Dead Songs in Depth

    
Looks Like Rain
w: Barlow m: Weir
AGDL: http://arts.ucsc.edu/gdead/agdl/llra.html
LASF: http://www.whitegum.com/songfile/LOOKRAIN.HTM
  

    
Looks Like Rain 
Lyrics: John Barlow
Music: Bob Weir

Copyright Ice Nine Publishing; used by permission.

I woke today, and felt your side of bed
The covers were still warm where you'd been layin'
You were gone: my heart was filled with dread
You might not be sleeping here again
It's all right, 'cause I love you; and that's not gonna change
Run me round, make me hurt again and again
But I'll still sing you love songs, written in the letters of your
name
And brave the storm to come, for it surely looks like rain

Did you ever listen to the sound of street cats making love
And guess from their cries you were listening to a fight
Well you know, hate's just the last thing they're thinking of
They're only trying to make it through the night

I only want to hold, I don't want to tie you down
Or fence you in the lines I might have drawn
It's just that I have gotten used to having you around
My landscape would be empty if you were gone
  

    
About ILLR, 5/16/93, written to my not-deadhead girlfriend who is
patiently indulging my passions.

>I just listened to an old song, "It Looks Like Rain". It's one of
young Bobby Weir's post-teenage obsessions, abetted by Barlow's dumbass
lyrics. I won't even bother sharing them with you, as they are so
insubstantial and maudlin, denuded of melody and beat, that the words
are just a pile of silly mush.

But the music, the passion, the howling longing, Garcia in full
calamity mode as the rest of the band struggles to keep pace with the
Tragedy of Romance unfolding, Lesh hurling galactic bass bombs into a
crowd of naked, sweaty freaks on fire and just fine, thank you. 

Weir is shrieking, pleading on his knees for That Woman to hurt him
again, and hurt him again, and hurt him again, and again, and again,
and again, until his being is shattered, his heart broken and burned to
cinders like diamonds from the furnace of the Soul of Love, Devotion
and Surrender... begging, begging to be utterly destroyed because that
is preferable to living without Her. A man crazy in love. It's
frightening, truly.<
  

    

Kenny Schneidman on FB:

Looks Like Rain is a love song to a dog. Prove me wrong!
  

    
Well, references to running him round,tying down and fencing in
support the theory. If only they'd been playing LLR when Otis
wandered onto the Warfield stage, "that's Otis" would have forever
been interpreted as the big reveal.
  

    
!!!
  

    

That said, "I've gotten used to having you around" isn't eactly powerful
romanticism...