American Rock musician Phil Lesh of the group Grateful Dead performs onstage at the Uptown Theater, Chicago, Illinois, February 28, 1981. (Photo by Paul Natkin/Getty Images)
Grateful Dead bassist and co-founder Phil Lesh has died at the age of 84. According to a statement from his family, the musician “passed peacefully this morning (Oct. 25). 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. We request that you respect the Lesh family’s privacy at this time.”
No cause was provided, although Lesh had a liver transplant in 1998 to combat hepatitis C and battled both prostate and bladder cancer over the years.
Lesh met his future Dead bandmate Jerry Garcia in the Bay Area in 1959 and, along with guitarist Bob Weir and drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, was a key contributor from day one amid their early experiments with LSD and associations with Ken Kesey’s acid tests in late ‘60s San Francisco; the turn toward Americana and recording of the Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty albums in the early ‘70s; the years spent on the road honing what was arguably the greatest live rock show in American history; the pop-cultural explosion of “Touch of Grey” in 1987 and the chaos and hedonism that followed the band in the ‘80s and ‘90s; and the slow, heartbreaking battles with illness and addiction that characterized Garcia’s final years before his 1995 death.
