Bob Weir, the U.S. guitarist and songwriter who co-founded the Grateful Dead and helped redefine American rock through six decades on the road, has died at 78, his family announced.
Weir was diagnosed with cancer in July and had beaten the disease but “succumbed to underlying lung issues,” his family said in a statement posted on his personal website. The statement did not specify where or when he died.
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“For over sixty years, Bobby took to the road,” the family said. “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.”
As rhythm guitarist, vocalist and a prolific songwriter, Weir was central to the Grateful Dead’s freewheeling, improvisational ethos that launched a singular live-music culture. Known for never performing the same show twice, the band invited audiences into the creative process, turning concerts into communal rites that stretched late into the night and often far beyond genre boundaries.
The Dead’s hardcore followers, known as “Deadheads,” helped pioneer a fan-driven economy of live recordings and tape trading. The group famously allowed audiences to record shows, spawning a bootleg network that strengthened the Dead’s bond with its community and influenced how bands engage with fans to this day.
The Grateful Dead disbanded in 1995, a few months after the death of lead guitarist Jerry Garcia. In recent years, Weir returned to big stages with Dead & Company, the offshoot that carried the songbook into new arenas and a new generation of listeners.
Weir was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1994 as a member of the Grateful Dead and received Kennedy Center Honors with the group in 2024, in the final year of President Joe Biden’s term, the family said.
In closing their statement, the family framed Weir’s life in the language of his songs, quoting lines from “Cassidy” and “Lost Sailor,” works he co-wrote with the late John Perry Barlow: “A man driftin’ and dreamin’, never worrying if the road would lead him home. A child of countless trees. A child of boundless seas.”
Courtesy: AFP
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
