“There is no final curtain here, not really”: Bob Weir, Grateful Dead guitarist, vocalist and founding member, dies aged 78

Grateful Dead guitarist and vocalist Bob Weir has passed away aged 78, according to a post on his social media channels.

The announcement, made on Saturday evening (January 10), says: “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 was a founding member of the Grateful Dead, joining forces with his bandmates Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann and Ron ‘Pigpen’ McKernan, in the mid-’60s. The band initially went by the name The Warlocks, before settling on The Grateful Dead after Garcia found the reference in a folklore dictionary.

The group’s transition from a folksier outfit into a psychedelic juggernaut was a reaction to the rich soup of countercultural influences that swirled around their San Francisco base. (A recently electrified) Bob Dylan, the Beatles and the Lovin’ Spoonful provided the musical impetus, while their association with Ken Kesey, as the in-house band during the Acid Test period, brought in the chemical stimulus.

Weir was initially the rhythm guitarist, the youngest of the group and known for his role as a vocalist on many of the band’s rock and country numbers, including probably their best-known song Truckin’.

Across a period of 30 years, the group defined the jam band movement and became a byword for ’60s counterculture and the hippy scene, before Garcia passed away in 1995.

Across that time, Weir became a formidable guitarist and musician, renowned for what Phil Lesh termed his “quirky, whimsical” ear and ability to produce complex, piano-like chord voicings on the fretboard.

Dead historians will point to key moments in which is playing is said to have evolved significantly: notably, the early 1970s – when a creative spark was said to have been ignited by Garcia and Lesh’s decision to jam with other players in the late-’60s – or, again, toward the end of the decade, when he started to incorporate slide guitar parts, drawing on the likes of John Coltrane’s horn playing to influence his phrasing.

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In truth, though, and in keeping with the spirit of the Grateful Dead, he never stopped evolving – in his playing, his gear choices, or his songwriting.

“I just keep changing,” Weir told Guitar World last year. “I wake up in the morning and I’m kind of different. You take all those mornings that I woke up kind of different and you add ’em together, and after a while, you start amounting to a different guy.”

Weir remained active following Garcia’s death, performing in various Grateful Dead offshoot groups, including the Others, The Dead and Furthur, plus his group Ratdog.

Despite playing thousands of gigs to enormous crowds across a period of 60 years, Weir once confessed to Guitar World that he still battled stage fright most nights.

“It’s the anticipation, the time before walking out. There is a moment onstage when I think, ‘Thank God, I’m out of here,’” he explained. “I can forget myself, leave the building and let the characters in the songs have my body, my spirit and everything else.”

In 2015, Weir joined forces with his remaining bandmates and John Mayer to form Dead and Company – across the group’s 10-year run he forged a significant playing relationship with Mayer.

“The thing I’ve learned from Bob is to let it breathe,” Mayer told GW last year. “And that’s changed my playing a lot. The two of us now have a very deep relationship. Almost like a telepathic relationship.

“I know where I stand with him in the best of ways. He knows where he stands with me in the best of ways. And we don’t have to talk about it.”

In July 2025, Weir was diagnosed with cancer, but continued to perform as much as possible around his treatment, continuing to play, to evolve, and to keep moving forward.

“There is no final curtain here, not really,” reads the statement following his death. “Only the sense of someone setting off again... we send him off the way he sent so many of us on our way: with a farewell that isn’t an ending, but a blessing. A reward for a life worth livin’.”

Weir is survived by his wife Natascha and daughters Monet and Chloe.