Phil Lesh, bassist and founding member of countercultural rock band The Grateful Dead, has died. He was 84 years old. His family posted the news on Lesh’s official Instagram page.
Born in Berkeley, Calif., in 1940, Lesh was initially drawn to classical music. He played violin as a child before turning his attention to the trumpet, which he studied throughout high school and his time at the College of San Mateo. In the early ‘60s, he met banjo player Jerry Garcia, who later asked him to join his rock band, The Warlocks, as their bassist — an instrument Lesh did not play. He accepted nonetheless, and in 1965, The Grateful Dead was born, with Lesh finding his footing in the improvisation-driven group as he went.
“On a day-to-day basis, the psychic pivot to the Dead is Phil Lesh, the most aggressive purist, the anti-philistine Artist,” wrote Grateful Dead biographer Dennis McNally in his 2002 book A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead. “It is he who most often and most loudly demands that they dance as closely as possible to the edge of the nearest available precipice. Intellectual, kinetic, intense, he was once nicknamed Reddy Kilowatt in recognition of his high mental and physical velocity.”
Over the Dead’s decades of musical longevity and reinvention, Lesh went on to sing lead vocals on some of the band’s most memorable songs, including “Box of Rain” off the 1970 album American Beauty, which he composed alongside longtime Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, and “Unbroken Chain” off 1974’s From the Mars Hotel.
This story will be updated.
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