Bob Weir, co-founding singer/guitarist for the Grateful Dead and their various offshoots, has passed away. “He transitioned peacefully, surrounded by loved ones, after courageously beating cancer as only Bobby could,” according to a statement on his website that cites “underlying lung issues” as the cause of death. Weir was diagnosed with cancer last July, and he began treatment before playing three farewell shows with Dead & Company last year, his final live performance. Weir was 78.
Robert Hall Weir was born in San Francisco, where he was raised by wealthy adoptive parents. He started playing guitar as a child and at 16 met the slightly older Jerry Garcia, who was working as a music teacher in Palo Alto. After an evening playing music together, they decided to start a band. The two formed a folk duo called Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions, which evolved into an electric rock band called the Warlocks and then into the Grateful Dead.
The Grateful Dead played their first show under that name at one of Ken Kesey’s acid tests in 1965. They quickly developed a reputation for sprawling, psychedelic improvisations, and they became a key institution in the Bay Area’s counterculture. Weir and Garcia frequently shared lead-vocal duty, and Weir developed his own intricate form of rhythm guitar, closely intertwined with Garcia’s leads and informed by country, jazz, and blues. Weir wrote or co-wrote Grateful Dead songs like “Sugar Magnolia,” “Playing In The Band,” and “One More Saturday Night,” and he sang lead on the iconic track “Truckin’.”
In 1972, Bob Weir released his debut solo album Ace, with his Grateful Dead bandmates backing him up. Later on, Weir also played with side projects like Kingfish and Bobby And The Midnites. But his main work was with the Grateful Dead, which remained a touring institution long after the excitement of the ’60s drifted away. For decades, the Dead were a lifestyle as much as a band. Fans followed them around from show to show, trading bootleg tapes and debating which of their live shows were the best. Their live shows were always more successful than their records, but they scored a one-off top-10 hit with the 1987 single “Touch Of Grey.”
After Jerry Garcia’s 1995 death, Bob Weir led the post-Dead band RatDog. He also took part in offshoots like the Other Ones, the Dead, Further, and Dead & Company, the version of the group with John Mayer that gradually won many fans over in recent years. Weir and his band Wolf Bros played a series of symphonic concerts in the past few years, and Weir was the subject of the 2014 documentary The Other One: The Long, Strange Trip Of Bob Weir. Along with the rest of the Dead, Weir was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 1994 and presented with the Kennedy Center Honors in 2024.
Check out some of Weir’s work below.
