The Grateful Dead has hailed the band’s late bassist Phil Lesh as their “brother”.
They paid tribute to the musician after the guitarist died “peacefully” aged 84 on Friday (26.10.24) morning, in a joint statement from iconic psychedelic band’s surviving members Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann.
Referencing Phil’s wife and children, the group said on Instagram: “Today we lost a brother. Our hearts and love go out to Jill Lesh, Brian and Grahame. Phil Lesh was irreplaceable.”
Paying tribute to Phil’s guitar style, they added: “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.”
Phil’s bandmates added that they could “count on the fingers of one hand” the people they can say “had as profound an influence on our development — in every sense”.
They added there have been “even less people who did so continuously over the decades” in music and “will continue to for as long as we live” – saying Phil was a “gift” to the Dead.
The statement went on: “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, born in Berkeley, California, met his future Dead bandmate Jerry Garcia in 1962, at a party in Menlo Park.
In 1965, Phil, Jerry, Bill, Bob and Ron ‘Pigpen’ McKernan played their first gig under the name The Warlocks and by the end of the year the group became known as The Grateful Dead – often called The Dead by its army of devoted ‘Dead Heads’ followers.
The band released 13 studio albums together as well as dozens of live albums, with Mickey Hart joining as drummer in 1967.
Pianist Ron died in 1973 and the group had various members over the years, including keyboardist Brent Mydland, before the band broke up in 1995 following Jerry’s death aged 53 the same year.
