Bob Weir - his Long Strange Trip is over.

This isn't a gaming post. It is to commemorate Bob Weir, founder member of the Grateful Dead, who has died, aged 78.

The Grateful Dead have been a constant fixture in my life for as long as I've been listening to music as a teenager. Now, all the original band members, apart from drummer Bill Kreutzmann have left us. All we have left is the remarkable body of music that they created over three decades of recording and touring.

Bobby was theoretically the rhythm guitarist and second main singer, but he was a very unorthodox rhythm player. He didn't just play the chords and keep things together. He went off and did all sorts of stuff behind the melody, riffing and weaving in and around what Phil and Jerry were doing. You couldn't imagine the Dead with no Bobby.

Apart from his work with the Dead, Bob made three solo records, notably the 1972 release, Ace, which was a Grateful Dead album in all but name. It contained music that would become regular pieces of the live GD set for the rest of the band's existence.

Here is the band in 1970, in a photo taken by Herb Greene for Billboard.

Ron McKernan, a.k.a. Pigpen (second left) was the first to go, in 1973, followed by Jerry Garcia (front) in 1995 and Phil Lesh (far right) in 2024. Various keyboards players have passed away between 1970 and today, They were Keith Godchaux, Brent Mydland and Vince Welnick, along with Dead songwriters Robert Hunter and John Perry Barlow. plus vocalist Donna Godchaux, who died in November last year. Now Bobby (centre behind Jerry) is gone. The only people left alive in that picture are the Rhythm Devils Bill Kreutzmann (far left) and Mickey Hart (second right), the second drummer who joined the band in 1967. 

It is hard to explain what this actually means to me. The music has been so important in my life that it is something that is a part of me, but the Dead also represented something outside the music. They were a huge symbol of a way of being and doing that influenced millions of people, including me. The fact that they existed made the world a better place. That world seems to be disappearing before our eyes, and not just because we don't have Bob Weir and the rest of them any more. "The Music Never Stopped", as written by Bob Weir and John Perry Barlow for the Blues For Allah album kind of sums things up. The version in the link about is a live one, though.

So, Bob Weir (16/10/1947-10/01/2026) RIP.