搬運自：網易云音樂專欄【Music Online Zine Courier】（在原文基礎上添加了英語原文與排版調整）

翻譯：豆目豆科

Reissued for its 50th anniversary,?American Beauty?is undoubtedly the Dead’s most beloved studio album, a pure and potent representation of their style and philosophical outlook.

在50周年之際重新發(fā)行的《American Beauty》無疑是樂隊Grateful Dead生涯最受歡迎的錄音室專輯，是他們風格和哲學觀最純粹、最有力的代表作。

To an outsider,?Grateful Dead?fandom can look like a religious calling. Consider the hours spent in contemplation of their famously lengthy jams, the lexicon of shibboleths and symbols that are inscrutable to the uninitiated, the seemingly prescribed style of dress, the reluctant messiah figure in?Jerry Garcia. Actual religious groups even attached themselves to the endless tours that provided this community with its gathering places. If you attended one of the Dead’s carnivalesque stadium shows in the late 1980s—when hippie nostalgia, spectacle-driven TV news coverage, and?a bona fide MTV hit?converged to make their crowds much larger than they’d ever been in the hippie era—you might have encountered the Peacemaker bus. Filled with longhaired evangelicals who followed the band in hopes of drawing its listeners into a cultish Christian sect known as the 12 Tribes, the Peacemaker had two floors, a groovy paint job, and a faintly eerie slogan emblazoned on the back: “We know the way, we’ll bring you home.”

對局外人而言，考慮要用許多時間去沉思他們著名而冗長的即興搖滾演奏會、考慮到對不熟悉這一樂隊的人來說那些難以理解的術語和符號、考慮到看似刻意而為的著裝風格、考慮到Jerry Garcia這一迫不得已的救世主形象，Grateful Dead的粉絲完全就是一群癲狂的某宗教使徒。甚至吸引著真正的宗教團體參與到他們巡演之中，一場無休止的狂歡Party。如果你在20世紀80年代末參加了Grateful Dead樂隊的狂歡式體育場演出——在當時嬉皮士的復古情結、奇觀驅動的電視新聞報道以及MTV熱單風潮的影響下，他們的受眾比嬉皮士時代要多得多——你可能會偶遇通往the Peacemaker的巴士。上面坐滿了追隨樂隊而來的長發(fā)翩翩的教派人士，他們希望在吸納一些聽眾加入一個叫做“12 Tribes”的基督教狂熱教派，那是the Peacemaker名下的雙層別墅，有著詭異而華麗的裝潢，門后還印著一個些微陰森的話：“We know the way, we'll bring you home.”

That line comes from “Ripple,” the sixth song on?American Beauty, Grateful Dead’s fifth and greatest studio album. But as Pitchfork contributor Jesse Jarnow notes in?Heads, his wonderful history of American psychedelia, the Peacemaker’s motto was a perversion of the original. The musicians of the Dead, as well as?Robert Hunter, the eremitic poet who wrote many of their lyrics, were temperamentally averse to dogma of any kind. On “Ripple,” a crystalline acoustic ballad with a hymnlike melody, they don’t profess to have the answers. “You who choose to lead must follow,” Garcia sings in his plainspoken tenor atop a cascading mandolin, then finishes with the line the 12 Tribes appropriated: “If I knew the way, I would take you home.” Were the Dead a religion, this would be one of its core tenets. Devotion and uncertainty are inseparable; no one knows the way, but we can try to get there together.

這句話來自“Ripple”，這是Grateful Dead第五張也是有史以來最偉大的錄音室專輯《American Beauty》中的第六首歌。但正如Pitchfork的撰稿人Jesse Jarnow在他精彩的美國迷幻樂史中指出的那樣，the Peacemaker的座右銘是對原作的一種歪曲。Grateful Dead樂隊的音樂家們，以及為他們貢獻了許多詞作的悲觀主義詩人Robert Hunter，在性情上都不喜歡任何形式的教條。在“Ripple”這首帶有贊美詩般悠揚旋律的集大成原聲民謠中，他們并不會自詡手握真理?！癥ou who choose to lead must follow,” Garcia在層層疊疊的曼陀林上用他平易近人的男高音唱道，然后用“12 Tribes”爭相傳誦的那句話來結束——“If I knew the way, I would take you home.”如果“Grateful Dead”真的變作一種宗教，這將是其核心教旨之一。奉獻和不確定性是不可分割的；沒有人知道路在何方，但我們仍可以嘗試一同前往那里。

Released in November 1970 and reissued for its 50th anniversary this month,?American Beauty?is a pure and potent representation of Dead-ness as a philosophical outlook. Earlier in the year, with?Workingman’s Dead, the band made an abrupt about-face from the murk and discord of previous albums toward the bluegrass and folk that had captivated Garcia in his early days as a musician, with some Buck Owens and Merle Haggard thrown in for good measure.?American Beauty, which came just five months later, uses a similarly earthy palette, but its concerns are quite different. The songs of?Workingman’s Dead, filled with archetypal characters of the American West, involve a fair amount of rambling and gambling.?American Beauty?is more like a guided meditation, or a solitary swim in a cool, clear lake.

