In an interview, Bob Weir once described his musical role in the Grateful Dead as always trying to figure out what made sense to say as a rhythm guitarist in between Phil Lesh’s bass playing and Jerry Garcia’s lead guitar.
Trying, as a new listener five decades ago, to make any sense of what I was hearing in the sometimes spare, sometimes dense musical landscape of the Dead, I had the most difficulty picking out Weir’s parts—they just didn’t land in any kind of expected way. His playing was unlike anyone else’s, and he seemed to delight in taking us all by surprise whenever possible.
And his ability to do that seemed linked, to me, to his own distinctive and utterly idiosyncratic songwriting. Surprise after surprise—whether in chord progression or meter, Weir just never seemed content with “normal.”
That’s only to be expected, given the environment of the Merry Pranksters in which he came of age. The Grateful Dead were overtly working on creating a new kind of music-making, born of a wide range of influences from jug band music to the acid tests, and of the sense, as Lesh once said, that they were five fingers on one hand. With the passing of Marin’s Weir last weekend, four of those original five members are now gone, leaving only Bill Kreutzman. (Mickey Hart is still pounding away with shamanic power, but he joined just a tad later…)
It had already been a very tough start to 2026. Donald Trump invaded Venezuela in a naked oil grab, and then Rebecca Good was murdered by ICE in Minneapolis. Last Thursday, my wife and I had made the decision to put our elderly dog, our beloved Benicia, to sleep. I was pretty broken-hearted, so the news arriving last Saturday of Weir’s passing hit me even harder than it might have.
As did probably tens of thousands of Deadheads around the world, I spent Saturday evening with friends, listening and reminiscing. Our soundtrack, over the course of the evening, ranged from several songs from Weir’s first “solo” album, Ace, to “Jack Straw” and “One More Saturday Night,” to “Let It Grow” from his Weather Report Suite, to “Cassidy,” to “Estimated Prophet,” and to “Only a River,” from his last solo album, Blue Mountain.
Listening to those songs, many of which I had played with the tribute band Dead Again, I thought of how accomplished they were. Again, the idiosyncrasy of the songwriting made us work hard to get things right—the challenge of a time signature in seven or ten, the inner logic of the chord progressions that was all Weir’s own. The refusal to do the expected thing led to the creation of a songbook that delights and that sometimes feels like a roller-coaster ride in performance.
My final Dead & Company show was the Aug. 1, 2025 opening concert of the Grateful Dead 60th Anniversary three-night run in Golden Gate Park. Much of the show seemed elegiac, and I remember wondering if something was going on with Weir’s health that I didn’t know about. I especially felt that during his rendition of “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” in the show. But it was Jerry Garcia’s birthday, after all, and I sort of figured that he was on Weir’s mind. But maybe, as it turns out, he was singing that one for himself.
It will take me a while to accept that the world no longer contains Bob Weir. But I know that the world is a better place for him having been here, and I am so grateful. Thanks, Bob.
David Dodd is the author of ‘The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics.’
