Grateful Dead founding member and bassist Phil Lesh died Friday morning, according to a post on his official Instagram account.
The California native and rock legend was 84.
Lesh “passed peacefully” while surrounded by family, according to the post to his Instagram.
“Phil brought immense joy to everyone around him and leaves behind a legacy of music and love,” the post read. “We request that you respect the Lesh family’s privacy at this time.”
Lesh was born and raised in a center of postwar counterculture, Berkeley, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he started his music journey by learning to play the classical violin. He traded the violin for the trumpet and created sounds inspired by German electronic music pioneer Karlheinz Stockhausen and American minimal music proponent Steve Reich.
According to his memoir, “Searching for the Sound: My Life in the Grateful Dead,” Lesh met Jerry Garcia in 1959 while out on the town in Palo Alto, California.
It wasn’t until after their second meeting in 1964, according to Rolling Stone, that Garcia recruited Lesh as a bassist for The Warlocks.
“At Garcia’s suggestion, Lesh learned to play the electric bass and joined him in a new group that blended R & B, country, and rock ‘n’ roll with an experimental fervor never before heard,” a summary of Lesh’s book states.
Shortly afterward, the band renamed itself the Grateful Dead, with Lesh on bass and Garcia on guitar. Its first gig was at Frenchy’s Bikini-A-Go-Go in Hayward, California, for an audience of three, according to the summary.
The Dead fused rock, jazz and folk, going on to become one of the most influential bands in American history, joining author Ken Kesey (“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”) early on for infamous, LSD-fueled “Acid Test” parties in the 1960s documented by another counterculture author, Tom Wolfe, in “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.”
In his memoir, Lesh wrote, “I knew instantly that this combination — acid and music — was the tool I’d been looking for.”
The Dead’s meandering, long-form rock was the soundtrack of American psychedelia. The band’s touring long held together a subculture of Deadheads who traded cassette recordings, traveled behind the band.
Known for being a virtuosic bassist, Lesh is credited with redefining the sound of the bass and heavily influencing the Grateful Dead’s sound.
He played his bass like a lead instrument, using a pick to find sounds that overlap with the low end of a guitar’s spectrum, Rolling Stone said.
“Lesh is one of the most skilled bassists you’ll ever hear in subtlety and invention,” Bob Dylan wrote about the Grateful Dead bassist in his 2022 book, “The Philosophy of Modern Song.”
San Francisco Mayor London Breed said Friday on social media platform X that City Hall would be lit in Lesh’s honor overnight. “Phil Lesh was more than a bassist — he was a San Francisco icon who helped define an era and shape the world of music,” she said.
The Empire State Building said on X that the historic New York City skyscraper would be lit in tie-dye colors Friday night “to honor the life and legacy of Phil Lesh.”
Chicago stadium Soldier Field, where the Dead played their final show with Garcia on July 9, 1995, said on X, “Thank you for the memories, Phil.”
Hip-hop icon Chuck D of Public Enemy said on X, “Phil Lesh kept it going.”
Martha Quinn, former MTV VJ and current iHeartRadio DJ said on X, referring to the Grateful Dead’s dancing bear mascot, “The bear is not feeling much like dancing today. … Thank you for your legacy Phil, you made us feel like we were all your friends.”
The band dissolved after 30 years, with Lesh becoming, in the words of Rolling Stone, “an active keeper of its live flame.” He presided over a new improvisational band called Phil and Friends, often playing shows in the Bay Area in the years before his death.
Lesh leaves behind his wife, Jill, and their two sons, Grahame and Brian.
