Bob Weir, rhythm guitarist, singer and occasional songwriter with the Grateful Dead, has played his last chord at the age of 78, following a brief but victorious skirmish with cancer—an outcome that will surprise no one familiar with Weir’s lifelong habit of emerging unscathed from situations that would have finished lesser mortals. Born Robert Hall Parber in San Francisco in 1947 and promptly adopted by a more conventionally named family, Weir met Jerry Garcia on New Year’s Eve 1963 in a music shop, an encounter that led, by a route only marginally less circuitous than one of the band’s own solos, to the formation of the Grateful Dead.
The name itself was a masterstroke of misdirection: to the casual observer it suggested a death-metal outfit specialising in gothic gloom, whereas the reality was nearer to a travelling folk festival that had accidentally ingested the entire West Coast’s supply of lysergic acid and decided to keep going for thirty years. Weir’s role was ostensibly that of rhythm guitarist, a position he interpreted with heroic latitude. While Garcia took the solos that wandered off like lost hikers, Weir supplied chords that arrived from unexpected angles, as though he had been taught harmony by a jazz musician who had then wandered off himself.
His singing voice—boyish, slightly nasal, eternally hopeful—carried songs such as “Sugar Magnolia” and “Playing in the Band” with a conviction that made even the most sceptical listener believe sunshine daydreams were a viable career path. After Garcia’s death in 1995, Weir continued touring with various permutations of the surviving Dead, most recently Dead & Company, proving that the band’s audience was prepared to follow him almost anywhere provided there was adequate parking for recreational vehicles. His later projects—RatDog, Wolf Bros—suggested a man unable to sit still, a trait that endeared him to fans and exhausted everyone else.
He is survived by his wife Natascha Münter and their two daughters, Monet and Chloe. The Grateful Dead’s music, once described by a critic as “the sound of tie-dye being wrung out”, will continue to circulate among the faithful, who may now reflect that the long strange trip has, for one of its principal navigators, finally reached journey’s end. Or, knowing Bob, merely paused for a very long drum solo.