Remembering Jerry Garcia 15 Years Later

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Tonight, on the fifteenth anniversary of Jerry Garcia’s death, Mickey Hart and Bob Weir will pay tribute to their bandmate at the San Francisco Giants' baseball game. (Weir is singing the National Anthem, Hart leading the crowd in a group kazoo performance.) Garcia's daughter Annabelle will also throw out the game's first pitch. To celebrate the life and music of one of rock's most important figures, check out a photo timeline of Garcia's life, plus features from the Rolling Stone archives, including a 1972 RS interview and the original 1995 tribute to his life.

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Song Stories

“He Will Break Your Heart”

Jerry Butler | 1960

A lightly swinging Latin-influenced, almost cha-cha groove and close harmonies decorated Jerry Butler's early soul hit "He Will Break Your Heart," delivering a stately warning that his rival would never love his girl like he did. The melody came to Butler as he was driving on the highway from Atlantic City, New Jersey, to Philadelphia with Curtis Mayfield, and as Butler told Rolling Stone, "I just sang the melody and Curtis put the chords to it." The song's premise, Butler added, "was something that I'd lived ...The lyric was an experience rather than a revelation. Whereas music is usually a revelation."

More Song Stories entries »

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