Musician with local roots — Bob Weir – passes away at age 78
The news spread quickly after the family of Bob Weir announced yesterday that he had passed away after battling cancer and underlying lung issues at the age of 78.
“For over sixty years, Bobby took to the road. 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,” the family said in a statement.
His Menlo School classmates and local music lovers remember him from the many performances by The Warlocks [who became The Grateful Dead] at Magoo’s Pizza Parlor and a performance out in Ladera. [Some accounts say he also attended Menlo-Atherton High School — anyone remember him there?]
Ali El Safy, the owner of Bar Loretta, located where Magoo’s once was, has hosted a couple of retrospectives over the years. Bob is second from left in above photo.
The family statement continued: “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.
“There is no final curtain here, not really. Only the sense of someone setting off again. He often spoke of a three-hundred-year legacy, determined to ensure the songbook would endure long after him. 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’.”
Here is a full obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Top photo by Chloe Weir
