Bob Weir, co-founding member of the Grateful Lifeless and a pioneer of American jam rock, whose rhythmic genius outlined a style for over sixty years, handed away on the age of 78. Weir had been battling most cancers and died as a consequence of underlying lung points.
“It’s with profound disappointment that we share the passing of Bobby Weir,” Weir’s daughter, Chloe, introduced in an announcement on Saturday (January tenth). “He transitioned peacefully, surrounded by family members, after courageously beating most cancers as solely Bobby may. Sadly, he succumbed to underlying lung points.”
“For over sixty years, Bobby took to the street,” the assertion continued. A guitarist, vocalist, storyteller, and founding member of the Grateful Lifeless. Bobby will eternally be a guiding power whose distinctive artistry reshaped American music. His work did greater than fill rooms with music; it was heat daylight that crammed the soul, constructing a group, a language, and a sense of household that generations of followers carry with them. Each chord he performed, each phrase he sang was an integral a part of the tales he wove. There was an invite: to really feel, to query, to wander, and to belong.”
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“Bobby’s remaining months mirrored the identical spirit that outlined his life. Identified in July, he started remedy solely weeks earlier than returning to his hometown stage for a three-night celebration of 60 years of music at Golden Gate Park. These performances, emotional, soulful, and full of sunshine, weren’t farewells, however items. One other act of resilience. An artist selecting, even then, to maintain going by his personal design. As we bear in mind Bobby, it’s arduous to not really feel the echo of the best way he lived. A person driftin’ and dreamin’ by no means worrying if the street would lead him dwelling. A toddler of numerous bushes. A toddler of boundless seas.”
Born Robert Corridor Parber in San Francisco on October sixteenth, 1947, Weir met Jerry Garcia on the age of 16 whereas wandering the again alleys of Palo Alto and stumbling upon Dana Morgan’s Music Retailer. The 2 determined to type a band, Mom McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions, which was later renamed the Grateful Lifeless in 1965. Because the youngest member of the band, Weir developed a particular enjoying type on rhythm guitar, drawing on jazz, nation, and classical influences, that turned a cornerstone of the Lifeless’s improvisational sound. Together with Garcia, he additionally shared lead vocal duties on a lot of the band’s repertoire.
For his efforts in Grateful Lifeless, Weir was inducted into the Rock and Roll Corridor of Fame in 1994, and was the recipient of a Kennedy Cent Honor in 2024.
Following the Grateful Lifeless’s disbandment in 1995, he continued to tour prolifically with acts similar to RatDog and The Lifeless, Furthur, Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros, and the Grateful Lifeless offshoot Lifeless & Firm.
In August 2025, simply weeks after his analysis, Weir carried out his remaining exhibits, a three-night celebration of the Grateful Lifeless’s sixtieth anniversary at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.
In a remaining tribute to her father, Chloe Weir shared Bob’s personal hope for the way he could be remembered. “There isn’t any remaining curtain right here,” she wrote, echoing his dream of a “three-hundred-year legacy” for the Grateful Lifeless songbook. “Could that dream reside on by means of future generations of Lifeless Heads. And so we ship him off the best way he despatched so many people on our means: with a farewell that isn’t an ending, however a blessing. A reward for a life value livin.’”