‘Reshaped American music’: Grateful Dead founding member Bob Weir dies

9 hours ago 3

By Andrew Dalton

January 11, 2026 — 2.15pm

Bob Weir, the guitarist and singer who helped found the sound of the San Francisco counterculture of the 1960s as an essential member of the Grateful Dead and who kept it alive through decades of endless tours and marathon jams, has died at the age of 78.

Bob Weir from The Grateful Dead performing with the Dead & Company at a festival in 2016.

His death was announced in a statement on his Instagram page that read: “It is with profound sadness that we share the passing of Bobby Weir. He transitioned peacefully, surrounded by loved ones, after courageously beating cancer as only Bobby could. Unfortunately, he succumbed to underlying lung issues.”

Weir joined the Grateful Dead — originally the Warlocks — in 1965 in San Francisco aged just 17. He would spend the next 30 years playing on endless tours with the band alongside fellow singer and guitarist Jerry Garcia, who died in 1995.

Weir wrote or co-wrote and sang lead vocals on such Dead classics as Sugar Magnolia, One More Saturday Night and Mexicali Blues.

After Garcia’s death, he would be the Dead’s most recognisable face. In the decades since, he kept playing with other projects that kept alive the band’s music and legendary fan base, including Dead & Company.

“For over 60 years, Bobby took to the road,” the Instagram statement said. “A guitarist, vocalist, storyteller and founding member of the Grateful Dead, Bobby will forever be a guiding force whose unique artistry reshaped American music.”

Weir’s death leaves drummer Bill Kreutzmann as the only surviving original member. The band’s other drummer, Mickey Hart, practically an original member since joining in 1967, is also alive at 82.

Dead and Company played a series of concerts for the Grateful Dead’s 60th anniversary in July in San Francisco.

Born in that city and raised in nearby Atherton, Weir was the Dead’s youngest member and looked like a fresh-faced high schooler in its early years. He was generally less shaggy than the rest of the band but he had a long beard like Garcia’s in later years.

The band would survive long past the hippie moment of its birth. Its ultra-devoted fans, known as Deadheads, often followed them on the road in a virtually non-stop tour that persisted despite decades of music and culture shifting around them.

Bob Weir performs at a Grateful Dead reunion concert in 2002.

“Longevity was never a major concern of ours,” Weir said last year. “Spreading joy through the music was all we ever really had in mind, and we got plenty of that done.”

Bumper stickers and T-shirts showed the band’s skull logo, the dancing, coloured bears that served as their other symbol, and signature phrases like “ain’t no time to hate” and “not all who wander are lost”.

Always a little too esoteric for the Grammys, they nevertheless won a lifetime achievement award in 2007 and the best music film award in 2018. Touch of Grey from 1987 was their only Billboard Top 10 hit.

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