I’ve been traveling way more than intended this year, but I still feel compelled to share some thoughts on Bob Weir who passed away in January.
I was absolutely NOT a Deadhead for much of my life. Growing up in the Bay Area in the 70’s/80’s, the Grateful Dead were embedded in the local culture, whether you liked it or not. I rebelled against that. I also had a family connection in that my step-uncle worked as a truck driver for the Dead, even going to Egypt with them and writing a book about it. As this uncle and I would have a severe falling out, I associated the Dead with him….so F&*K them!
In truth, however, I did like American Beauty as a kid, associating it with some brief happy memories of my childhood that surround a hippie babysitter I had after my mom died (a long story for another day).
Fast forward to 2016 when I got reacquainted with an old friend from my days playing in hard Rock bands in the Bay Area in the 80’s. He too was “anti-Dead” back in the day but somehow became an avid fan. This was surprising to a degree but as we change as we get older, not earthshattering. In our conversation, he said “You’ve got to give the Dead another chance!”…to which I said “yeah, yeah”..
As an aside, my sister had also become a big Deadhead so I knew more than a few people who fell under their sway.
Some weeks after that meeting with my friend, while having an apple pie with my wife, I put on my vinyl copy of “Dead Set”, the live album that my stepbrother gave me for Christmas in 1980 that I played maybe twice before storing it within my record collection for 36 years. As I’m listening to “Samson and Deliah” while enjoying home-made apple pie, I was mentally transported back to that aforementioned childhood time with the hippie baby-sitter that smelled of marijuana and Nag Champa (again, long story but I remember her cooking apple pie), and something “clicked”. I listened to the album over and over. Then I bought ” Workingman’s Dead”, then “Blues for Allah”. Then I switched the Sirius radio to the Grateful Dead channel, then I started becoming familiar with the huge wealth of live recordings. I was hooked. It was the damnedest thing. It was a music rabbit hole that I went down into hard.
That, in itself, was enough to make The Grateful Dead and all their members special for me. But, in 2019, when my father was dying in my home, I put on The Dead for him to listen to. At that point, my father wasn’t very lucid and was fading fast. But he did turn to me as he heard the music and said “That is nice. Keep playing that”. Those were some of the last lucid words he said to me.
All this is to say that The Grateful Dead became and remain very special to me. And Bob Weir, of all the members, is the most revered to me for a few reasons.
1st reason is because I came to the Dead after Jerry Garcia passed and the GD were officially no more. Of course, I know that Jerry is and will forever be the guiding musical force behind the Grateful Dead. But the post-Jerry activities have fascinating me even more so and especially Mr. Weir’s. He literally never stopped. He was a relentless artist that pursued his own path while also keeping the legacy of the Grateful Dead not just alive but evolving. In a very real way, he became the elder statemen of the movement that the Dead created that Jerry Garcia did not live to become.
2nd, I am in awe at Bob Weir’s guitar ability. His chord phrasing and style were 2nd to none. He was such an amazing contributor to the sound of the band. Its impossible to imagine the Dead’s sound without his rhythm guitar.
Lastly, his song writing and voice were fantastic. “Jack Straw”, “The Other One”, “Sugar Magnolia” and on and on were fantastic songs. His interpretation of the cover songs like the aforementioned “Samson and Deliah” and “El Paso” made those songs his. Even the “Jerry Songs” that he would sing later in life were made (dare I say) more special. His solo albums, especially “Blue Mountain” are fantastic.
I’m grateful that I got to see Dead and Co. in 2022 and The Wolf Brothers in 2024, both with my oldest daughter who has also gone down the Dead rabbit hole. I’m grateful that I was encouraged by a friend to explore the music and open my mind. I’m grateful to have discovered art late in my life that has been there all along and feels like its been here forever. I’m grateful for Bob Weir for being the most devoted chaser of bliss that made my world a little richer. I’m Grateful.