Singer-songwriter-guitarist Bob Weir, a cornerstone of the Grateful Dead and the San Francisco psychedelic band’s many latter-day offshoots for more than half a century, has died after a long battle with cancer and lung issues, according to a social media post from his family. He was 78.
The post said that Weir had been diagnosed last summer and began treatment three weeks before Dead & Company, a spinoff group of the Grateful Dead, played a weekend of shows at Golden Gate Park. Many fans believed those livestreamed concerts might be the band’s unbilled farewell engagement, but few could have guessed the conditions under which Weir powered through what turned out to be his final gigs.
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Weir was just 16 years old when he befriended Jerry Garcia, then a music teacher at a Palo Alto, CA, instrument store, on New Year’s Eve of 1963. The two guitarists formed an old-time music unit, Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions, and went electric with the rock band the Warlocks, before finally taking the name the Grateful Dead in 1965.
