LOS ANGELES — Bob Weir, the guitarist and singer who as an essential member of the Grateful Dead helped found the sound of the San Francisco counterculture of the 1960s and kept it alive through decades of tours and marathon jams, has died. He was 78.
“It is with profound sadness that we share the passing of Bobby Weir,” a statement on his Instagram page posted Saturday said. “He transitioned peacefully, surrounded by loved ones, after courageously beating cancer as only Bobby could. Unfortunately, he succumbed to underlying lung issues.”
Weir joined the Grateful Dead — originally the Warlocks — in 1965 in San Francisco at just 17 years old. He would spend the next 30 years playing rhythm guitar on virtually nonstop tours alongside fellow singer and guitarist Jerry Garcia, who died in 1995.
“Longevity was never a major concern of ours,” Weir said when the Dead got the Grammys’ MusiCares Person of the Year honor last year. “Spreading joy through the music was all we ever really had in mind, and we got plenty of that done.”
Weir wrote or co-wrote and sang lead vocals on Dead classics including “Sugar Magnolia,” “One More Saturday Night” and “Mexicali Blues.”
The face of the Grateful Dead's legacy
After Garcia’s death, Weir would be the Dead's most recognizable face. In the decades since, he kept playing with other projects that kept alive the band's music and legendary fan base, including Ratdog, The Other Ones, and Dead & Company.
Weir’s death leaves drummer Bill Kreutzmann as the only surviving original member. Founding bassist Phil Lesh died in 2024. The band's other drummer, Mickey Hart, practically an original member since joining in 1967, is also alive at 82. The fifth founding member, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, died in 1973.
Dead & Company, featuring former members and guitarist and singer John Mayer, played a series of concerts for the Grateful Dead’s 60th anniversary in July at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, drawing some 60,000 fans a day for three days.
San Francisco beginnings
Born Robert Hall Parber in San Francisco in 1947, Weir would take on the last name of the adoptive parents who raised him in nearby Atherton.
He had dyslexia that went undiagnosed at the time, struggled in school as a child and was kicked out of several institutions. At a Colorado boarding school for boys with behavioral problems, he met his frequent lyricist-collaborator John Perry Barlow.
Weir began playing guitar at age 13 and a few years later met and latched on to Garcia, five years his senior, when he heard him playing banjo in Palo Alto, California.
Weir became the Dead's youngest member and looked like a fresh-faced high-schooler in its early years. He was generally less shaggy than the rest of the band, but he had a long beard like Garcia’s in later years.
The band made its name and forged its identity at the LSD-fueled Acid Tests thrown in San Francisco in the mid-1960s by writer Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters.
Their music — called acid rock at its psychedelic inception — incorporated elements of blues, jazz and country in long improvisational jams at concerts.
The band went on to make classic albums including “American Beauty” and “Workingman's Dead,” but the Dead would always be primarily known as a live sensation.
“For over sixty years, Bobby took to the road,” the statement on his Instagram page said. It added that Weir will “forever be a guiding force whose unique artistry reshaped American music.”
‘The Other One’
Weir took take a backseat to Garcia, whose face was as much an avatar of the band as its legendary skull logo. At times he would be called “The Other One,” the name of an early song he wrote and the title of a 2014 documentary about him.
“Bob Weir wasn’t The Other One, he was That Guy,” TV personality and devoted Dead fan Andy Cohen said on Instagram on Saturday night. “He was impossibly beautiful and wildly fiery, intense and passionate.”
Others paying tribute included the Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan, who posted “God Bless Bob Weir” on the social platform X.
In New York, the Empire State Building was lit up in tie-dye colors in his honor.
The band survived long past the hippie moment of its birth, with its ultra-devoted fans known as Deadheads often following them on tours that persisted despite decades of shifting music and culture.
Ubiquitous bumper stickers and T-shirts showed dancing, colored bears, another symbol of the band, and signature phrases like “ain't no time to hate” and “not all who wander are lost.”
Belated Grammy and pop chart landmarks
The Dead won few Grammys — they were always a little too esoteric — getting only a lifetime achievement award in 2007 and the best music film award in 2018, along with the 2025 MusiCares honor.
Just as rare were hit pop singles. “Touch of Grey,” which brought a big surge in the aging band's popularity in 1987, was their only Billboard Top 10 hit.
But in 2024 they set a record for all artists with their 59th album in Billboard's Top 40. Forty-one of those came since 2012, thanks to the popularity of a series of archival albums compiled by David Lemieux.
Weir also made solo albums, including 1972's “Ace,” 1978's “Heaven Help The Fool” and 2016's “Blue Mountain.”
He is survived by his wife, Natascha, and daughters Monet and Chloe.
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