Lyrics to
Pride Of Cucamonga

This version of Pride Of Cucamonga was released by Grateful Dead in 1974.

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

Out on the edge of an empty highway, howling at the blood on the moon,
Big diesel Mack truck rolling down my way, can’t hit that border too soon.
Running hard out of Muskrat Flats, it was sixty days or double life,
Hail on my back like a shotgun blast, high wind chimes in the night.

Oh, oh the Pride of Cucamonga, oh, oh bitter olives in the sun,
Oh, oh I had me some lovin’, and I done some time.

Since I came down from Oregon, there’s a lesson or two I’ve learned
By standing in the road alone, standing watching the fires burn.
The northern sky it stinks with greed, you can smell it for miles around,
Good ole boys in the Greystone Hotel, sitting doing that git on down.

Oh, oh the Pride of Cucamonga, of, of silver apples in the sun,

I see your silver shining town, but I know I can’t go there —
Your streets run deep with poisoned wine, your doorways crawl with fear.
So I think I’ll drift for ol’ where it’s at, where the weed grows green and fine
And wrap myself around a bush of that bright, whoa, on Oaxaca vine.

Yes, it’s me, I’m the Pride of Cucamonga, I can see golden forests in the sun.

---

Grateful Dead has released many songs over the years besides Pride Of Cucamonga. 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.

If you're a fan of 1970s songs looking for more songs from 1974 or the 1970s overall, you've come to the right place!

When you decide to study the lyrics to Pride Of Cucamonga, you're looking at the words, verses and background chorus from the 1974 song by Grateful Dead. Some of the lyrics to Pride Of Cucamonga 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 Pride Of Cucamonga 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 Pride Of Cucamonga" means the words set to the music of Pride Of Cucamonga, 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 Pride Of Cucamonga and the lyrics to Pride Of Cucamonga 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 Pride Of Cucamonga, but we feel it is still fun to learn what's behind commonly used words and lyrics in songs.

More Songs & Lyrics by Grateful Dead

Visit our Grateful Dead profile for more Grateful Dead songs, lyrics & info!

)