Phil Lesh, whose expansive approach to the bass as a charter member of the Grateful Dead made him one of the first performers on that instrument in a rock band to regularly play a lead role rather than a supporting one, died on Friday. He was 84.
His death was announced on his Instagram account. No further information was given.
In addition to providing explorative bass work, Mr. Lesh sang high harmonies for the band and provided the occasional lead vocal. He also co-wrote some of the band’s most noteworthy songs, including ones that inspired adventurous jams, like “St. Stephen” and “Dark Star,” as well as more conventional pieces, like “Cumberland Blues,” “Truckin’” and “Box of Rain.”
Key to the dynamic of The Dead was the way Mr. Lesh used the bass to provide ever-shifting counterpoints to the dancing lines of the lead guitarist Jerry Garcia, the curt riffs of the rhythm guitarist Bob Weir, the bold rhythms of the drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, and, in the band’s first eight years, the warm organ work of Ron McKernan, known as Pigpen.
A source of particular excitement was the relationship between Mr. Lesh’s instrument and Mr. Garcia’s. At times, they mirrored each other. At other times, they contrasted, in the process widening the music’s melodic nuances while helping to create the kind of variety and tension that allowed the band to improvise at length without losing the listener.
Mr. Lesh’s bass work could be thundering or tender, focused or abstract. On the Grateful Dead’s studio albums, his lines held so much melody that one could listen to a song for his playing alone. At the same time, he shared his bandmates’ love for unusual chord structures and uncommon time signatures. In constructing his bass parts, he drew from many sources, including free jazz, classical music and the avant-garde.
He had formal training in those last two areas, having played both classical violin and trumpet, composed music for orchestras and studied with the avant-garde composer Luciano Berio, all before taking up the bass and joining the Dead. His work with the band held such value for a significant portion of its massive following that, at concerts, devotees would position themselves in the “Phil Zone,” an area named for “the proximity to Lesh’s position onstage,” according to the 1994 Grateful Dead guidebook “Skeleton Key: A Dictionary for Deadheads.”
Mr. Lesh played with the Dead for the band’s entire 30-year history, which formally ended in 1995 after the death of Mr. Garcia. In 1994, he and the band were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. After the Dead disbanded, Mr. Lesh played in the offshoot bands the Other Ones, the Dead and Further, as well as with his own assemblage, Phil Lesh and Friends. He retired from regular road work in 2014.
A complete obituary will be published shortly.
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