Phil Lesh has died aged 84.
The official Instagram account for the bassist and co-founder of The Grateful Dead, said he “passed peacefully this morning” [October 25, 2024]. “He was surrounded by his family and full of love.”
Lesh, who was born on March 15, 1940 in Berkeley, California, was invited to join pre-Dead band The Warlocks by his friend Jerry Garcia in 1965.
When The Warlocks became The Grateful Dead, Lesh’s bass playing became critical in the evolution of the band through their many sonic adventures.
After Gacia’s death in 1995, played with several touring iterations of the band – including the Other Ones, the Dead and Furthur.
In 2015, the four surviving core members of the Dead – Lesh, Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann and Bob Weir – performed together in a series of concerts, Fare Thee Well: Celebrating 50 Years of the Grateful Dead.
Following the news of his death, Hart, Kreutzmann and Weir paid tribute to their fallen bandmate.
Today we lost a brother. Our hearts and love go out to Jill Lesh, Brian and Grahame. Phil Lesh was irreplaceable. In one note from the Phil Zone, you could hear and feel the world being born. His bass flowed like a river would flow. It went where the muse took it. He was an explorer of inner and outer space who just happened to play bass. He was a circumnavigator of formerly unknown musical worlds. And more. We can count on the fingers of one hand the people we can say had as profound an influence on our development – in every sense. And there have been even less people who did so continuously over the decades and will continue to for as long as we live. What a gift he was for us. We won’t say he will be missed, as in any given moment, nothing we do will be without the lessons he taught us – and the lessons that are yet to come, as the conversations will go on. Phil loved the Dead Heads and always kept them in his heart and mind. The thing is… Phil was so much more than a virtuoso bass player, a composer, a family man, a cultural icon… There will be a lot of tributes, and they will all say important things. But for us, we’ve spent a lifetime making music with Phil Lesh and the music has a way of saying it all. So listen to the Grateful Dead and, in that way, we’ll all take a little bit of Phil with us, forever. For this is all a dream we dreamed one afternoon, long ago…. – Mickey, Billy and Bobby
The estate of Jerry Garcia also paid tribute to Lesh’s “sharply dry humor, wry smiles and brilliant insights.”