"Dire Wolf," The Grateful Dead

Did MTV get the idea for its "Unplugged" series from this tasty, almost-all-acoustic performance on the Tom Snyder Show in 1981? According to Grateful Dead publicist and historian Dennis McNally, the song title came from Jerry Garcia's girlfriend, Mountain Girl, who was watching "The Hound of the Baskervilles" with lyricist Robert Hunter one night and called the pooch a "dire wolf":

The wolf, "600 pounds of sin," is also the devil, and the fact that our guy invites him in speaks volumes. By and large, the Dead stood for moral goodness, but later they would also write a song called "Friend of the Devil." The pivotal moment in American blues history had taken place some 40 years before, when, as Son House told the story, Robert Johnson made a Faustian compact and sold his soul to the devil for the ability to play the guitar, leaving the church and setting out on the blues road. The Dead's postmodern, post-Christian cosmology didn't demand that choice.

But He Did Not Shoot The Sheriff

In his history of the Grateful Dead, Dennis McNally describes an unexpected rim shot at the Red Dog Saloon, a now-legendary music venue in Virginia City, Nevada:

On opening night, June 29, 1965, the sheriff stopped by, handed his gun to the bartender, and said, "Check my gun." The bartender fired a round into the floor and handed it back. "Works fine, Sheriff."

Chrome Heart Shining In The Sun

For Richard Nixon in the deep forest of Watergate, there were several roads not taken. According to official Grateful Dead biographer Dennis McNally, the band was working hard on his problem at their headquarters in San Rafael, California:

[T]he Dead's best political statement came in a 1974 letter from Ron Rakow, then president of the Grateful Dead Record Company, to President Richard Nixon. Rakow offered the threatened officeholder an idea on how to continue his administration. "We pass our solution along to you with only the remotest expectation that you will carry it out. Since, while it is brilliant, it is not extremely logical. We have concluded that the problems referred to above would disappear, as if by magic, were you to chrome the entire White House."