Remembering Bob Weir
• Bob Weir, singer, songwriter, rhythm guitarist and founding member of The Grateful Dead and the band’s latest iteration, Dead & Company, died Saturday, Jan. 10 at the age of 78.
The news was shared on Weir’s social media feed, which reads, in part, “It is with profound sadness that we share the passing of Bobby Weir. He transitioned peacefully, surrounded by loved ones, after courageously beating cancer as only Bobby could. Unfortunately, he succumbed to underlying lung issues.”
Weir was just 16 years old when he met Jerry Garcia, who was then teaching banjo and guitar at a Palo Alto, CA, music store, on New Year’s Eve of 1963. Reflecting the musical tastes at the time, the two formed an old-time jug band, dubbed “Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions.” About a year later, as The Beatles exploded onto the scene, Garcia and Weir went electric and formed The Warlocks, finally taking the name the Grateful Dead in 1965.
The tribute continued, “For over sixty years, Bobby took to the road. A guitarist, vocalist, storyteller, and founding member of the Grateful Dead. Bobby will forever be a guiding force whose unique artistry reshaped American music. His work did more than fill rooms with music; it was warm sunlight that filled the soul, building a community, a language, and a feeling of family that generations of fans carry with them. Every chord he played, every word he sang was an integral part of the stories he wove. There was an invitation: to feel, to question, to wander, and to belong.”
“Bobby’s final months reflected the same spirit that defined his life. Diagnosed in July, he began treatment only weeks before returning to his hometown stage for a three-night celebration of 60 years of music at Golden Gate Park. Those performances, emotional, soulful, and full of light, were not farewells, but gifts. Another act of resilience. An artist choosing, even then, to keep going by his own design. As we remember Bobby, it’s hard not to feel the echo of the way he lived. A man driftin’ and dreamin,’ never worrying if the road would lead him home. A child of countless trees. A child of boundless seas.”
In closing, the tribute notes, “There is no final curtain here, not really. Only the sense of someone setting off again. He often spoke of a three-hundred-year legacy, determined to ensure the songbook would endure long after him. May that dream live on through future generations of Dead Heads. And so we send him off the way he sent so many of us on our way: with a farewell that isn’t an ending, but a blessing. A reward for a life worth livin.’
Weir is survived by his wife, Natascha, and daughters Monet and Chloe.
Weir’s passing follows the Oct. 2024 death of the Grateful Dead’s founding bassist Phil Lesh at 84, leaving percussionists Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann the last surviving original members of the Grateful Dead, who were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. [Photo by Chloe Weir]
