Editorial: Mill Valley’s Weir leaves worldwide legacy

For a small county, Marin has a large share of rock ’n’ roll legends who have called it home.

Grateful Dead founder and guitarist Bob Weir was among them.

Mr. Weir, a Mill Valley resident, brought home honors such as being a Kennedy Center honoree, a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and recipient of a Grammy for lifetime achievement.

His passing on Jan. 10 at age 78 comes after building a monumental legacy of artistry and what Rolling Stone magazine calls “a 60-year musical empire.”

Mr. Weir was a musician and a muse, who together with his bandmates created an almost tribal group of tie-dyed followers that for decades has stretched the boundaries of age, incomes, societal structures and sometimes political leanings, uniting people in their love for the Grateful Dead’s music.

It was a remarkable fusion of musical genres and fans.

The Grateful Dead was born in the hippie peace-and-love movement and the band kept it alive.

Mr. Weir was a flamekeeper and kept the Dead’s music living. Songlists usually changed from night to night. So did the way the band delivered them.

He was the boyish San Francisco-born guitar player who in 1965 joined forces with Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann and Ron “Pigpen” McKernan. Mickey Hart became a core member of the band in 1967 as the band’s second drummer and percussionist.

Today, only Kreutzmann and Hart remain from that legendary lineup.

Mr. Weir was its youngest member.

What a ride.

To borrow from the lyrics of the Grateful Dead’s hit song “Truckin:” “What a long, strange trip it’s been.”

For six decades, Mr. Weir played and added to the Grateful Dead’s thick songbook that was multi-dimensional with rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, gospel and jazz with large helpings of freewheeling improvisation added.

Their live performances were memorable and legendary among Deadheads, the nickname for their followers.

Mr. Weir helped keep the music alive after breakups and deaths.

Getting older turned his clean-shaven boyhood looks to a fuzzier gray-bearded appearance, but his music never grew old or stale. It may have defied the desires of radio station programmers.

For much of the band’s songbook, rhythm was far more important than catchy poetic rhymes.

But for decades, the band drew loyal fans. They packed indoor and outdoor venues, arenas and even small clubs like Mill Valley’s Sweetwater, of which Weir was a co-owner and frequented its stage. Counterculture festival-like happenings often accompanied their concerts.

One of Mr. Weir’s final concerts was last summer in Golden Gate Park, bringing fans back to the band’s local roots.

It was a final performance in a career in which he had taken the stage for thousands of shows – around the world.

Mr. Weir was one of the band’s frontmen and the music never got old.

In 2015, as surviving band members embarked on its “Fare Thee Well” tour, President Barack Obama toasted them, calling them “an iconic American band that embodies the creativity, passion and ability to bring people together that makes American music so great.”

Those concerts drew sellout crowds, filling Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara with 151,650 fans and Chicago’s Soldier Field with more than 200,000.

Mr. Weir continued to perform. For an incredible 60 years, he and his Grateful Dead bandmates brought to fans the music and its energy and spirit.

He leaves an incredibly impressive legacy of music. In a 2005 interview with Rolling Stone, he said he looked forward to dying.

“I tend to think of death as a reward for a life well-lived,” he said.

Bob Weir’s life was well-lived and the music he and his Grateful Dead bandmates’ brought forth is part of America’s musical landscape.