Robert Hunter wrote Stella Blue at the Chelsea Hotel
In Box of Rain, Robert Hunter said the song “Stella Blue” (which was part of the Grateful Dead repertoire) was “written at the Chelsea Hotel in 1970.” A copy of the handwritten lyrics for Stella Blue appears to the right. Click the picture to see the full-size image on Hunter’s website.
David Dodd cited Hunter’s comment on The Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics site, and then went on to elaborate about other works created at there:
Written, according to Box of Rain at the Chelsea Hotel in 1970. This places “Stella Blue” in distinguished company. It’s where Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001: a Space Odyssey; Bob Dylan wrote “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands”; and Arthur Miller wrote After the Fall. It’s been home, in its hundred-year plus history (built in 1883), to Mark Twain, Sarah Bernhardt, O. Henry, Hart Crane, Nelson Algren, Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Vladimir Nabokov (see note under “Stella Blue”, below, for more on Nabokov), Jane Fonda, Charles Jackson, Milos Forman, Edie Sedgwick, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Brendan Behan, Dylan Thomas, Thomas Wolfe, Edgar Lee Masters, and a slew of others. For a good article on the Chelsea, see Helen Dudar’s article “It’s Home Sweet Home For Geniuses, Real Or Would-Be,” in The Smithsonian, December 1983, p. 94.
Living With Legends: Hotel Chelsea Blog referred to The Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics.