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Bob Weir, the singer, songwriter and guitarist who co-founded the Grateful Dead and helped define the sound of the San Francisco rock scene, died Saturday, Jan. 10, after a prolonged battle with cancer and underlying health issues, his family said. He was 78.
The announcement was shared on social media, revealing that Weir was diagnosed last summer and began treatment just weeks before Dead & Company performed a highly anticipated weekend of concerts at Golden Gate Park, celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Grateful Dead.
Those shows, believed by many fans to be possible farewells, became his final appearances, according to his family.
“It is with profound sadness that we share the passing of Bobby Weir,” the statement began. “He transitioned peacefully, surrounded by loved ones, after courageously beating cancer as only Bobby could. Unfortunately, he succumbed to underlying lung issues.”
A founding member of the Grateful Dead, Weir was a central creative force in the band for more than half a century, providing rhythm guitar, vocals and songwriting that helped shape the group’s improvisational style and enduring appeal. Though often overshadowed by the mythic stature of lead guitarist Jerry Garcia, Weir’s influence proved just as durable — and, in many ways, singular.
Weir’s rhythm guitar work rejected convention. Rather than anchoring songs with simple chord patterns, he favored color, texture and counterpoint, weaving high-register accents that danced against Garcia’s solos and Phil Lesh’s bass lines. As the band moved beyond its early feedback-heavy experiments, Weir elevated the use of controlled feedback itself, deploying it more like an organist sustaining legato notes.
“They’re going to see how we get the job done. They’re going to see us state a theme and take it for a walk in the woods,” Weir told The San Francisco Chronicle in 2010. “If I were playing a note-for-note set every night for all these years, I think I would have put a gun to my head. If we’re not having fun, we’re not doing our job.”
“Bobby’s final months reflected the same spirit that defined his life,” the family statement added. “Diagnosed in July, he began treatment only weeks before returning to his hometown stage for a three-night celebration of 60 years of music at Golden Gate Park. Those performances, emotional, soulful, and full of light, were not farewells, but gifts. Another act of resilience. An artist choosing, even then, to keep going by his own design. As we remember Bobby, it’s hard not to feel the echo of the way he lived. A man driftin’ and dreamin’, never worrying if the road would lead him home. A child of countless trees. A child of boundless seas.”
Bob Weir was born Robert Hall Parber in San Francisco on Oct. 17, 1947. His birth parents, both college students, gave him up for adoption, and he was raised by Frederic and Eleanor Weir in a comfortable, socially prominent Bay Area household supported by his adoptive father’s work in engineering.
Initially more interested in athletics, Weir gravitated toward music after a family nanny introduced him to jazz. Early forays into piano and trumpet were short-lived, but at 13, he found his instrument in the acoustic guitar.
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