Bob Weir, Grateful Dead Co-Founder Who Birthed A New Generation Of Fans, Dead At 78

Bob Weir, who co-founded the Grateful Dead and helped introduce new generations to the band at the end of a virtuosic career, died Saturday following a brief battle with cancer. He was 78.

“It is with profound sadness that we share the passing of Bobby Weir,” the guitarist’s family wrote in a statement posted on his website. “He transitioned peacefully, surrounded by loved ones, after courageously beating cancer as only Bobby could.”

“A guitarist, vocalist, storyteller, and founding member of the Grateful Dead,” the statement continues, “Bobby will forever be a guiding force whose unique artistry reshaped American music.”

Fans were shocked to learn that Weir received his cancer diagnosis in July and began treatment just before performing in a series of shows to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Grateful Dead in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

His final performance with the band was, fittingly, “Touch of Grey,” a 1987 song about coming to terms with growing old that marked the Grateful Dead’s only appearance on the Billboard Hot 100.

The youngest member of the band’s founding lineup, Weir was known for his fierce stage presence and baritone voice, which served as counterpoints to frontman Jerry Garcia’s hippie tenor.

Like the band’s founding bassist, Phil Lesh, who died in October 2024, Weir was known for his unique style of rhythmic playing, which served as the driving pulse of the Dead’s famous jams. Bob Dylan called Weir “a very unorthodox rhythm player” who “plays strange, augmented chords and half chords at unpredictable intervals that somehow match up with Jerry Garcia.”

Weir, whose voice even casual Dead fans will recognize from the verses of “Truckin’,” wrote or co-wrote many of the Grateful Dead’s most popular songs, including “Sugar Magnolia,” “Jack Straw,” “Mexicali Blues,” and “Playing in the Band.” Known affectionately to friends and fans alike as “Bobby,” Weir is survived by his wife, Natascha, and their two daughters, Monet and Chloe.

Born Robert Hall Parber in San Francisco on October 16, 1947, Weir was adopted by Frederic and Eleanor Weir shortly after birth.

Weir met a 21-year-old Jerry Garcia on New Year’s Eve 1963, when Weir was just 16. The pair joined with Lesh, drummer Bill Kreutzmann, and pianist Ron “Pigpen” McKernan to form the Grateful Dead in 1965. He remained with the band until they disbanded following Garcia’s death in 1995.

Like Garcia, Weir had a prolific musical career outside the Dead. In the early 1980s he formed Bobby and the Midnites, a band packed with jazz veterans that blended jazz, rock, and power pop in two albums and legendary live shows.

In 1998, Weir, Lesh, Kreutzmann, and Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart formed The Other Ones, which continued the Dead’s legacy of improvisation-driven live shows. Weir partnered with Lesh again in 2009 to form Furthur, a psychedelic jam band that was active until 2014. From 1995 until 2014, Weir was also the frontman for RatDog, his primary post-Dead vehicle.

In 2015, Weir launched his most enduring side project, which wasn’t really a side project at all. Weir met John Mayer, then a nascent Deadhead, at Capitol Studios that winter. A few weeks later, when Mayer was slated to guest-host The Late Late Show on CBS, he invited Weir to join as the musical guest. The two first played together during a now-legendary soundcheck that lasted more than two hours and inspired the pair to launch Dead & Company.

The revival act, which featured Mayer in Garcia’s place, brought Weir back together with drummers Hart and Kreutzmann, along with Allman Brothers bassist Oteil Burbridge and RatDog keyboardist Jeff Chimenti. Dead & Company played more than 200 shows over its 10-year run, including two residencies at the Sphere in Las Vegas.

Though Mayer and Weir conceived of it as its own entity, Dead & Company continued the Grateful Dead’s tradition of live jams and brought their catalogue and the Deadhead culture to a new generation of fans.

Tributes to Weir are pouring in from all corners of the globe, a testament to his and the Dead’s wide-reaching appeal.

“Rest in Peace Bob Weir. Thank you for all the years of support in the environment wars and thank you for your friendship,” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy posted, along with a picture of him with Weir.

Rest in Peace Bob Weir. Thank you for all the years of support in the environment wars and thank you for your friendship.

“Fare-thee-well now
Let your life proceed by its own design
Nothing to tell now
Let the words be yours, I’m done with mine” pic.twitter.com/MqD0w9BWGj

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) January 11, 2026

“Mostly, he just loved playing, and I loved that about him,” Phish frontman Trey Anastasio wrote on Instagram. “I don’t think he ever got caught up in the bigness. I don’t think it meant anything to him. There were times when I was talking to him when I thought he was the last actual hippie.”

 

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A post shared by Trey Anastasio (@treyanastasio)

Daily Wire host Michael Knowles hours chipped in with a rendition of “Sugar Magnolia” on his ukelele, adding only, “RIP, Bob Weir.”

RIP, Bob Weir! pic.twitter.com/yoBtdAmn5D

— Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) January 11, 2026

Though fans remained unaware of Weir’s failing health, the guitarist reflected on mortality in a March interview with Rolling Stone.

“I’ll say this: I look forward to dying. I tend to think of death as the last and best reward for a life well-lived. That’s it,” Weir said. “I’ve still got a lot on my plate, and I won’t be ready to go for a while.”