Like everyone else I was caught off-guard by a left-handed monkey wrench hearing of Bobby Weir’s unexpected passing from this world a week ago today. Since then I’ve found myself mostly at a loss for words: it’s such a huge sea change that it’s taking time to grasp the depth of the realignment of forces. But something must be said to honor the passing of one who made such a great contribution to the music and culture of the past 60 years (!) and to my own life and journey.
Others have spoken better than I to Weir’s prominent contributions during his time here on Earth: his kindness and thorough decency as a human; his utterly unique approach to the rhythm guitar—playing for decades between two other utterly unique geniuses in his Grateful Dead bandmates bassist Phil Lesh and guitarist Jerry Garcia. The idea that he maybe played on more stages than any other musician of his era. Or most eras! The most recorded musician ever, they say. All these deep and true elements of a life well lived.
It’s almost cliché to say Bobby’s and the band’s music has been a huge part of the soundtrack of my life—and yet the truth is that statement doesn’t go nearly far enough. It’s more like part of my DNA, something woven so deeply into my own nervous system it’s impossible to imagine life without it. More than just as a listener, the Dead’s spirit of adventure embodied in sound deeply informed my own life playing music. Jerry in 1995 and Phil Lesh just last year were also big losses and threshold crossings—but Bobby remained always out there on the road, in various creative configurations, playing the music, keeping part of that original vibe alive. With the way he exercised in recent decades it didn’t seem crazy to imagine that we’d be hearing Bobby Weir on the road for the next 5 or 10 years, at least.
So it’s with the aching poignancy of the unexpected, of unforgiving finality, that this new reality settles in.
Now, with no more original singers left to carry forward the band’s catalog, we have crossed another Rubicon. From here on–with all respects to Billy Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart in all their percussive glory–all iterations of the Dead large and small will at best be 2nd or 3rd order derivatives from the original DNA.
Everywhere we turn death comes and things end, and the life we know is no longer the life we live.
Bob Weir, you will be missed. Thank you for all the great music over the years. I honor your dedication to serving the Muse, especially through live music, and to following the inspiration and the songs in ever-new directions and explorations, until the very end that most of us didn’t see coming. Sleep in the stars, travel well from here, and I hope we all get to do something like this again next time. We sure had the time of our lives.
Because I could not stop for Death –
He kindly stopped for me –
The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
And Immortality.
-Emily Dickinson
