Grateful Dead founding member and guitarist Bob Weir died from natural causes while surrounded by loved ones, his daughter, Chloe Weir announced on Saturday.
Weir recently beat a fight against cancer but “succumbed to underlying lung issues,” Chloe Weir said in an announcement on her father’s personal website. She did not without saying when or where his death occurred.
“For over 60 years, Bobby took to the road,” his daughter said, and described him as a guitarist, vocalist and storyteller “whose unique artistry reshaped American music.”
“His work did more than fill rooms with music,” Chloe continued. “It was warm sunlight that filled the soul, building a community, a language and a feeling of family that generations of fans carry with them.”
She said, “Every chord he played, every word he sang was an integral part of the stories he wove. There was an invitation: to feel, to question, to wander and to belong.”
While with the Grateful Dead, Weir and his bandmates combined folk, rock, blues and country music and became one of the first successful jam bands that thrived on improvisation.
They developed a loyal fanbase of “Deadheads” who followed the band while it toured across the country, recording musical sets and trading or selling them with others.
The band never had any No. 1 hits, but it won a Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award in 2007 and another for Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package for its boxed set of Madison Square Garden performances that were recorded from 1981 through 1983.
Bob Weir was diagnosed with cancer in July and started cancer treatment soon afterward and only weeks before performing for three nights at Golden Gate Park to celebrate the music of the Grateful Dead 60 years after its founding in San Francisco.
“Those performances, emotional, soulful and full of light, were not farewells, but gifts,” Chloe Weir said. “Another act of resilience. An artist choosing, even then, to keep going by his own design.”
She called her dad a “man driftin’ and dreamin’, never worrying if the road would lead him home. A child of countless trees. A child of boundless seas.”
In addition to Chloe, Bobby Weir is survived by family members Natascha and Monet, and they ask his fans to respect their privacy while grieving.
“There is no final curtain here, not really. Only the sense of someone setting off again,” his daughter wrote.
“He often spoke of a three-hundred-year legacy, determined to ensure the songbook would endure long after him. May that dream live on through future generations of Dead Heads,” she said.
“And so, 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’.”
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