[A note to readers: hit play above to hear the fully produced version of this story, which is filled with the wonderful music of Bobby Weir.]
On Saturday, a ripple went out through the cosmos: Bobby Weir had shed his mortal coil and joined the infinite beyond. Tributes poured in far and wide from across the cultural spectrum.
Tight end George Kittle of Weir’s beloved San Francisco 49ers bore the message “Dead Forever” on his cleat as the team defeated the Philadelphia Eagles in Sunday’s playoff game.
Bassist Oteil Burbridge, who played in Grateful Dead offshoot Dead and Company alongside Weir for a decade, shared his remembrance of Weir on social media: “I can’t think of anyone that needed to play live music any more than Bob. It went past devotion, past dedication, past obsession. It seemed to me more like self-identification. I think he felt it is what and who he was. I also cannot think of anyone who played more live shows. We could depend on it like the sun coming up.”
Burbridge continued, “a friend of mine noted that it was sad that Bob died at just 78 years old. I told him I thought Bob packed at least 146 years into it.”
Phish bassist Mike Gordon chimed in with his own Weir memory from playing the Washington, D.C., inaugural ball for then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi in 2007: “They had a 7-foot-long cake that was a replica of the Capitol building. I dared Bobby to take a bite out of the Capitol dome without his hands and with zero hesitation, he bent over and ate the dome off. I wish I were half that fearless.”
Weir wrote, sang, and spoke often of dreams — of communing with lost friends like Jerry Garcia in them, of how they shaped his waking life, and in songs like “Two Djinn” written by Grateful Dead scribe Robert Hunter on the sole studio album by Weir’s band RatDog, where the narrator grapples with the line “dreams are lies, it's the dreaming that's real.”
He managed to live some of those dreams. Weir described the Grateful Dead’s performances at the Giza pyramid complex in Egypt back in 1978 in the 2014 documentary “The Other One: The Long Strange Trip of Bob Weir.”
“When the pyramid was lined up with the Sphinx, I would hear echoes in the sound that seemed to go far beyond this place in time," said Weir. "At dusk, the mosquitoes come out, and I looked at my arm, and it was covered with mosquitoes, and I think, OK, welcome to hell. And then something flies by my face. It was a bat. I look across the stage, and the stage has swarmed with bats, and they're taking out the mosquitoes. They're saving our asses. There's a rock 'n' roll band upon a thousands-of-year-old stage at the foot of the Great Pyramid surrounded by a cloud of bats- And I think to myself, take me now, Lord. I want to remember it just like this.”
Speaking with WAMC in a previously unaired interview from 2021, longtime Grateful Dead publicist and author of the band’s definitive biography “A Long Strange Trip” Dennis McNally reflected on Weir’s reputation for cryptic quips and esoteric interests.
“I don't know if I think of him as ineffable and mysterious," he said. "I do think of him as a guy with a sense of humor that's so dry you don't always see it coming. He's one of my favorite people, but he has a big dose of don't give a bleep in his personality.”
McNally worked closely with Weir over the decades, from the Grateful Dead into his solo career with RatDog and other endeavors following the band’s dissolution in 1995 after the death of Jerry Garica.
“There's that line and grateful that song about 'find your own way home,' the song 'Liberty.' And that's Weir. He has an independent streak that is beyond almost anybody else's. And there's part of me that loves it, and then there's also part of it that makes it sometimes difficult to understand.”
Weir also worked to weave subsequent generations of musicians into the fabric of the Dead’s ethos and legacy.
“He was a warrior," said Vinnie Amico. "He was fearless with music, and he would talk to you about that, just to be fearless and not to be worrying or thinking about it.”
Amico is the drummer of beloved upstate New York jam band veterans moe. The band linked up with Weir in the late 90s, kicking off many years of friendship and musical collaboration. Amico says the legend brought no airs with him when he got to know the boys in moe.
“A year earlier, he was an idol, and then to be a peer and then a mentor is mind boggling- But that's the kind of guy he was," he told WAMC. "It didn't matter that we were some band that came out of the bars or whatever. We joined them on tour, and then he mentored us. It was wild.”
For Amico, a longtime Deadhead, it was a dream come true.
“[Weir] never played the same, ever, whether it was with us or in any of his bands," he said. "His approach was, everything's going to be different every time. And I don't even know if it was conscious with him, I think that's just what it was. He just was constantly searching for something new, something different, something that sounded interesting.”
Weir’s passing has resonance far and wide, but especially in the Northeast, where for decades audiences in the densely populated corner of the United States could reliably count on Bobby showing up many times a year.
Berkshire County singer-songwriter Wes Buckley — a music educator by day with Community Access to the Arts for performers with disabilities — fronts the band Vaguely Pagan. As both a fan of Weir and a guitar slinger himself, Buckley says he absorbed a lot from Bobby over the years.
