Bob Weir of Lifeless & Firm performs at Bonnaroo Music and Arts Competition on Sunday, June 12, 2016, in Manchester, Tenn. AP-Yonhap
LOS ANGELES — Bob Weir, the guitarist and singer who as an important member of the Grateful Lifeless helped discovered the sound of the San Francisco counterculture of the Nineteen Sixties and saved it alive by a long time of infinite excursions and marathon jams, has died. He was 78.
Weir’s loss of life was introduced Saturday in an announcement on his Instagram web page.
“It’s with profound unhappiness that we share the passing of Bobby Weir,” an announcement on his Instagram posted Saturday stated. “He transitioned peacefully, surrounded by family members, after courageously beating most cancers as solely Bobby may. Sadly, he succumbed to underlying lung points.”
The assertion didn’t say the place or when Weir died, however he lived within the San Francisco Bay Space for many of his life.
Weir joined the Grateful Lifeless — initially the Warlocks — in 1965 in San Francisco at simply 17 years outdated. He would spend the following 30 years enjoying on infinite excursions with the Grateful Lifeless alongside fellow singer and guitarist Jerry Garcia, who died in 1995.
Weir wrote or co-wrote and sang lead vocals on Lifeless classics together with “Sugar Magnolia,” “One Extra Saturday Evening” and “Mexicali Blues.”
After Garcia’s loss of life, he could be the Lifeless’s most recognizable face. Within the a long time since, he saved enjoying with different initiatives that saved alive the band’s music and legendary fan base, together with Lifeless & Firm.
“For over sixty years, Bobby took to the highway,” the Instagram assertion stated. “A guitarist, vocalist, storyteller, and founding member of the Grateful Lifeless. Bobby will perpetually be a guiding power whose distinctive artistry reshaped American music.”
Weir’s loss of life leaves drummer Invoice Kreutzmann as the one surviving unique member. Founding bassist Phil Lesh died in 2024. The band’s different drummer, Mickey Hart, virtually an unique member since becoming a member of in 1967, can be alive at 82. The fifth founding member, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, died in 1973.
Lifeless and Firm performed a collection of live shows for the Grateful Lifeless’s sixtieth anniversary in July at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, drawing some 60,000 followers a day for 3 days.
Born in San Francisco and raised in close by Atherton, Weir was the Lifeless’s youngest member and appeared like a fresh-faced high-schooler in its early years. He was typically much less shaggy than the remainder of the band, however he had a protracted beard like Garcia’s in later years.
This undated file photograph exhibits members of the Grateful Lifeless band, from left to proper, Mickey Hart, Phil Lesh, Jerry Garcia, Brent Mydland, Invoice Kreutzmann and Bob Weir. AP-Yonhap
The band would survive gone the hippie second of its beginning, with its ultra-devoted followers often known as Deadheads usually following them on the highway in a just about continuous tour that continued regardless of a long time of music and tradition shifting round them.
“Longevity was by no means a serious concern of ours,” Weir stated when the Lifeless obtained the Grammys’ MusiCares Individual of the Yr honor final 12 months. “Spreading pleasure by the music was all we ever actually had in thoughts, and we obtained loads of that carried out.”
Ubiquitous bumper stickers and T-shirts confirmed the band’s cranium brand, the dancing, coloured bears that served as their different image, and signature phrases like “ain’t no time to hate” and “not all who wander are misplaced.”
The Lifeless received few precise Grammys throughout their profession — they have been all the time slightly too esoteric — getting solely a lifetime achievement award in 2007 and the most effective music movie award in 2018.
Simply as uncommon have been hit pop singles. “Contact of Gray,” the 1987 tune that introduced a giant surge within the growing old band’s recognition, was their solely Billboard Prime 10 hit.
However in 2024, they set a report for all artists with their 59th album in Billboard’s Prime 40. Forty-one of these got here since 2012, because of the recognition of the collection of archival albums compiled by David Lemieux.
Their music — referred to as acid rock at its inception — would pull in blues, jazz, nation, folks and psychedelia in lengthy improvisational jams at their live shows.
“I enterprise to say they’re the nice American band,” TV persona and devoted Deadhead Andy Cohen stated as host of the MusiCares occasion. “What a marvel they’re.”
