Bob Weir was the eternal kid, ponytailed with a goofy smile, who metamorphosed into the grizzled sage. In between, he gave us a lifetime of mindful music with his band of merry pranksters in The Grateful Dead.
As much as the Dead would not have been who they were without Jerry Garcia’s leadership and guitar conductorship, they would also not have been the same without Weir’s equally important but understated contributions. He was the rhythm and the accents to Garcia’s flourishes, or as Garcia called him, a singular guitarist in a sea of conformity.
Perhaps nobody epitomized the hippie adventure spirit more than Weir; he encompassed so much more. He was also the ‘preppy’ with Izod shirts, a fitness fanatic, a scatter-brained little brother to Garcia, and the ‘rock star’ of the group. Garcia’s laid-back persona contrasted with Weir’s-in-your face vocal performances and stage shenanigans (outlandish for the Dead at least).
Near the end of shows, after a Garcia ballad would remind the audience of mortality and the hardships of life, Weir would remind them of the joy and the need for release and celebration with a rousing “Not Fade Away,” “One More Saturday Night,” or “Sugar Magnolia.”
More than 35 years after Garcia’s death in 1995, Weir was responsible for keeping the Dead spirit alive through various incarnations, including the long-lasting Dead and Company.
'More fun than a frog in a glass of milk'
He brought more happiness to the world than anyone has a right to. And by his own reckoning, he spent more time on stage than anyone in musical history. And in his own slightly ‘more or less in line’ Grateful Dead way of looking at the world and verbalizing it, it amounted to “more fun than a frog in a glass of milk.”
The result is a life and a body of music and influence that, despite its flaws, was, in another Weirism he frequently used to describe the band’s sound system, “just exactly perfect.”