Grateful Dead's Bob Weir Is Dead at 78

Bob Weir, the guitarist and singer who as an essential member of the Grateful Dead helped found the sound of the San Francisco counterculture of the 1960s and kept it alive through decades of endless tours and marathon jams, has died at age 78. Weir's death was announced Saturday in a statement on his Instagram page, per the AP. "It is with profound sadness that we share the passing of Bobby Weir," the statement said. "He transitioned peacefully, surrounded by loved ones, after courageously beating cancer as only Bobby could. Unfortunately, he succumbed to underlying lung issues."

• Weir co-founded the Grateful Dead—originally the Warlocks—in 1965 in San Francisco at just 17 years old. He would spend the next 30 years playing with the Dead alongside fellow singer and guitarist Jerry Garcia, who died in 1995.
• Weir wrote or co-wrote and sang lead vocals on Dead classics including "Sugar Magnolia," "One More Saturday Night," and "Mexicali Blues."
• After Garcia's death, he would be the Dead's most recognizable face. In the decades since, he kept playing with other projects that kept alive the band's music and legendary fan base, including Dead & Company.
• Weir's death leaves drummer Bill Kreutzmann as the only surviving original member. Founding bassist Phil Lesh died in 2024. The band's other drummer, Mickey Hart, practically an original member since joining in 1967, is also alive at 82. The fifth founding member, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, died in 1973.

• Born in San Francisco and raised in nearby Atherton, Weir was the Dead's youngest member and looked like a fresh-faced high-schooler in its early years. He was generally less shaggy than the rest of the band, but he had a long beard like Garcia's in later years.
• The band would survive long past the hippie moment of its birth, with its ultra-devoted fans known as Deadheads often following them on the road in a virtually non-stop tour that persisted despite decades of music and culture shifting around them. "Longevity was never a major concern of ours," Weir said when the Dead got the Grammys' MusiCares Person of the Year honor last year. "Spreading joy through the music was all we ever really had in mind, and we got plenty of that done."