My favorite bass player has died.

Tweet

Phil Lesh was the bassist for the Grateful Dead, and for several other bands after Jerry Garcia died in 1995. He was a classically trained musician, born here in Berkely in 1940, and joined the Grateful dead in 1965, when they were still the Warlocks. . What's funny about Weir is that he was trained in classical music, and played trumpet and violin, before joining the Warlocks. Jerry Garcia and his mates asked Weir to learn the bass so he could join what Weir's bass playing was influenced by his love of classical music. He went "way up the neck," playing parts of melodies, then returning to more typical, and lower, bass lines. He was the greatest single influence of my own bass playing. I'll attach an article from Rolling Stone about his life. He was 84.