Oct. 25 (UPI) — Phil Lesh, the innovative and unconventional bassist and founding member of the seminal American rock band The Grateful Dead, died Friday. He was 84.
The announcement of his death was posted on his official Instagram page.
Lesh “passed peacefully this morning. He was surrounded by his family and full of love. Phil brought immense joy to everyone around him and leaves behind a legacy of music and love,” the post read.
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Lesh, born in Berkeley, Calif., on March 15, 1940, attended the University of California-Berkeley after growing up in a middle-class family headed by his parents, who owned an office machine repair shop.
After making several musical forays and receiving classical training, Lesh first met Grateful Dead co-founder Jerry Garcia in 1959 and again in 1964 when Garcia was fronting The Warlocks, an early incarnation of the famous band.
Garcia invited Lesh to join the Warlocks as a bass player — an instrument he had never played — and the partnership lasted for decades until Garcia’s death in 1995.
He taught himself to play bass, incorporating a distinctive style that leaned on classical music concepts such as Johann Sebastian Bach’s “counterpoint” style in which two independent musical themes combine to play off of each other.
But as in most things musically associated with the band, it was his improvisations that most enthralled audiences. One of his signature sounds was the “bass bomb,” in which he would pound out three-note chords rather than play single notes.
Lesh also contributed vocally on the Dead’s early 1970s masterpiece albums, Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty, but afterwards stepped back from singing duties.
Following Garcia’s death, Lesh enthusiastically continued the Grateful Dead’s tradition by occasionally appearing and touring with other survivors under differing formations.
In recent years, he and his wife, Jill, opened the Terrapin Crossroads restaurant and music venue in San Rafael, Calif., with their sons, Grahame and Brian, serving as house band, according to Rolling Stone.
