Phil Lesh, the bassist, singer, and founding member of the Grateful Dead, died on the morning of Oct. 25 at the age of 84.
He was born on March 15, 1940 in Berkeley, California to Frank and Barbara Lesh. He played the violin in his childhood before switching to the trumpet at 14, which earned him second chair in California’s Oakland Symphony Orchestra. He attended a semester at UC Berkeley before studying at Mills College under composer Luciano Berio.
In 1965, Jerry Garcia recruited Lesh to play the bass for his band, The Warlocks. Although he did not know how to play the instrument, Lesh accepted. Along with Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann, and Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, they renamed their band to the Grateful Dead.
Kevin Estrada ’00, an avid fan of the Dead, said, “[Lesh] was an expert musician who created some incredibly sonic sounds and knew how to expand the musical field with his groovy bass lines.”
The Grateful Dead gained popularity from their live shows, which featured extended jams of their songs, and a refined sound system engineered by Owsley “Bear” Stanley. Most of these psychedelic concerts were recorded, and bootleg records were passed around by fans known as “deadheads.” The group lived at 710 Ashbury, the epicenter of the San Francisco hippie movement.
Diego Aguilar ’25 explained, “Their connection to the Bay Area also meant they were part of a larger cultural and social movement that changed the course of American music, leaving an indelible mark on subsequent generations of musicians.”
In 1967, the band released their first, eponymous album. Two of their most popular albums, Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty, were released in 1970.
They gained world-wide success during their tour of Europe in Spring of 1972. All 70 hours were recorded by the band.
From 1967 to 1978, the Dead released an album every year, including Wake of the Flood (’73), From the Mars Hotel (’74), and Blues for Allah (’75).
By the 1980s, popularity of the group had begun to go downhill. They enjoyed a brief mainstream success with their single “Touch of Grey” in 1987. They released their final album, Built to Last in 1989 before Garcia’s death in 1995.
Lesh married his wife, Jill in 1984. Due to heavy drinking, he contracted hepatitis C and received a liver transplant in 1998. Because of this, he spent the last two-and-a-half decades as a whole-hearted advocate for organ donation.
He opened Terrapin Crossroads, a music venue and restaurant in San Rafael, with his wife in 2012.
Lesh would frequent The Fillmore and The Warfield with his band, Phil Lesh & Friends, until his death.
After his death, band members and fans alike took to social media to pay tribute to their fallen bassist.
Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart posted on Instagram a statement, “Phil was bigger than life, at the very center of the band and my ears, filling my brain with waves of bass.”
