Bob Weir, a founding member of the enduring American rock group the Grateful Dead who seemingly by no means stopped touring for six many years, has died, in line with a press release posted to his official website.
The guitarist, vocalist and storyteller “courageously” beat most cancers after being identified in July, the assertion mentioned. He handed away “peacefully” and surrounded by family members after succumbing to underlying lung points, the assertion added.
Weir, the youngest member of the rock, folks and blues-influenced band that dominated the jam scene for years, carried out as just lately as this previous summer time when the remaining members of the Dead reunited for concerts at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco to have fun the band’s sixtieth anniversary. He started most cancers remedy simply weeks earlier than these summer time live shows, the assertion mentioned.
He wrote or co-wrote iconic Dead songs like “Sugar Magnolia,” “Truckin’,” “Cassidy” and “Throwing Stones.”
“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,” the announcement famous.
Weir joined the Dead as a young person once they had been forming in San Francisco. They had been a fixture on the Haight-Ashbury scene within the Sixties and ’70s. Their infinite touring included cultural touchstones like Woodstock, and maybe their largest live performance on their very own in entrance of over 100,000 spectators in Englishtown, New Jersey in 1977.
The group discovered a resurgence of recognition within the late Nineteen Eighties with the band’s solely prime 10 hit, “Touch of Grey.” After that, they stuffed stadiums for years with new and outdated followers alike. Their followers, often known as Deadheads, would tour alongside and revel within the continually altering set lists and prolonged soloing and jamming that gave every present a singular taste.
After the dying of lead guitarist and singer Jerry Garcia, Weir reconstituted the band in a number of varieties earlier than inviting guitarist John Mayer to hitch, and so they toured efficiently as Dead & Company till final 12 months, together with a sequence of live shows at the Sphere in Las Vegas.
“Bob’s approach to guitar playing is sort of like Bill Evans’ approach to piano was. He’s a total savant. His take on guitar chords and comping is so original, it’s almost too original to be fully appreciated until you get deep down into what he’s doing,” Mayer told an interviewer again in 2016. “I think he’s invented his own vocabulary where a lot of times the root note isn’t at the bottom of the chord, it’s somewhere in the middle of it. It’s a joyous thing to play along with.”
Weir is survived by his spouse Natasha, and his daughters Monet and Chloe.
NCS’s Adam Levine contributed to this report.