Bob Weir. Picture: file
LOS ANGELES:
American guitarist and songwriter Bob Weir, a founding member of the revolutionary, psychedelic jam band Grateful Lifeless, has died aged 78, his household introduced Saturday.
Weir was recognized with most cancers in July and had crushed the illness, however “succumbed to underlying lung points,” his household stated in a press release on his private web site, with out specifying the place or when he died.
“For over sixty years, Bobby took to the street,” the assertion stated. “Bobby will ceaselessly be a guiding pressure whose distinctive artistry reshaped American music.”
“His work did greater than fill rooms with music; it was heat daylight that crammed the soul, constructing a neighborhood, a language, and a sense of household that generations of followers carry with them.”
Based in San Francisco by Weir, Jerry Garcia, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, Phil Lesh, and Invoice Kreutzmann, the Grateful Lifeless turned one of many main music teams to emerge from the Sixties counterculture motion.
With its trademark improvisational, genre-blending model, the band turned identified for by no means performing the identical present twice, successful an avid and numerous legion of followers, and promoting thousands and thousands of data.
The group revolutionized fan engagement, as followers — famously referred to as “Deadheads” — recorded and swapped bootleg tapes of the live shows in a communal, drug-addled camp setting that traveled from stadium to stadium, a pattern later copied by different bands’ fandoms.
The rockers disbanded in 1995, just a few months after lead guitarist Garcia’s demise on the age of 53, and a yr after the group was inducted into the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame.
Weir would nevertheless proceed to carry out intermittently with different residing bandmembers, extra lately within the group Lifeless & Firm, which additionally included guitarist and singer John Mayer.
“As we bear in mind Bobby, it is exhausting to not really feel the echo of the way in which he lived,” the household stated.
“A person driftin’ and dreamin’, by no means worrying if the street would lead him residence. A baby of numerous bushes. A baby of boundless seas,” the household stated, quoting the songs “Cassidy” and “Misplaced Sailor,” written by Weir and the late John Perry Barlow.
Following Weir’s demise, 79-year-old drummer Kreutzmann turned the final residing co-founder of the Grateful Lifeless.
Bassist Lesh died in October 2024 on the age of 84, whereas keyboardist McKernan died aged 27 in 1973.
Drummer Mickey Hart, 82, joined the group in 1967.
In 2024, the ultimate yr of Joe Biden’s presidency, Weir and different residing Grateful Lifeless members got Kennedy Middle Honors, among the many highest American arts awards.
“The Grateful Lifeless has all the time been about neighborhood, creativity, and exploration in music and presentation,” Weir, Hart, Lesh and Kreutzmann had stated on the time.