《American Beauty》發(fā)行于1970年11月，同時選在本月（2020年10月）為其50周年重新發(fā)行，這張專輯極具哲學意味，為我們簡潔有力的闡明了何謂“死亡”。今年早些時候發(fā)行的《Workingman's Dead》五十周年再版中，樂隊突然一改過往專輯中陰暗和不和諧轉向藍草和民謠，這早在Garcia成為音樂家之初便吸引著他，其中還添有一些Buck Owens和Merle Haggard的味道。僅僅五個月后的《American Beauty》便使用了類似充斥著泥土氣息的調色板，但其著重點卻截然不同?！禬orkingman's Dead》中的歌曲講述的是美國西部的經典人事，它們洋溢在漫無邊際的浪跡和博彩之中。而《American Beauty》給人的感覺更像是一次正念冥想，或是在一個清涼的湖里獨自游泳。

Bassist Phil Lesh earned a rare songwriting credit for “Box of Rain,” the heartbreaking opener, whose melodies he wrote to sing to his father as he died of prostate cancer. Hunter’s dreamlike titular image might stand for the ephemerality of the present moment, or of life itself. Again, the band goes out of its way to avoid presenting its wisdom as something certain or compulsory: “Just a box of rain/Wind and water/Believe it if you need it/If you don’t, just pass it on.” Hunter conjures similar impossibilities across the album: lights that no eyes can see, tunes that play on harps unstrung, ripples emerging in water without pebbles to cause them.

貝斯手Phil Lesh憑借“Box of Rain”在音樂界享有他的作曲榮譽，這首令人心碎的開場曲是他為死于前列腺癌的父親所寫。Hunter塑造出的夢幻般圖景或許代表了當下的短暫，又或許映射了生命本身的短暫。同時樂隊也竭力避免將其中的哲理表現(xiàn)為某種確定的或強制性的東西：“Just a box of rain/Wind and water/Believe it if you need it/If you don't, just pass it on.” Hunter在整張專輯中創(chuàng)造了類似的不可能奇觀：瞳孔無法捕獲的光、無弦豎琴演奏的歌謠、靜水中無緣出現(xiàn)的漣漪。

Decades before mindfulness became a corporate buzzword, the Dead were devoted to being here now. According to Garcia, an acid-fried visit to the?Watts Towers?a few years before the?American Beauty?sessions informed this approach, albeit in an inverted way. The guitarist was inspired?not?to toil in solitude for his legacy, like Simon Rodia building his folk-art monuments in southern Los Angeles, but to live in the world as it unfolded. “If you work really hard as an artist, you may be able to build something they can’t tear down, you know, after you’re gone,” he said later. “But hey, what the fuck? I want it here. I want it now, in this lifetime...I also don’t want to be isolated. I don’t want to be an artist suffering in a garrett somewhere, you know what I mean? I want to work with other people.”

早在正念成為官方流行語的數十年前，Dead樂隊就致力于感受“當下”去發(fā)聲。據Garcia說，在《American Beauty》開始演出的前幾年，他在Watts Towers的一次旅行就為這一法門提供了啟示，盡管是以一種顛覆性的方式。這位吉他手受到的啟發(fā)并不是獨守他的遺產而孤獨的創(chuàng)作，就像Simon Rodia在洛杉磯南部建造他的民間藝術紀念碑一樣，他選擇將之立于世界舞臺上而存在。“若你作為一個藝術家能不辭辛勞地為你地作品付出，你就可能會建成一些別人永遠無法摧毀的東西，即便你離世之后，它也將永存，”他后來說道。“但是他媽的，我希望它現(xiàn)在就出現(xiàn)。我現(xiàn)在就想要，就這輩子......我不想被孤立、孤獨一生、我不想作那個在某個車庫里受苦的藝術家，你懂我意思吧？我想同他人一起為之奮斗。"

This commitment to coming together and being present manifested most clearly in the Dead’s live performances, communal explorations of the moment that only survived for posterity because of bootleg tapers, the sect of Deadheads who documented the band’s fleeting magic, like catching rain in a box. But they also show up on?American Beauty, in subtler ways. “Friend of the Devil,” a narrative told from the perspective of an outlaw on the run, might have been a straightforward piece of Americana if not for the way the band played it. Joined by bluegrass-jazz mandolin virtuoso David Grisman, they refuse to sit still and simply strum the chords. Instead, each player pursues his own melodic path through the changes, which emerge in crystalline polyphony. Each line wanders freely, but complements the others; none could support Garcia’s lead vocal alone, but their latticework holds him high.

這種對“結伴而行”和“存在感”的信念在Dead樂隊的現(xiàn)場表演中表現(xiàn)得最為明顯，這種對“當下”的共同探索，也只能靠偷拍器才得以流傳后世，那些記錄下樂隊施展轉瞬即逝的魔力時刻的死忠粉們，就像身處在盒中接雨一樣。同時它們也以更微妙的方式出現(xiàn)在《American Beauty》中?！癋riend of the Devil”以一個逃犯的角度講述了一段故事，倘若不以樂隊的演奏方式來演繹，它最多可能是一首最簡單普通的美國音樂。在藍草爵士曼陀林大師David Grisman的加盟下，他們不再坐著不動、不再只是簡單地彈撥和弦；相反，參與其中地每一位演奏者都在行進變化中追尋著自己的旋律路徑。這些變化在水晶般剔透的復調中顯現(xiàn)，每條絲線都在自由地游蕩、但同時又與其他絲線交連、相輔相成；沒有任何一條線能單獨支撐起Garcia的主旋律人聲，但它們共同縫織的結構又將他托舉向上。

Across?American Beauty,?the band accomplishes such feats without straying from the bounds of country-folk songcraft, encoding their collective interplay within verses and choruses rather than jamming, per se. The album’s simplicity and campfire warmth make it approachable to newcomers even as it embodies the spiritual yearning that turns people into lifelong followers. It is an ideal gateway drug.

在《American Beauty》中，樂隊完成了這樣的壯舉，卻并未偏離鄉(xiāng)村民謠的界限，他們將他們間的集體互動編碼在詩句和副歌中，而非干擾將之打亂。這張專輯所具有的簡易性和篝火般的溫暖氛圍使它對新樂迷而言很容易上道，即使它體現(xiàn)了將人們轉化為終身信徒的精神渴望。總而言之，它是很理想的入門新手村。

The reissue comes packaged with a 1971 concert recording, and arrives in tandem with?American Beauty: The Angel’s Share, a collection of demos and outtakes that will hardcore fans will lap up, but newcomers to the album should probably ignore. For anyone in between,?The Angel’s Share?is a useful reminder of the work that goes into sounding so free. Garcia, Lesh, and rhythm guitarist Bob Weir struggle hard with their vocal harmonies in the “Brokedown Palace” demo, an uncomfortably intimate window on their process, which hardly anyone needs to hear more than once. Drummer Bill Kreutzman stumbles over a flashy drum fill to start “‘Til the Morning Comes,” an intro the band abandoned at some point between the demo and the final version.?The?Angel’s?Share?comes in an album-length edition with one demo for every song, as well as a 56-track version containing 20 different takes on “Friend of the Devil” alone. For all their emphasis on spontaneity, these songs didn’t?actually?emerge from thin air.

這次的再版附加了一張1971年的演唱會現(xiàn)場唱片，與《American Beauty》的正式內容一起打包裝訂。這張附加的專輯鐵桿歌迷會愛上它的，但對新歌迷而言很有可能將之忽略。對于介于兩者之間的人來說，《The Angel's Share》更像是個提醒，提醒他們樂隊為使音樂聽來如此自由所付出的艱辛。Garcia、Lesh和節(jié)奏吉他手Bob Weir在“Brokedown Palace”的Demo中與自己的和聲作著斗爭，這是他們創(chuàng)作中的一個極其令人不適的部分，幾乎不會有人想體驗超過一遍。鼓手Bill Kreutzman在華麗的鼓點中緩緩開啟了“'Til the Morning Comes”，這個前奏是樂隊在錄制Demo和最終版本之間的某個時刻被棄用的片段。除此之外《The Angel's Share》有一個專輯版本，其中的每首歌都有一個樣帶，還有一個56軌的版本，僅“Friend of the Devil”一首歌就有20個不同的版本。盡管他們反復強調著自發(fā)性（所謂的“自然而然”），但這些歌曲總不是憑空出現(xiàn)的。

