Death of Phil Lesh: Bassist and founding member of The Grateful Dead, dies at 84

SAN FRANCISCO– Phil Lesh, a classically trained violinist and jazz trumpeter who found his true calling reinventing the role of rock bass as a founding member of the iconic band The Grateful Dead, died Friday at age 84.

Lesh’s death was announced on his Instagram account. Lesh was the oldest and one of the longest-serving members of the band that came to define the acid rock sound emanating from San Francisco in the 1960s.

“Phil Lesh, bassist and founding member of The Grateful Dead, passed away peacefully this morning. He was surrounded by his family and full of love. Phil brought immense joy to everyone around him and leaves a legacy of music and love,” he posted on Instagram. The statement reads in part.

The statement did not cite a specific cause of death and attempts to reach representatives for additional details were not immediately successful. Lesh had previously survived bouts with prostate cancer, bladder cancer and a liver transplant in 1998, necessitated by the debilitating effects of a hepatitis C infection and years of heavy drinking.

Although he maintained a relatively low public profile, rarely granting interviews or speaking to the public, fans and bandmates recognized Lesh as a key member of the Grateful Dead, whose thunderous lines on the six-string electric bass provided a brilliant counterpoint. to the lead guitarist. Jerry Garcia’s soaring solos anchored the band’s famous jam marathons.

“When Phil is happening, the band is happening,” Garcia once said.

Drummer Mickey Hart called him the intellectual of the group who brought the mentality and skills of a classical composer to a five-chord rock ‘n’ roll band.

Lesh credited Garcia with teaching him to play bass in the unorthodox style of lead guitar he would become famous for, mixing thunderous arpeggios with fragments of spontaneously composed orchestral passages.

Fellow bassist Rob Wasserman once said that he differentiated Lesh’s style from that of any other bassist he knew. While most others were content to keep the beat and do the occasional solo, Wasserman said, Lesh was good and confident enough to guide his fellow musicians through the melody of a song.

“He plays bass, but he’s more like a trumpet player, he does all those arpeggios, and he has that counterpoint all the time,” he said.

Lesh began his long musical odyssey as a classically trained violinist, beginning with lessons in third grade. He began playing trumpet at age 14 and eventually earned a second chair at California’s Oakland Symphony Orchestra while still a teenager.

But he had 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 that he didn’t play bass, the musician asked him, “Didn’t you 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 the strings of his instrument an octave lower than the four lower strings of García’s guitar. Garcia then let him go, allowing him to develop the spontaneous style of play he would embrace for the rest of his life.

Lesh and Garcia frequently swapped leads, often spontaneously, while the band as a whole frequently performed long, jazz-influenced experimental improvisations during concerts. The result was that even well-known Grateful Dead songs like “Truckin'” or “Sugar Magnolia” rarely sounded the same two shows in a row, something that would inspire loyal fans to attend show after show.

“It’s always fluid, we just figure it out as we go,” Lesh said, laughing, during a rare 2009 interview with The Associated Press. “You can’t set those things in stone in the rehearsal room.

Lesh was a native of Berkeley and living in Marin at the time of his passing.