Grateful Dead Bassist was 84 years old

Bass Phil Leshwhose dense, inventive play fueled The grateful dead and after the guitarist’s death in 1995 Jerry Garciamany reincarnations of the San Francisco band died on Friday. He was 84 years old.

The message was published on his website official page on Instagram with the news “Phil Lesh, bassist and founding member of The Grateful Dead, passed away peacefully this morning. He was surrounded by family and full of love. Phil brought immense joy to those around him and left behind a legacy of music and love. We ask that you respect the Lesh family’s privacy at this time.”

Lesh was a classically trained trumpeter who had studied with avant-garde composer Luciano Berio and was playing with minimalist pioneer Steve Reich when he was hired to play bass – an instrument he had never learned – at a 1965 concert at a Menlo Park, California pizzeria by the Warlocks , a group headed by his friend Jerry Garcia.

“I was so excited I didn’t have to think about it… but I knew something big was happening, something bigger than everyone, certainly bigger than me,” Lesh told The Dead publicist and official historian Dennis McNally in a 2002 book “A long strange journey.”

It’s hard to imagine the Dead’s often expansive, improvisational output without the sophisticated contributions of Lesh, who – like his Bay Area colleague Jack Casady of Jefferson Airplane and his English contemporary Jack Bruce of Cream – essentially reinvented the role of the bassist in the rock band format, in a band that started life playing covers of bluegrass, blues and country tunes.

“What makes the Dead’s sound so different from other types of rock and roll may be Lesh’s bass,” Nick Paumgarten noted in a 2012 New Yorker article about the band’s devoted “Deadhead” fans.

The writer added: “He did not like repetition, which is rare for an instrument whose function is usually to keep time. He played around the root note and rhythm, often skewing the pocket, skipping it, holding off on changes, bubbling around it, or playing melodic counterpoint. Growing up, he listened to more (classical composers) Elliot Carter and Charles Ives than Lead Belly or Hank Williams.

Overall, Lesh left his deepest mark on the Dead’s early albums for Warner Bros. Records, to which he was usually credited for music alongside Garcia. After parting ways with producer Dave Hassinger, he helped mix the band’s 1968 second album, “Anthem of the Sun,” which used the chopped-up editing technique typical of avant-garde music of the period.

As a writer, he co-authored a number of compositions – “St. Stephen,” “The Eleven” and the epic “Dark Star” – which became long-running, jam-oriented staples of the Dead’s live repertoire, beloved by legions of bootlegging fans. From 1968-70 he was assisted in the band by keyboardist Tom Constanten, his like-minded former roommate at Oakland’s Mills College.

His influence became less visible after the Dead took a more roots-oriented turn with the million-selling “Workingman’s Dead” in 1970, after which Garcia wrote most of the band’s songs in collaboration with lyricist Robert Hunter. However, along with Garcia, guitarist Bob Weir and drummer Bill Kreutzmann, he remained a constant and irreplaceable element of the band’s lineup throughout their 30 years on stage.

Lesh played a key role in the Grateful Dead’s long afterlife, touring with other former members from The Other Ones (1998-99), The Dead (2003-04, 2008-09) and Furthur (2009-13). After the group’s formal funeral in 2015 with “Fare Thee Well” concerts in Northern California and Chicago, Lesh left the latest incarnation of Dead & Company, in which he was replaced by Allman Brother Band bassist Otell Burbridge.

In later years, he played in Phil Lesh and Friends and the Terrapin Family Band, which continued the offerings of Terrapin Crossroads, his family music hall and restaurant in San Rafael, California, which opened in 2012. The inspiration for this informal endeavor came from the informal “Midnight Rambles” organized by the band’s drummer Levon Helm in his barn in Woodstock, New York.

Lesh told the New Yorker: “I want to bring in musicians who may not have had much exposure to the Grateful Dead and work with them and engage them. It’s not necessarily about teaching, but about getting them to see music this way. So that they can then play this music not in the same way, but with the same spirit, with the same perspective and goals as us.”

In 1994, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Grateful Dead.

Lesh was born on March 15, 1940 in Berkeley, California. His mother encouraged him to listen to classical music, and he was initially a violin student. He started playing trumpet at Berkeley High. He became interested in avant-garde music and jazz, and later noticed the influence on his playing with the Dead of jazz bassists Scott La Faro of Bill Evans’ trio and Charlie Haden of Ornette Coleman’s quintet.

After high school, he moved from school to school, studying music at San Francisco State University, the College of San Mateo, the University of California at Berkeley (where he met Constanten), and Mills College, where he studied with Berio and met Reich.

Lesh met Garcia while working as a volunteer engineer at Bay Area public radio station KPFA. He was driving a mail truck for a living when he stopped by Magoo’s Pizza Parlor to catch the second concert of the group that grew out of the guitarist’s previous venture, Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions. Lesh accepted Garcia’s invitation to play bass, and a few months later the Warlocks were rechristened the Grateful Dead.

Amid the psychedelic ferment of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury era, the Dead became the city’s biggest rock ballroom attraction, moving audiences with their long, improvisational playing. In 1967, the band signed a contract with Warner Bros. During this time, Lesh demonstrated complete mastery of his adopted instrument and also contributed high harmonies to the band’s vocal mix.

Between 1967 and 1990, Lesh appeared on all 13 of The Dead’s studio releases and 10 official live albums. From the beginning, the Dead actively encouraged their fans to record their live performances, and tapes passed from hand to hand; Lesh quickly became one of the most documented bassists in music history, with approximately 2,000 Dead performances captured for posterity.

On August 9, 1995, Garcia, who had struggled with health problems and drug addiction for years, suffered a fatal heart attack at Serenity Knolls Treatment Center in Forest Knolls, California. Lesh wrote in “Searching For the Sound,” his 2005 article. autobiography: “I was numb; I lost my oldest living friend, my brother.”

Recognizing the Deadheads’ insatiable appetite for their music, Deadheads members met regularly for over two decades in various configurations, almost all of which included Lesh. At the end of 2018, the bassist and Bob Weir went on a six-concert tour around the United States.

For his part, Lesh – who was unflatteringly profiled by San Francisco journalist Joel Selvin in his 2018 book about the Dead’s later years, “Fare Thee Well” – has sought to create a musical identity for himself outside the reunion circuit, and has appeared annually as a headliner at each Halloween at his “Phil-O-Ween” concerts at New York’s Dead-Friends club, Capitol Theater.

He remained very active despite ongoing health problems that included a liver transplant in 1998, successful prostate cancer surgery in 2006, bladder cancer surgery in 2015, and spine surgery in 2019.

Lesh is survived by his wife Jill and sons Grahame and Brian, who performed with the Terrapin Family Band.