RIP Bobby Weir 💔

[John A]

I'm sure many here have read about this; in the late 60s (most likely late summer '68) The Dead actually tried to fire Bobby and Pigpen because Phil and Jerry were frustrated they couldn’t keep pace musically with the band's evolution. The story is as much legendary heresy as fact, but there's definitely more than a little something to it. One angle is it was Phil's idea, and he convinced Jerry to go along with it. Jerry being notoriously averse to confrontation, he had band management do it. The best the event can be pieced together is that it simply didn't take.  Bobby and Pigpen kept showing up, and no one stopped them. So quintessentially Grateful Dead! This situation would repeat itself a decade later with Keith and Donna, this time in a very different fashion.

 

Anyway, it's easy to understand that as of 1968 Bobby's playing was indeed stunted in relation to how Phil and Jerry were evolving musically at warp speed. He was both younger and had far less musical training. He knew how to play coffee house acoustic music, but he was way out of his league on electric guitar as the psychedelic era was ushered in. Given all that backdrop, this later Garcia take on Bobby’s playing is all the more awesome...

 

Quote

Years later, Garcia would be surprised by all the discoveries Weir made in his guitar-playing. “That’s his unique value – he’s an extraordinarily original player in a world full of people who sound like each other. He’s got a style that’s totally unique as far as I know. I don’t know anybody else who plays the guitar the way he does… I have a hard time recognizing any influences in his playing…even though I’ve been along for almost all of his musical development. I’ve been playing with him since he was 16.”

 

[John A]

Warfield show announced (and sold out immediately) after Bobby's SF memorial tomorrow, and billed "Graham Lesh & Friends".  All A-list musician who are in town anyway (Mayer, Trey, Dead drummers, who know who else?) are bound to want to participate. Seems there's huge potential and an emotional and epic evening at The Warfield.

[stlblues]

20 piece band at the Delmar Hall in St. Louis last night for Bobby. Musician in the Voodoo Players as Bobby wearing cut-off shorts and a preppy polo shirt with the collar flipped up. Lots of Bobby references last night to start the show. I got all choked up during the first two songs Sugar Mag and Hell in a Bucket and again at the start of Playin' in the Band. My first time hearing horns during Woman Smarter and Mexicali Blues. The Funky Butt Brass Band killed it on those two songs! My first time seeing a 4-drummer drum solo at a GD related show as well. Monkey and the Engineer was played in honor of the four monkeys on the loose in St. Louis this week. Many thanks to Sean Canan and the Voodoo Players for honoring Bobby Weir.

[John A]

I just read John Mayer‘s eulogy to Bobby from this afternoon. Very nice. I like how he was careful around mentioning Jerry. He did so just once, and used it to spin a great analogy, connecting a Jerry / Bobby sentiment with a newfound Bobby / John sentiment. He also did great on a solo acoustic Ripple, complete with thick sunglasses and a Bolero tie! 

 

[Greg from Chestertown]

So many thoughts and they are all beautiful. 
so many memories and they are all wonderful. 

[Tea]

8 hours ago, John A said:

I just read John Mayer‘s eulogy to Bobby from this afternoon. Very nice. I like how he was careful around mentioning Jerry. He did so just once, and used it to spin a great analogy, connecting a Jerry / Bobby sentiment with a newfound Bobby / John sentiment. He also did great on a solo acoustic Ripple, complete with thick sunglasses and a Bolero tie! 

 

here’s the text of it:

"Good afternoon. Bobby and I were born on the same day, exactly 30 years apart. Libras. While the astrology checks out, three decades is a pretty wide chasm between any two people, whether they share a birthday or not. In the 30 years that preceded me, Bob had become a countercultural icon. I was a child of the 1980s. I come from a world of structural thinking, the concept, the theorizing, the reassessing, the perfecting. Bob learned early on that spirit, heart, soul, curiosity, and fearlessness was the path to glory. We both found success with each of our templates, and then we found each other.

