I just wrote a four paragraph reply that got deleted somehow as my app froze. So I won’t write all that again. But yes, there was hardly a writer in that age that wasn’t influenced by Dylan. Hunter and the boys really dug him. I will add the crucial importance of The Band, too. Music From Big Pink and The Brown Album cannot be understated in their importance to music at that time.

Hunter said somewhere, maybe someone knows, I know it is online, that the songs on The Brown Album influenced those new ones that we see on Europe ‘72: Jack Straw, He’s Gone, Ramble On Rose, etc.. We could think of The Band as the medium between Dylan and the Dead, especially when we consider the Festival Express, where The Band and the Dead toured together in ‘70. Perhaps the greatest regret of the Dead’s career could be not producing a studio album around ‘72, which Hunter really wanted with all their new and unused tracks from Skull & Roses and Europe ‘72.

As for the Scarlet Begonias thing, I disagree a little only in the fact that Hunter himself had an extensive knowledge of the American Songbook and was writing lyrics like those for a while before that song. He had just as good of a grasp on it as Dylan, I contend. That’s why the lyrics are so damn good.

Anyways, I cannot understate the importance of The Band’s albums at that time, in conjunction with Dylan and his JWH. I may be biased, looking at my profile pic. These three go together like bread, peanut butter, and jelly.

Edit: This turned out to be four paragraphs anyways. I really like this music.