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Eagle Mall
Composer: Robert Hunter

Eagle Mall is a suite of 6 songs written by Robert Hunter in the late 1960's and originally intended for the Grateful Dead. Hunter comments on the suite in A Box of Rain: Lyrics 1965-1993
This saga was written in 1968-69, a pet project of mine intended for setting and performance by the Grateful Dead. In retrospect, it was too ambitious a lyric project for practical consideration. The direction we took with Workingman's Dead was more to the point. However, the warm reception given by audiences to Terrapin Station, a similarly outré oeuvre concerning some of the same characters, shows that the boundaries of rock can be successfully stretched more than is commonly conceded - unless, of course, one is seeking a "hit," in which case more normative rules probably apply. Eagle Mall recounts the trials of a nomadic people and embraces the notion of eternal recurrence. The concluding parts of the reprise are intended to be sung simultaneously as a kind of "round."
The songs in the suite are: Robert Hunter performed the suite live a number of times in 1979 and 1980.

There are no recordings of the Eagle Mall suite.