Bob Weir, founding member of the Grateful Dead, dies at 78

Bob Weir, a founding subordinate of countercultural icons the Grateful Dead, known for his singular guitar playing, emotive singing and vibrant songwriting, has died astatine 78.

“It is with profound sadness that we stock the passing of Bobby Weir,” a spokesperson for the instrumentalist confirmed to The Times. “He transitioned peacefully, surrounded by loved ones, aft courageously beating crab arsenic lone Bobby could. Unfortunately, helium succumbed to underlying lung issues.”

Weir was diagnosed with crab successful July.

Weir-penned songs see Grateful Dead instrumentality favorites “Sugar Magnolia,” “Jack Straw,” “Playing successful the Band” and “Weather Report Suite.” His vocal show connected the rock-radio staple “Truckin’” counts among the band’s finest recorded moments.

The Dead released 13 workplace albums with Weir, among them “Aoxomoxoa” (1969), “Workingman’s Dead” (1970), “American Beauty” (1970), “Wake of the Flood” (1973), “Terrapin Station” (1977) and 1987’s “In the Dark,” which featured the Top 10 azygous “Touch of Grey” and became the band’s highest-charting album, reaching No. 6 connected the Billboard 200.

The Dead besides released 8 “official” unrecorded albums, arsenic good arsenic a long-running bid of curated unrecorded shows known arsenic Dick’s Picks and, later, Dave’s Picks. The set was the archetypal to authorisation instrumentality taping astatine their concerts, spawning an abundance of homespun recordings that person been collected, traded and debated for decades.

Weir’s authoritative relation successful the Grateful Dead was bushed guitarist, alongside pb guitarist Jerry Garcia, but his analyzable benignant — marked by unsocial chord voicings, precise rhythms and a willingness to play done his bandmates alternatively of implicit them — elevated him from the modular bushed player. “Bob’s attack to guitar playing is benignant of similar Bill Evans’ attack to soft was. He’s a full savant,” John Mayer told Guitar World mag successful 2017. “His instrumentality connected guitar chords and comping is truthful original, it’s astir excessively archetypal to beryllium afloat appreciated until you get heavy down into what he’s doing. I deliberation he’s invented his ain vocabulary. … It’s a joyous happening to play on with.”

Weir’s archetypal solo album, “Ace,” released successful 1972, contained galore songs that became standards successful the Dead’s unrecorded show, including “Black-Throated Wind,” “Cassidy” and “Mexicali Blues.” “Blue Mountain,” Weir’s solo medium from 2016, written successful collaboration with musicians Josh Ritter and Josh Kaufman and inspired by Weir’s affinity for cowboy euphony and Western iconography, became his highest-charting solo album, reaching No. 14 connected the Billboard 200.

Weir besides played successful galore broadside projects, post-Dead tribute acts and different stone bands, including Bob Weir & Wolf Bros, RatDog, Kingfish, Bobby and the Midnites, and the Weir, Robinson & Green Acoustic Trio with members of the Black Crowes. Dead & Company, featuring Weir, Dead bandmates Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, bassist Oteil Burbridge, keyboardist Jeff Chimenti and singer-guitarist Mayer, kickstarted a Deadaissance successful 2015, reviving the band’s euphony and tie-dye-wearing, hacky-sack-kicking aesthetic for legions of caller and existing fans. The band’s last circuit earlier an indefinite hiatus, successful 2023, drew astir 1 cardinal people.

Weir besides was a dedicated collaborator, inviting friends to execute with him oregon guesting connected their records oregon successful concert. Willie Nelson, Joan Baez, the Allman Brothers, Sammy Hagar, Nancy Wilson, Stephen Marley, Billy Strings, Tyler Childers, Sturgill Simpson, the National, Margo Price and nouveau jam enactment Goose counted among his galore philharmonic compatriots. “Music is similar transcendental medicine and Bob Weir is my tone guide,” Price said connected Instagram successful 2022. Weir’s relationship with the itinerant people vocalist Ramblin’ Jack Elliott began successful the aboriginal 1960s, and successful the caller millennium, Elliott and Weir often performed low-key shows unneurotic successful Marin County, wherever some resided.

Robert Hall Weir was calved Oct. 16, 1947, successful San Francisco to John Parber and Phyllis Inskeep, a assemblage pupil who aboriginal gave him up for adoption. He was raised by adoptive parents Frederic Utter Weir and Eleanor (née Cramer) Weir successful Atherton, Calif. Weir struggled arsenic a kid owed to undiagnosed dyslexia and was kicked retired of each schoolhouse helium attended, including the backstage Fountain Valley School successful Colorado Springs, Colo., wherever helium met John Perry Barlow, who would aboriginal lend lyrics to the Grateful Dead.

