Dead Bob Weir, the 'other half' of the Grateful Dead
At the age of 78, 'The Kid' is gone due to lung cancer. He and Jerry Garcia were the dioscuri of the San Francisco psychedelic scene
And so we have also lost 'The Other One', the other half of the Grateful Dead, San Francisco's iconic Bay Area band: Bob Weir, rhythm guitarist and vocalist of what was, without question, the best psychedelic rock band ever, has died at the age of 78 from 'lung problems', after being diagnosed with cancer last summer.
A few weeks after starting treatment, Weir was back on stage in his hometown at Golden Gate Park to perform in a three-night celebration of his 60-year musical career. Those concerts represented his last live performances.
Bob Weir and Jerry Garcia, co-founder and lead guitarist of the Grateful Dead, were somewhat the dioscuri of the 1960s psychedelic revolution, certainly the band members best loved by the 'Deadheads', that people of fans willing to follow them anywhere and everywhere live, from one end of America to the other. Because the Dead were above all a live band, because together they released seminal studio records, but it was on stage that they transformed them each time into a unique and, for that very reason, unrepeatable collective trip. Weir and Garcia were in fact the two frontmen, the two main voices and the two souls of the Dead.
Old Bob, according to some critics the 'best rhythm guitarist in the history of rock' for the characteristic riffs he was able to invent, with his unmistakable hair tied back in a ponytail was the 'handsome one' of the band, the one who sang Truckin', the Deadheads' anthem, but also the author of Sugar Magnolia and Playing in the Band. And excuse me for saying so. And to say that at the beginning of the Dead's adventure he was just a kid. Or rather: 'The Kid', as Garcia himself nicknamed him, being the youngest member of the band.
Born Robert Hall Parber, he was adopted by a couple from Atherton, California. He did not excel in school, partly due to undiagnosed dyslexia. In 1964, while still in high school, he met Jerry and together they formed the Warlocks, the first nucleus of the Grateful Dead. Not a bad bunch: Phil Lesh on bass, Ron 'Pigpen' McKernan on bass and Bill Kreutzmann on drums. Lesh recalled in his 2005 autobiography that he and Garcia had to make a kind of solemn promise to young Bob's adoptive mother. "Basically, if Jerry and I promised to make sure Bob went to school every day and came home safely after gigs, she would allow him to stay in the band," the bassist recalled. "Somehow we convinced her that we would make sure he went to school every day. And indeed we did: at 8 a.m.".
