Grateful Dead: Hart For Jersey Shore

Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart has written a song in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy and the devastation it caused to the New Jersey coastline.

Hart tells Rolling Stone he got the idea watching the NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams. "He had [Jon] Bon Jovi on and they were talking about the Jersey Shore. And Brian, you could see it in his eyes, and Bon Jovi, it was loss of a sense of place. It was much more than just buildings and water and boardwalks. And it really touched me, the loss for all these people, their memories and where they grew up." Bon Jovi lives in Middletown, New Jersey, the town where Williams spent his childhood.

Hart poured his emotions into his music, coming up with the song, "Jersey Shore." Though we always associate him and the Dead with the San Francisco Bay Area, Hart was born and raised in New York, and spent part of his childhood on the Jersey Shore. "I remember going there when I was a kid and my grandparents used to take me there. It felt really good to be there... We used to go and walk on the boardwalk, and it was a spiritual kind of thing for me."

Hart is donating all proceeds from the song to Clean Ocean Action. "They're on the ground, they really do the clean-up work, the survival work. And this is a song of survival, it's a song of hope."