 

"The echoes of the music Bobby and the Grateful Dead made would lead me to him, through whatever strange and nervy knack I have for sidling up next to the things I'm in awe of. What would follow would become the adventure of a lifetime for me. It's hard to find the words to describe the relationship Bob and I had: we never really went looking for them. We didn't need to. We stood side by side together in the music. That's where those 30 years would melt away and that Libra balance would kick in. We'd become comrades, sometimes brothers, even if only by one shared parent. We were unlikely partners, and that was part of our magic.

 

"Over the course of a decade, we came to trust each other. He taught me, among many other things, to trust in the moment, and I'd like to think I taught him a little bit to rely on a plan, not as a substitute for the divine moments, but as a way to lure them in a little closer. I guess maybe what I was really doing was showing him he could rely on me. Bob took a chance on me. He staked his entire reputation on my joining a band with him. He gave me musical community, he gave me this community. I got to know his incredible family, Natasha, Monet, and Chloe, whom I now consider my dear friends for life. He lent me his songbook, invited me into the worlds he'd constructed, and taught me what the songs meant and what it meant to perform them. In return, I gave him everything I had night after night, year after year.

 

"The honor of getting the opportunity to express my heart and soul and take flight over those magical compositions has never been lost on me. It's also never been lost on me that there is very little difference between myself and anyone else who loves this music. In so many ways, our experiences have been the same. So I'd like to say a few words to Dead Heads everywhere: the excitement you felt when you were boarding a plane or packing up the car to travel miles to see the shows was the same excitement I felt about flying to the next city, working out the setlist in a group chat, meeting up with the band on stage for sound check, and getting ready for that magical moment when we take the stage and discover whatever was in store for us that night.

 

"When tours would end, you would come home, dump out on your couch, and sleep for two days straight. I would do the same. I could feel the connection we shared together, all of us tired and weary, our hearts so full of music and memories, waiting on the next bit of chatter that it could all happen again. When we played multiple nights in the same city, the afternoons in between felt as if we were suspended in a dream, waiting to become reanimated as soon as the first note of the next show would play. You might have gone to work and your colleagues wouldn't understand why you were only half there; it's because the other half of you was still at the venue, ready to become whole again by the music. I felt the same. The hours before the next show existed only to bring the next show closer to us all.

 

"To the countless musicians who have shared a stage with Bobby, I share in this sadness with you. To have played behind him is to know how the songs go. We will forever share stories of what we learned from studying under a master, and we will go on to teach others how he saw this music, how to leave room to hang a note, how to embody the main character of each song, giving the music everything those characters require for their stories to come to life. After all we'd shared together, something new has arisen: a sadness so hard to put into words and nowhere near being fully realized. We've only begun to make sense of what's gone missing, and in the end, Bobby was right again. Because all we can do is hold on to this moment, and I don't have the faintest idea of a plan.

 

"I know right now it's easy to feel as if time is speeding up and taking so much from us all, but I would remind you, as I have tried to remind myself this past week, of just how many nights we all lived so fully in each second, hanging on to every word of Bobby's, following the music around twists and turns through forests and over majestic vistas, taking in the magnificent interviews and wondering how we all got so lucky to have been found by this music and invited into this dream together. Bob had mentioned that Jerry had never really left him, that he still felt him up on his shoulder, and now Bob will be forever perched over my shoulder. I expect to see him in my dreams for many nights to come, when we'll take that stage together with the rest of the band and weave notes around one another, and I will wake up with a smile, remembering the beauty of it all.

 

"There are a lot of Grateful Dead lyrics that give comfort at a time like this, but the line I find myself thinking about the most is from a Leon Russell song called 'A Song for You.' I'd like to think I can hear Bobby saying these words to us all this afternoon: 'But now I'm so much better, so if my words don't come together, listen to the melody because my love is in there hiding.' And so we will all keep listening together. 300 years, Bobby, now that's a plan I can get behind."

 

"Thank you, Maestro. You changed my life. I will love you forever. Thank you."

Photo by Miikka Skaffari / Getty Images