Grateful Dead Co-Founder and Guitarist Bob Weir Dies at 78

BOb Weir, a co-founder of the thankful deadened, an iconic American banding thanks to its sunny, often-improvised meld of folks, vapours, country and psychedelic rock, has died at age 78.“He transitioned peacefully, surrounded by loved ones, after courageously beating cancer as only Bobby could,” the artist’s family wrote in a statement shared by a representative. “Unfortunately, he succumbed to underlying lung issues.”Weir played many roles in the Grateful Dead, contributing swashbuckling, jazz-inflected rhythm guitar, co-writing classic songs like “Sugar Magnolia” and “Truckin’ ” and often helping out on lead vocals.“Bobby will forever be a guiding force whose unique artistry reshaped American music,” the family’s statement continued. “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.” Guitarist at 13Robert Hall Weir was born in San Francisco on Oct. 16, 1947, and began playing guitar at age 13.He later formed a band called Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions with Jerry Garcia and Ron “Pigpen” McKernan. That group expanded and became the Warlocks and then the Grateful Dead in 1965.The Grateful Dead featured Garcia also on guitar, McKernan on organ and harmonica, Phil Lesh on bass and Bill Kreutzmann on drums. Soon the group was part of a burgeoning rock movement in San Francisco that included Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape and Big Brother and the Holding Company. The Grateful Dead’s commitment to loose improvisation, to stretching songs out until they became gummy and supple, helped set it apart.So did Weir’s playing. “There is not another guitarist in the world who plays like him,” Don Was, a producer and collaborator in Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros, said in 2022. “He never plays the same thing remotely the same way twice in a row and will alternate between being as raw as John Lee Hooker to as sophisticated as Andrés Segovia from one phrase to another.”The Grateful Dead released its eponymous debut album in 1967. Two years later, the band earned high praise for “Live/Dead:” “Side two of this four-sided set contains the finest rock improvisation ever recorded,” the Village Voice gushed, “and the rest is gently transcendent as usual.” The following year, the group released a pair of laid-back rock gems, “Workingman’s Dead” and “American Beauty,” both of which eventually sold more than 1 million copies. Devoted followingMembers rotated in and out of the Grateful Dead for the next 25 years as they continued to record and tour. They scored just one Top 40 hit, 1987’s “Touch of Grey,” but fostered a legion of devoted fans, known as Deadheads, who followed them from show to show, trading precious tapes of their performances. The prolific Weir also released solo albums, played in the group Kingfish, and had another side project called Bobby & the Midnites.The band including Weir was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.After Garcia died in 1995, Weir continued to perform Grateful Dead songs in his own band, RatDog, and then in various groups that included other former members of his old band—the Other Ones, the Dead, and Dead & Company. He was diagnosed with cancer in July, according to his family’s statement.“There is no final curtain here, not really,” Weir’s family wrote. “Only the sense of someone setting off again. He often spoke of a three-hundred-year legacy, determined to ensure the songbook would endure long after him. May that dream live on through future generations of Dead Heads.”Write to Elias Leight at elias.leight@wsj.com