Weir met Garcia connected New Year’s Eve, 1963, astatine a Palo Alto euphony store, and soon formed the jug set Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions with Garcia and aboriginal Dead bandmate Ron “Pigpen” McKernan. Weir was conscionable 16 years old. “There was immoderate hostility astatine location due to the fact that I was neglecting my studies, and I grew up nether the shadiness of Hoover Tower,” Weir explained successful an interrogation with Dan Rather. “My folks had Stanford successful caput for me, not an itinerant troubadour. But they could besides intelligibly spot that I was pursuing my bliss.”

About a twelvemonth later, astatine McKernan’s urging, the trio, on with bassist Dana Morgan Jr. and drummer Kreutzmann, formed the Warlocks, an electrical stone band, and played a fistful of gigs earlier bassist Phil Lesh replaced Morgan. The radical rapidly discovered that a set called the Warlocks already existed and renamed themselves the Grateful Dead, a word Garcia recovered successful a dictionary. Dead lyricist Robert Hunter and 2nd drummer Hart joined the radical successful 1967.

As a subordinate of the Dead, Weir was a benignant of shape-shifting clairvoyant, creating ever-evolving sounds and forms that became indispensable to the cloth of American euphony culture. With the Dead, Weir was portion of Ken Kesey’s Acid Tests successful the mid-’60s, centered astir experiments with LSD, and the band’s members were known to usage nitrous oxide, marijuana, velocity and heroin. The precocious ’70s launched an evident relation with cocaine, and a play known arsenic Disco Dead.

The band’s predilection for unrecorded improvisation, successful which they refashioned and extended their songs via intuitive jams and imaginative transitions, drew legions of adoring fans — called Deadheads — who followed the set from metropolis to city, and were the bedrock of the jam set question that followed successful the 1980s. The Dead’s graphic symbols, including “dancing” bears, the “Stealie” lightning skull and instrument-wielding terrapins, were plastered crossed innumerable merchandise and became a calling paper of hippie-influenced counterculture implicit the ensuing decades.

Throughout the Dead’s existence, Weir was sometimes viewed arsenic “the Other One” owed to Garcia’s outsize beingness successful the band. Weir was its youngest member, and its astir handsome. (Beautiful Bobby and the disfigured brothers, the set utilized to joke.) He wrote and sang less songs than Garcia. But for others, Weir’s deference to Garcia — however helium constructed a singular signifier of bushed guitar playing to suit Garcia’s earthy style, and utilized his deeper dependable arsenic a affluent vocal counterpoint — was indicative of his generosity and willingness to enactment ego aside. In the 2014 documentary “The Other One: The Long Strange Trip of Bob Weir,” helium said that helium takes nary pridefulness successful what he’s accomplished due to the fact that helium views pridefulness arsenic a “suspect emotion.”

Unlike his bandmates successful the Dead, Weir had a long-running involvement successful idiosyncratic style, and often opted for tucked-in button-down shirts, Western deterioration and polo shirts alternatively of tie-dye and ponchos. “I conscionable wanted to beryllium benignant of elegant,” helium told GQ successful 2019. “People were paying bully wealth to spot us, and astatine that clip I figured that meant we ought to formal up a bit.” His denim cutoffs, which crept up successful magnitude implicit the years, were known arsenic Bobby Shorts. Weir would turn his grey hairsbreadth and beard into a benignant resembling histrion Sam Elliott successful the 1979 Western “The Sacketts,” and began a collaboration with manner decorator James Perse that landed determination betwixt cowboy and surfer.

Weir was azygous for astir of his clip successful the Dead, and didn’t wed until 1999. With woman Natascha Münter, helium had 2 daughters, Shala Monet Weir and Chloe Kaelia Weir. He was vegetarian for overmuch of his life, and was passionate astir carnal rights, biology causes and backing for the arts.

In interviews, Weir spoke of Eastern religion and philosophy, and his dreams, which dictated galore decisions helium made successful his life. He often said successful interviews that his narration with Garcia ne'er died, adjacent aft the Grateful Dead person passed distant successful 1995. In 2012, Weir told Rolling Stone that Garcia “lives and breathes successful me.”

“I spot him successful my dreams each the time,” helium told the Huffington Post successful 2014. “I would accidental I can’t speech to him, but I can. I don’t miss him. He’s here. He’s with me.”

Times unit writer Carlos De Loera contributed to this report.