Bob Weir — the Grateful Dead’s rhythm guitarist and one of its songwriters and lead singers — should be celebrated for his riffs and vamps alone.
The musician, whose family announced his death at 78 on Saturday, composed the chiming, rolling, ebb-and-flow 10/4 foundation of “Playing in the Band,” the leaping twin-guitar lick of “One More Saturday Night,” the modal triplets of “The Other One” and the jubilant “sunshine daydream” outro of “Sugar Magnolia.”
Those were some of the Dead songs in which Weir stepped forward as frontman, singing in a genial baritone that he’d occasionally push toward a good-natured growl. “Sugar Magnolia” was one of the band’s most-played live tracks. But through six decades with the Grateful Dead and its latter-day incarnations after the death of Jerry Garcia in 1995, Weir contributed just as much when he wasn’t the player in the spotlight.
In the luminous, cooperative, ever-shifting tangle that defined the Grateful Dead’s music, Weir was as self-effacing as he was essential. Rhythm guitar is a supportive role, filling in the chords and texturing the beat behind the singer or soloist in the foreground. In the Dead, Weir constantly threaded his way through the counterpoint of Garcia and his successors, on lead guitar and often lead vocals, and the bubbling countermelodies of Phil Lesh on bass, who died in 2024.
Weir strummed his rhythm chords lightly, nimbly and malleably, charting and shaping the ever-shifting undercurrents of the Dead’s songs and jams. Bluegrass, blues, country, funk, reggae, mariachi and jazz were all at his fingertips. He was a consummate ensemble player — a full participant in the improvisatory mix who was somehow able to almost vanish into the background while he made the other players shine.
Weir was fond of country music and cowboy narratives. He made songs like Marty Robbins’s “El Paso,” Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried” and John Phillips’s “Me and My Uncle” staples in the band’s set lists. He sang rambling-man tales of his own in “Jack Straw,” with lyrics by Robert Hunter, and “Mexicali Blues,” with lyrics by John Perry Barlow.
But his own songwriting pushed beyond the three-chord country basics. He toyed with odd meters in “Playing in the Band,” with the 7/4 reggae of “Estimated Prophet” and in his ambitious 13-minute “Weather Report Suite,” which hinted at Renaissance lute songs and gospel on the way to the upbeat folk-rock chorus of its finale, “Let It Grow.”
Weir was an inveterate collaborator, determined to share a chance to make more music. When the core members of the Dead weren’t working together, he founded bands: Kingfish, Ratdog, solo projects with serious lyricists like Josh Ritter. What they came up with didn’t always live up to the Dead’s milestones — what could?
But Weir kept playing, singing, trying. Clearly he loved the work of making music, the chance to connect, to catalyze an ensemble with hands on strings. He kept doing just that.
Jon Pareles has been The Times’s chief pop music critic since 1988. He studied music, played in rock, jazz and classical groups and was a college-radio disc jockey. He was previously an editor at Rolling Stone and The Village Voice.
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