“A few years ago, I stumbled in my quest upon an entire concert of isolated guitar of just Bob Weir, so you could just sit and listen to two and a half hours of him playing guitar with no one else in the band for the whole show," Buckley told WAMC. "I was really moved by how much it felt like calligraphy or some kind of dance, or something going on that just had so many unexpected twists and turns, so much grace to it. And at once you can say after listening to that, boy, what a rhythm guitar genius Bob Weir is- But, at the same time, I think I eventually stumbled on the idea of boy, what a rhythm guitar genius the Grateful Dead is.”
Unity is exactly what Weir and the Grateful Dead personified. Disparate personalities from varied backgrounds hurling themselves wholly into a shared endeavor, translating ancient musical ideas into something new and unexpected and thrilling. It’s a concept that’s proved built to last, with the band’s songbook and communal approach to improvisation becoming a cherished practice onto itself.
As a Deadhead born in 1990, my trip with the Grateful Dead began as a kid listening to a Jerry Garcia and David Grisman tape in the back seat of a Volvo. Years later, after I rediscovered the band’s magic in my 20s, it was Bobby Weir with Dead and Company that truly swept me up into the adventure of the Dead. There truly is nothing like experiencing Dead music and culture in person, rambling with the band and its entourage of fanatics through parking lot after parking lot. With my best friends, family members, and hordes of fellow heads, I followed Weir and his pals from coast to coast; from the sci-fi futurism of Sphere in Las Vegas to ballparks in San Francisco and Boston to rain-soaked lawns up and down the East Coast and from the site of Woodstock in Bethel to the imperial majesty of Madison Square Garden in the heart of Manhattan. I saw Bob take his Wolf Bros project to the Kennedy Center to play with the National Symphony Orchestra, stumbling out of the iconic venue in a daze to hear nitrous balloons being hawked in front of the Watergate. I saw him make mistakes, laugh them off, then promptly blow our minds with some completely unexpected stroke of genius moments later. It’s hard to believe my career seeing Bobby in the flesh is over, but as he well expressed, he’s now freer than he ever has been before having received the great reward of death. I can’t wait to see him in my dreams.
I’m not the only person in the WAMC newsroom thinking about Bobby now that he’s gone on to the next big adventure.
“I saw Bobby Weir for the first time right when Shakedown Street was released. It was the fall of 1978. Two station wagons filled with LeMoyne students headed out from Syracuse to the Rochester War Memorial in cars with acoustic guitars and a lot of smoke in the air," said WAMC commentary editor and longtime Deadhead Cailin Brown. “It was an experience not to forget, because it was like a throbbing heart, and that's how I have always thought of it since. The whole, thousands of people became like one unit, that one love feeling.”
She fondly remembers covering the raucous Dead shows at SPAC for the Troy Record in the 80s, an era where Weir’s always unique sartorial style was in rare form.
“I do remember him running around in cutoff blue jean shorts with the strings hanging off them, and really moving around that stage,” she laughed.
Brown mostly remembers Weir’s relationship with the audience, from his iconic requests for the Dead’s often overflow crowds to take a step back to give a little space to their fellow concertgoers to shepherding the fanbase through its greatest challenge: Jerry Garcia’s death in 1995.
“When Jerry died, Bobby raised his hands up to the sky, and asked people, when he was giving a little memorial, to reflect back all that good energy that Jerry had shined on everyone," she said. "And I think Bobby shined a lot of good energy on people, and I think that energy continues to resonate. We saw it in our own newsroom at WAMC, I mean, there are people of many decades who have an interest in the Grateful Dead music. So, I think it'll live on. I'm hoping that my little brother, who was a big fan, my brother Bergan, will welcome Bobby into the golden doors with open arms. I think that music will live on. I truly do.”
The great Ray Graf of Vox Pop fame is both a devout Deadhead with many a show under his belt and a rocker in his own right. He shared his thoughts on both Weir’s contributions and his passing.
“Now, anybody who's been in a rock band and played guitar knows the lead guitar player is where the action is, but in truth, the rhythm guitar player is what makes things go- And this guy had an uncanny ability to mesh with the drums and the bass and make that rhythm section fire, and he did some really cool stuff on rhythm guitar," Graf said. "We were playing the Dead over the weekend at the house, and then to find out he's gone is kind of a blow. What a great life, though. And the great thing about a musician who has made so many recordings, to have those recordings is to have immortality. He has given us something that we will never lose. And so, I say it was a good life, a great life, a life that has brought much to millions and millions of people. I say, thanks, Bob.”
Weir got one of the greatest compliments of his life back in 2023 when one of his tunes got the cover treatment from no less than Bob Dylan, the reigning master of American song and one of Bobby’s heroes. With the same love and reverence Weir brought to playing his songs over the decades, Dylan busted out the melancholy, gorgeous ballad “Only A River” from Bobby’s 2016 solo album “Blue Mountain” while on tour in Japan. You just know Bobby was pleased as punch to hear it.
Thanks for everything Bobby. We always had more fun than a frog in a glass of milk when you played the blues.
