well over 500 times. The Grateful Dead first performed ‘China Cat Sunflower’ on Januand it was recorded on their 1969 studio album Aoxomoxo a, and later released on the triple live album Europe ’72 , played as a suite with the John A Lomax & Alan Lomax traditional blues tune ‘I Know You Rider’. ‘China Cat Sunflower’ and ‘The Eleven’ were the first lyrics that Robert Hunter wrote for the Grateful Dead and they were composed while he was on LSD. The Grateful Dead were known for never playing the same concert twice and most of their fans really paid attention to which songs they were playing, although a lot of real stoners did go to the shows. Well, at least I didn’t request that they play ‘Freebird’. My most embarrassing moment at a Grateful Dead concert came for me at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, when I yelled out ‘China Cat’ and all of these Deadheads looked at me and said, “They already played that song.” I was humiliated, but I can blame my blunder on the acid that I took. Robert Hunter the Grateful Dead lyricist said that the song ‘China Cat Sunflower’ came to him when he was visiting Mexico’s Lake Chapala and a cat decided that his belly looked like a comfortable place to take a nap.
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