Grateful Dead icon Phil Lesh has died aged 84.
The bassist and founding member of the rock band ‘passed peacefully’ on Friday, October 25 – a statement on his Instagram page confirmed.
The statement read: ‘Phil Lesh, bassist and founding member of The Grateful Dead, passed peacefully this morning.
‘He was surrounded by his family and full of love. Phil brought immense joy to everyone around him and leaves behind a legacy of music and love.
‘We request that you respect the Lesh family’s privacy at this time.’
His cause of death is currently unknown. He previously battled cancer twice, prostate cancer in 2006 and bladder cancer in 2015, and underwent a liver transplant in 1998 due to a hepatitis C infection and years of heavy drinking.
Grateful Dead icon Phil Lesh has died aged 84 – pictured 2019
The bassist and founding member of the rock band ‘passed peacefully’ on Friday, October 25 – a statement on his Instagram page confirmed
Lesh (second left) is pictured with Grateful Dead members Mickey Hart, Jerry Garcia, Brent Mydland, Bill Kreutzmann, and Bob Weir
He is survived by wife Jill, who he wed in 1984, and their sons Grahame and Brian – who are also both musicians.
Lesh is best known for co-founding the rock band in 1965 – it went on to become one of the world’s most influential bands.
Lesh was a classically trained violinist and jazz trumpeter who found his true calling reinventing the role of rock bass guitar.
The original line-up was Lesh, Bob Weir, Ron ‘Pigpen’ McKernan, Bill Kreutzmann, and Jerry Garcia.
Starting out as a folk-infused quintet in psychedelic-era 1960s San Francisco, the Grateful Dead steadily morphed into a cultural phenomenon and one of the most successful touring acts of all time.
Fueled by the carnival atmosphere of its traveling Deadhead fanbase and an ethos that encouraged tape-trading and emphasized live performance over studio output, the Dead have spanned multiple generations and remain wildly popular.
Lead guitarist and founding member Jerry Garcia died in 1995, but the band continued almost nonstop touring in multiple incarnations.
‘There´s a lot of ingredients that go into it,’ drummer Mickey Hart said, when asked about the music´s longevity. ‘The fans say that the shows feel like home. It gives them that feeling of connectiveness and community and joy and love for life and the music.’
Although he kept a relatively low public profile, rarely granting interviews or speaking to the audience, fans and fellow band members recognized Lesh as a critical member of the Grateful Dead whose thundering lines on the six-string electric bass provided a brilliant counterpoint to lead guitarist Garcia’s soaring solos and anchored the band’s famous marathon jams.
‘When Phil’s happening the band’s happening,’ Garcia once said.
Lesh credited Garcia with teaching him to play the bass in the unorthodox lead-guitar style that he would become famous for, mixing thundering arpeggios with snippets of spontaneously composed orchestral passages.
Currently calling themselves Dead and Company with guitarist John Mayer taking Garcia´s place, the band recently had a residency at The Sphere in Las Vegas.
After the band disbanded in 1995, Lesh founded side project Phil Lesh and Friends – which played songs from Grateful Dead and original songs from his group.
Lesh’s cause of death is currently unknown. He previously battled bladder cancer in 2015 – pictured 2006
The star toured solo as Phil Lesh & Friends – he is seen performing in July 2023
Lesh (end right) is pictured in 1968 with Weir, Kreutzmann and Garcia,
He also ran his own music venue called Terrapin Crossroads.
In 1998, Lesh underwent a liver transplant as a result of chronic hepatitis C infection.
In 1999 and 2000, he co-headlined two tours with Bob Dylan.
In October 2006, Lesh revealed he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer – the same disease which killed his father. In December 2006 he stated he had undergone surgery and the cancer was removed.
In 2009 he went back on tour with Grateful Dead.
From 2009-2014 he performed with Weir in Furthur.
In his final years he performed with the Lesh family band – alongside Cory, Heidi and Joseph Lesh.
Lesh began his long musical odyssey as a classically trained violinist, starting with lessons in third grade. He took up the trumpet at 14, eventually earning the second chair in California´s Oakland Symphony Orchestra while still in his teens.
But he had largely put both instruments aside and was driving a mail truck and working as a sound engineer for a small radio station in 1965 when Garcia recruited him to play bass in a fledgling rock band called The Warlocks.
When Lesh told Garcia he didn´t play the bass, the musician asked, ‘Didn´t you used to play violin?’ When he said yes Garcia told him, ‘There you go, man.’
Armed with a cheap four-string instrument his girlfriend bought him, Lesh sat down for a seven-hour lesson with Garcia, following the latter´s advice that he tune his instrument´s strings an octave lower than the four bottom strings on Garcia´s guitar. Then Garcia turned him loose, allowing him to develop the spontaneous style of playing that he would embrace for the rest of his life.
Lesh and Garcia would frequently exchange leads, often spontaneously, while the band as a whole would frequently break into long experimental, jazz-influenced jams during concerts.
The result was that even well-known Grateful Dead songs like Truckin’ or Sugar Magnolia rarely sounded the same two performances in a row, something that would inspire loyal fans to attend show after show.
‘It´s always fluid, we just pretty much figure it out on the fly,’ Lesh said, chuckling, during a rare 2009 interview with The Associated Press. ‘You can´t set those things in stone in the rehearsal room.’
He would say in later years that his love of music came from listening to broadcasts of the New York Philharmonic on his grandmother´s radio. One of his earliest memories was hearing the great German composer Bruno Walter lead that orchestra through Brahms´ First Symphony.
Musical influences he often cited were not rock musicians but composers like Bach and Edgard Varese, as well as jazz greats like John Coltrane and Miles Davis.
Lesh had gravitated from classical music to cool jazz by the time he arrived at the College of San Mateo, eventually becoming first trumpet player in the school´s big band and a composer of several orchestral pieces the group performed.
But he set the trumpet aside after college, concluding he didn´t have the lung power to become an elite player.
Soon after he took up the bass, The Warlocks renamed themselves the Grateful Dead and Lesh began captivating audiences with his dexterity. Crowds gathered in what came to be known as ‘The Phil Zone’ directly in front of his position on stage.
Although he was never a prolific songwriter, Lesh also composed music for, and sometimes sang, some of the band´s most beloved songs. Among them were the upbeat country rocker Pride of Cucamonga, the jazz-influenced Unbroken Chain and the ethereally beautiful Box of Rain.
Grateful Dead, from left, Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, Bob Weir and Mickey Hart perform during a reunion concert in East Troy, Wis. on Aug. 3, 2002
Lesh composed the latter on guitar as a gift for his dying father, and he recalled that Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, upon hearing the instrumental recording, approached him the next day with a lyric sheet. On that sheet, he said, were ‘some of the most moving and heartfelt lyrics I´ve ever had the good fortune to sing.’
The band often closed its concerts with the song.
Lesh did take part in a 2009 Grateful Dead tour and again in 2015 for a handful of Fare Thee Well concerts marking both the band´s 50th anniversary and what Lesh said would be the last time he would play with the others.
