Bob Weir, co-founding member of the Grateful Dead and a pioneer of American jam and psychedelic rock, whose rhythmic genius defined a genre for over sixty years, passed away at the age of 78. Weir had been battling cancer and died due to underlying lung issues.
“It is with profound sadness that we share the passing of Bobby Weir,” his family announced in a statement on Saturday (January 10th). “He transitioned peacefully, surrounded by loved ones, after courageously beating cancer as only Bobby could. Unfortunately, he succumbed to underlying lung issues.”
“For over sixty years, Bobby took to the road,” the statement continued. A guitarist, vocalist, storyteller, and founding member of the Grateful Dead. Bobby will forever be a guiding force whose unique artistry reshaped American music. His work did more than fill rooms with music; it was warm sunlight that filled the soul, building a community, a language, and a feeling of family that generations of fans carry with them. Every chord he played, every word he sang was an integral part of the stories he wove. There was an invitation: to feel, to question, to wander, and to belong.”
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“Bobby’s final months reflected the same spirit that defined his life. Diagnosed in July, he began treatment only weeks before returning to his hometown stage for a three-night celebration of 60 years of music at Golden Gate Park. Those performances, emotional, soulful, and full of light, were not farewells, but gifts. Another act of resilience. An artist choosing, even then, to keep going by his own design. As we remember Bobby, it’s hard not to feel the echo of the way he lived. A man driftin’ and dreamin’ never worrying if the road would lead him home. A child of countless trees. A child of boundless seas.”
Born Robert Hall Parber in San Francisco on October 16th, 1947, he was adopted and grew up in the Bay Area. Struggling in school in part due to an undiagnosed case of dyslexia, he instead gravitated toward music, picking up the guitar at age 13. Three years later, on New Year’s Eve 1965, Weir met Jerry Garcia while wandering the back alleys of Palo Alto and stumbling upon Dana Morgan’s Music Store.
The two decided to form a jug band called Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions, which was later evolved into a group called The Warlocks, and then ultimately the Grateful Dead. As the youngest member of the group, Weir developed a distinctive playing style on rhythm guitar, drawing on jazz, country, and classical influences that became a cornerstone of the Dead’s improvisational sound. Along with Garcia, he also shared songwriting and lead vocal duties on much of the band’s repertoire.
Weir’s early years in the Dead were turbulent, as he struggled to fully gel creatively with Garcia and bassist Phil Lesh. By 1968, both Weir and fellow bandmate Ron “Pigpen” McKernan were temporarily removed from the band, but they were welcomed back into the fold a few months later. As the Dead gravitated towards a more country rock sound in the early 1970s, Weir began to thrive, composing songs like “Sugar Magnolia,” “Playing in the Band,” “The Music Never Stopped,” and Cassidy’” that became classics in the Grateful Dead’s songbook. Additionally, in 1972, Weir released his first solo album, the well-received Ace.
For his efforts in the Grateful Dead, Weir was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, and was the recipient of a Kennedy Center Honor in 2024.
Following the Grateful Dead’s disbandment in 1995, Weir carried on the band’s legacy as he prolifically toured the countrywith acts such as RatDog, Furthur, Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros, and the Grateful Dead offshoot Dead & Company.
In August 2025, just weeks after his diagnosis, Weir reunited with Dead & Company for what would become his final performances: a three-night celebration of the Grateful Dead’s 60th anniversary in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.
In a tribute to Bob, his family shared his own hope for how he would like to be remembered. “There is no final curtain here,” the family wrote, echoing his dream of a “three-hundred-year legacy” for the Grateful Dead songbook. “May that dream live on through future generations of Dead Heads. And so we send him off the way he sent so many of us on our way: with a farewell that isn’t an ending, but a blessing. A reward for a life worth livin.’”