American Beauty?contains the final studio performances of keyboardist and singer Ron “Pigpen” McKernan. His bluesy shout and rough-hewn charisma made him the Dead’s de facto frontman in their earliest years, but his role in the band receded in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, as he grew dissatisfied with their drift toward experimentation and away from the driving rock’n’roll that was his forte. In 1973, months before the Dead started work on?American Beauty’s studio followup?Wake of the Flood, he died at 27 from complications related to his heavy drinking, leaving his bandmates devastated. The twangy and good-natured “Operator,” his lone lead vocal and songwriting credit on?American Beauty, is the album’s outlier, content on Earth without reaching for anything resembling the divine.

《American Beauty》還收錄有鍵盤手兼歌手Ron "Pigpen" McKernan一生最后一次錄音室演唱。他的藍調呼喊和粗獷魅力使他成為Dead樂隊早期名副其實的主唱大大，但在隨后的60年代末到70年代初，他對樂隊向實驗性方向的發(fā)展而背離他所擅長的內驅性搖滾樂感到不滿，便漸漸銷聲匿跡。1973年，在Dead樂隊開始制作《American Beauty》的后續(xù)作品《Wake of the Flood》的幾個月前，他死于過度酗酒引起的并發(fā)癥，享年僅27歲，這讓他的樂隊伙伴大受打擊。他在《American Beauty》中唯一作為的主唱同時為之作曲的作品“Operator”，可謂是專輯中的異類，讓人身處塵世便能心感滿足，而沒有觸及所謂“神圣之物”的絲毫。

Though?American Beauty?is undoubtedly the Dead’s most beloved studio album, by fans and skeptics alike, most of its songs were never major staples of their live sets, making it something like an island in the stream of their larger canon. One exception is “Truckin’,” the album closer, an easygoing ode to the open highway that became an anthem for Deadheads and for freaks and hippies more generally. It can be difficult to apprehend how the Chuck Berry pastiche of “Truckin’”’s verses relates to?American Beauty’s zen worldview, until you get to the song’s spacious bridge, which spawned one of those catchphrases so ubiquitous as to seem without origin:

盡管《American Beauty》無疑是Dead樂隊最受歡迎的錄音室專輯，無論對于他們的歌迷還是那些陰謀論者，但它之中的大多數歌曲都不是他們現(xiàn)場演出的主要曲目，這使得它在他們無數作品中像是一座孤島。有一個例外是“Truckin'”，這張專輯的收官之作，一首輕松的公路頌歌，更是在之后的歲月中漸漸成為樂隊頭號樂迷、怪咖和嬉皮士們的圣歌。你可能很難理解Chuck Berry模仿“Truckin'”中的詩句與《American Beauty》中所隱含的禪宗世界觀有何關聯(lián)，直到你來到了這首歌最宏偉寬闊的橋段，也是由此產生了那些無處不在、像是憑空而現(xiàn)的口頭禪：

Sometimes, the light's all shining on me

Other times, I can barely see

Lately it occurs to me

What a long, strange trip it's been

In the scheme of things, Grateful Dead were only just getting started in 1970; the trip would get much longer and stranger still, and Pigpen was not the last member they’d lose along the way. The “Truckin’” bridge offers a brief pit stop for reflection on the past, but the point is to keep going, city to city, moment to moment. In concert, “Truckin’” regularly stretched past 10 minutes; on record, it is a modest 5:07. It ends with a fade, a tantalizing glimpse at a jam that might go on forever—six brothers truckin’ down the road together toward home, whichever way that is.

1970年，Grateful Dead的故事剛剛完成序章；這段旅程對他們而言將變得愈加漫長和陌生，同時"Pigpen"也并非他們在途中會失去的最后一個成員?！癟ruckin'”中的橋段為反思過去提供了一個短暫的停靠點，但重心仍應落在繼續(xù)前行上，跨越一個城市到另一個城市、歷經一刻再到另一刻。在音樂會上，“Truckin'”經常被延長至10分鐘以上；而在唱片上，它只有五分鐘出頭。它以淡出作結，就像一場可能永遠持續(xù)下去肆意即興演繹，聽者眼中一閃而過一幅圖景：兄弟六人結伴而行，一起沿著公路向家的方向走去，無論那路途是何等漫長、艱辛。