With the death of Bob Weir on January 10, drummer Bill Kreutzmann is now the only surviving original member of The Grateful Dead. The band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco suburb of Palo Alto, California. Originally called The Warlocks, by the end of 1965, the group had changed its name The Grateful Dead.
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The other founding members were singer/guitarist Jerry Garcia, bassist Phil Lesh, and Rod “Pigpen” McKernan. McKernan died in 1973, Garcia in 1995, and Lesh in 2024.
Kreutzmann has posted on lengthy tribute to Weir on his social media pages. In the homage, the 79-year-old drummer reminisced about the band’s early days, his camaraderie with Weir, his respect for Bob’s musical talent and more. The post also features a series of archival photos of Bill and Bob together.
Kreutzmann began by recalling, “Jerry Garcia had already been playing music with Bob Weir in a jug band when he called me up to form a rock band with them. That’s how I first met Bob. We called ourselves the Warlocks, playing our first real shows at a pizza parlor in Menlo Park and, long story short (but with a few steps in between)… we became the Grateful Dead.”
He continued, “Together, we embarked on a journey without a destination. We didn’t set out to change the world, or to become big stars, or to have our own counterculture—we didn’t know any of those things were actually possible and we wouldn’t have been very interested in them even if we did. Well, not too much, anyway. Just enough to dream.”
About Having Fun During the Grateful Dead’s Early Years
Kreutzmann then reflected on the bond how the band members formed early on.
“We were a ‘group’ in the sense that we were five friends trying to have the most amount of fun we could think of as often as we could,” he explained. “That meant playing music and all the other things: taking acid, getting high, goofing around.”
Bill also shared that he and Weir were the youngest members of the group, and that he and Bob “liked to play pranks and be silly and not take ourselves too seriously.”
Kreutzmann recalled that when The Grateful Dead started to get famous, buses would drive tourists by the houses where the members lived in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco so they could take pictures.
“Bob and I used to enjoy throwing water balloons at each other so one day we started throwing them at the tourist busses,” Bill remembered. “That didn’t end well, but it’s making me smile all these years later thinking about it, because it was a time when every day felt like a great American adventure.”
He added, “Nothing was more important than having fun and nothing was more fun than playing music. Especially once audiences started coming and we could look out and see a sea of people dancing. Once that happened, it was all we wanted to do. We didn’t want to stop. That was our first real goal—to just keep going.”
About The Grateful Dead Members Continuing Passion to Make Music
Kreutzmann then noted that the love of playing music continued for the rest of all of the Grateful Dead members lives. The band broke up after Garcia’s death in 1995, but Weir and all the other remaining members continued playing and recording, with each other in various configurations and with other musicians.
“And so for sixty years, the music never stopped,” he noted. “This was true for all of us, together and apart, but when Bob was off the road, all he wanted to do was get back on it. And in the meantime, he would stop by any bar or club where there was someone playing that would let him sit in. He seemed to always be on some stage, somewhere.”
As for the relationship between the band members, Bill wrote, “Offstage, we were everything you’d expect from lifelong friends and bandmates. We fought together (both on the same side and opposing), we celebrated together (both personal and professional milestones), and we watched each other, both near and far, as we went from teenagers to old men and all the stops in between.”
About Weir’s Musical Talent and Influence
Kreutzmann then reflected on Weir as a musician, as well as the talent of his other Dead bandmates.
“I once heard Bobby refer to himself as ‘the greatest rhythm guitar player in the world’ and it made me chuckle lightheartedly at my brother’s boastfulness,” Bill recalled. “The thing is… he was probably right. Time has proven that nobody will ever be able to replace Jerry Garcia—or Phil Lesh—and time will prove the same for Bob Weir. They were the biggest influence on my own playing, more than any drummer, and they will continue to be the biggest influence on whatever I do next.”
Kreutzmann offered that he felt “tomorrow’s artists and visionaries” should take the influences and inspiration of the Grateful Dead and make “something new and original out of it.”
Final Reflections on Weir and His Passing
As he neared the conclusion of his tribute, Kreutzmann wrote, “There are so many people who can rightfully say that their life would not have been the same without Bob Weir. That’s been true for me since I was 17. And through it all, the high times and the low tides, my love for him will not, indeed can not, fade away.”
He added, “In the end, what more was there for him to do? He played it all… and never the same way, twice. I think he had finally said everything he had to say and now he’s on to the next thing. I just hope he was able to bring his guitar with him or otherwise he’ll go crazy.”
Kreutzmann then quoted some lines from the 1971 Grateful Dead tune “Bird Song,” which lyricist Robert Hunter wrote for Janis Joplin after her death: “Sleep in the stars. Don’t you cry. Dry your eyes on the wind.”
Bill poignantly added, “And get there safely, old friend. Love you forever.”
(Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic)
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