“The song was done, and Jerry happened to be hanging around, so I said, ‘Hey, come into the studio and put pedal steel on it.’ I had no idea that pedal steels never stopped. Jerry started playing and just went through the whole thing. Pedal steels take up a lot of room, and you have to be really careful about how you use them.

“The opening lick that he did, now that’s one of those things you can sing in your head, which is why the Grateful Dead were the Grateful Dead [laughs]. It was the first thing out of his head, that wonderful little passage once the song starts.

“I wouldn’t let him do another take – that’s how much I liked the first lick. Actually, I think I told him he could do another take, but I was going to keep the first lick no matter what.”