Now there are just three remaining original members of the Grateful Dead with today's passing of co-founder Phil Lesh. The bassist split from the group after the 50th anniversary reunion concerts in 2015. He suffered from liver disease and recently had pneumonia.
Lesh, who was 84, had a liver transplant in 1998 due to hepatitis C. He performed with his own group Phil & Friends for the last several decades.
He remained with the band as it evolved into the Other Ones, Further and The Dead, but chose not to join Dead & Company which formed shortly after the anniversary, That left the band with three original members, guitarist/vocalist Bobby Weir and drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutizmann, who bowed out of the group in 2023. Founding guitrarist/vocalist Jerry Garcia died in 1995. The other founding member, keyboardist/vocalist Ron "Pigpen" McKernam, succumbed to alcohol abuse in 1973.
Not noted as a songwriter or singer, Lesh did compose one popular Grateful Dead number, "Box of Rain," which he would sing often somewhat out of tune.
Born in Berkeley on Mar. 15, 1940, Lesh met Garcia in 1963 and by the next year they were in a band together, the Warlocks. The name changed to Grateful Dead and their first live gig was at one of Ken Kesey's Acid Tests event on Dec. 4, 1965. He would play with the group for the next 30 years.
Lesh's role with the band post-Garcia's death was controversial. He and his wife Jill had taken over business operations. Lesh didn't want to play with the drummers any longer, but he needed Weir to help draw the crowds. While on tour with Furthur in 2013, Weir collapsed on stage during a show at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, NY, a home-away-from-home venue for Lesh who had a strong relationship owner Peter Shapiro.
Weir had a shoulder injury and was taking painkillers. Mixed with alcohol, it was a bad combination for the bushy-haired singer. Roadies lifted him up onto a chair while Lesh imperviously played on. Weir and Lesh would rarely share a stage with each from that point on.
Joel Selvin called Lesh "the dark knight of the kingdom" in his incisive 2018 book Fare Thee Well. "He was done cedeing territory to the other knaves in the court," Selvin noted. "He appeared to see himself as the one, true capable keeper of the flame."
But as it turned out, Lesh isolated himself from the other Dead founders. He did mini-tours with Phil and Friends that was eventually dwarfed by the success of Dead & Company.
Fans kept expecting Lesh to show up at Dead & Co's run at the Sphere in Las Vegas this year, but that never happened. Would he have agreed to team up on a 60th annivesxay event in 2025 like he did 10 years earlier? Sadly, we'll never know. And thus ends another chapter in the Grateful Dead's "long, strange trip."
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