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

Bob Weir, rhythm guitarist and co-founder of the Grateful Dead, has died, his family announced Saturday on Instagram. He was 78.

“It is with profound sadness that we share the passing of Bobby Weir,” the statement said. “He transitioned peacefully, surrounded by loved ones, after courageously beating cancer as only Bobby could. Unfortunately, he succumbed to underlying lung issues.”

Weir’s life took a fateful turn in 1963 when, on New Year’s Eve, the 16-year-old heard banjo music drifting out of a store in Palo Alto, California. Walking inside, he encountered Jerry Garcia and soon became his guitar student; for the next 30 years, the two would be the core of what was soon to become the good ol’ Grateful Dead.

Though Garcia died in 1995, Weir pushed on through several versions of the band, most recently with Dead & Co., the highly successful touring act that recruited John Mayer to step into the Garcia role. Weir’s death leaves only two founding members – the drumming tandem of Mickey Hart (also a Dead & Co. member) and Billy Kreutzmann. Bassist Phil Lesh died in October of 2024.

Weir’s unorthodox guitar playing was the perfect complement to Garcia’s, providing a subfloor to his counterpart’s distinctive sonic explorations; though Weir was affectionately known as “the other one,” he went by another nickname – “Ace” – for his wizard-level mastery of chord structures that were a launchpad for Garcia’s fat, noodly overtones.

Onstage together for decades, the “Bobby & Jerry Show” was truly a pair of co-leads, trading off vocal and songwriting duties. Weir’s glittering “Playin’ in the Band,” composed with longtime writing partner John Perry Barlow, was the Grateful Dead’s most-played live song; he also contributed set staples like “Sugar Magnolia,” “Me & My Uncle,” “Estimated Prophet,” “Jack Straw” and “The Other One.”

“For over sixty years, Bobby took to the road,” his family wrote. “A guitarist, vocalist, storyteller, and founding member of the Grateful Dead. Bobby will forever be a guiding force whose unique artistry reshaped American music. 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. Every chord he played, every word he sang was an integral part of the stories he wove. There was an invitation: to feel, to question, to wander, and to belong.”

Weir was indeed a storyteller – he brought several “cowboy song” sagas to the Dead’s repertoire, performing tunes like Marty Robbins’ “El Paso,” Merl Haggard’s “Mama Tried” and Johnny Cash’s “Big River” while writing quite a few of his own with Barlow. His influence steered the band to the dusty, violent and morally gray tales of American myth, but preserving its dark, psychedelic roots all the while.

While Garcia struggled for decades with addiction and health issues, Weir was the “healthy one” – an avid runner and vegetarian, he appeared onstage for years in those too-short shorts and day-glo polos or muscle T’s, the lone handsome-faced playboy rock star in a band of ruffians and misfits.

Weir was quietly diagnosed with cancer in July, starting treatment just weeks before what was to be his final performance with Dead & Co., a three-night celebration of 60 years of music at Golden Gate Park in his hometown San Francisco.

“Those performances, emotional, soulful, and full of light, were not farewells, but gifts,” the family wrote. “Another act of resilience. An artist choosing, even then, to keep going by his own design. As we remember Bobby, it’s hard not to feel the echo of the way he lived. A man driftin’ and dreamin’, never worrying if the road would lead him home. A child of countless trees. A child of boundless seas.”

Weir became an older-brother figure to Mayer – much as Garcia was to Weir – and the band’s new fronting duo generated an onstage telepathy not unlike their original counterparts. As the popularity of Dead & Co. grew to reach a whole new set of generations, Weir grew out his fluffy white hair and full beard, no longer the heartthrob gunslinger “Ace,” but the elder shaman that Garcia embodied before him.

“There is no final curtain here, not really,” the family statement added. “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. And so we send him off the way he sent so many of us on our way: with a farewell that isn’t an ending, but a blessing. A reward for a life worth livin’.” 

Weir is survived by his wife since 1999 Natascha Münter, and their daughters Shala Monet Weir and Chloe Kaelia Weir.

“May we honor him not only in sorrow, but in how bravely we continue with open hearts, steady steps, and the music leading us home,” they concluded. “Hang it up and see what tomorrow brings.”

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