Lyrics to
Bertha

Our About Grateful Dead page at Decade Lyrics includes the lyrics for Bertha from 1971 as well as all of the other lyrics from Grateful Dead that we have in our lyrics database.

Here's more interesting things in songs and lyrics tied to Grateful Dead or about the 1970s in general.

I had a hard run
Running from your window
I was all night running, running, running
I wonder if you care?
I had a run-in
Run around and run down
Run around a corner
Run smack into a tree

I had to move
Really had to move
That’s why if you please
I am on my bended knees
Bertha don’t you come around here anymore

Dressed myself in green
I went down to the sea
Try to see what’s going down
Maybe read between the lines
Had a feeling I was falling, falling, falling

Turned around to see
Heard a voice calling, calling, calling
You was comin after me
Back to me

I had to move
Really had to move
That’s why if you please
I am on my bended knees
Bertha don’t you come around here anymore

Ran into a rainstorm
Ducked into a bar door
It was all night pouring, pouring rain
But not a drop on me

Test me, test me
Why don’t you arrest me?
Throw me in the jail house
Until the sun goes down
Till it go down

I had to move
Really had to move
That’s why if you please
I am on my bended knees
Bertha don’t you come around here anymore

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Grateful Dead has released many songs over the years besides Bertha. Grateful Dead released songs from 1967 to 1989 spanning across albums like The Grateful Dead, Anthem Of The Sun, Live / Dead, Aoxomoxoa, American Beauty, Workingman's Dead, Grateful Dead (Skull & Roses), Europe '72, History Of The Grateful Dead, Vol. 1 (Bear's Choice), Wake Of The Flood, Grateful Dead From The Mars Hotel, Blues For Allah, Steal Your Face, Terrapin Station, Shakedown Street, Go To Heaven, Reckoning, In The Dark, and Built To Last. Decade Lyrics has over lyrics & songs by Grateful Dead.

About Lyrics and Bertha by Grateful Dead

When you decide to study the lyrics to Bertha, you're looking at the words, verses and background chorus from the 1971 song by Grateful Dead. Some of the lyrics to Bertha have clear meanings and some contain metaphorical references. Like most songs, only Grateful Dead and their collaborators know the full story behind any of the their songs.

You can understand the lyrics to Bertha if you take apart the structure of the words. The word "lyric" itself derives from the Latin word lyricus, with the actual English word lyrics applied to the definition "words set to music" listed in Stainer and Barrett's 1876 Dictionary of Musical Terms. Continuing the chain, the Latin word lyricus derives from the Greek word λυρικός or lyrikós. This somewhat means "poetry accompanied by the lyre" or "words set to music." You can easily see that by looking at the background of the word lyric, that the "lyrics to Bertha" means the words set to the music of Bertha, or poetry accompanied by the lyre played by Grateful Dead. The singular form "lyric" is still used to mean the complete words to a song. However, the singular form lyric is also commonly used to refer to a specific line (or phrase) within a song's lyrics. Hence, by this analysis of word structure, you could say that the lyric to Bertha and the lyrics to Bertha are both one and the same thing. None of this talk about the word Lyrics is really relevant to fans of Grateful Dead who came here looking just for the lyrics to Bertha, but we feel it is still fun to learn what's behind commonly used words and lyrics in songs.

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