Phil Lesh passed away on the morning of Oct. 25, 2024. Lesh was best known as the bass player for the rock band, the Grateful Dead. He was part of the band from its founding in 1967 to the time it was disbanded in 1995. He played an estimated 2,500 shows with this band alone.
He was one of the founding members of the Grateful Dead and contributed to a new style of bass playing.
Lesh was a native of Berkeley, California. He was an only child who took up playing the violin when he was eight years old. He played with Berkeley’s Young People’s Orchestra.
He started at El Cerrito High School but quickly transferred to Berkeley High School where he began to study harmony and play the trumpet. He took part in numerous music-related extracurricular activities.
He learned from the best of the best. His trumpet instructor was Bob Hansen, the conductor of the Golden Gate Park symphonic band. He became fascinated in Free Jazz and avant-garde classical music.
Before he even graduated high school, Lesh had made up his mind to be a composer. He studied at the College of San Mateo and continued to play the trumpet. He transferred to UC Berkeley when he was a sophomore.
His journey to the rock and roll scene started while he was working for a local radio station. He met a banjo player by the name of Jerry Garcia and invited him to perform on the station’s night show. They became good friends.
In 1965, Lesh saw Garcia’s band in concert. They were called The Warlocks and he was very impressed, even though it wasn’t the type of music he usually associated himself with. He was invited to be the band’s bass guitarist. Although he had never played the bass before and was not familiar with the instrument in any way, he still accepted.
He learned on the job, and his musical expertise and classical training allowed him to learn quickly. He started playing with the band after their second or third show. The group changed their name to the Grateful Dead and signed a deal with Warner Bros, and from there they began to play larger stages.
Bass guitars have traditionally been used to keep time and beat in a song. It was around this time that it began to take more artistic roles. Since Lesh was so unfamiliar with the instrument and its traditional roles, he was able to do his own thing.
His playing was not repetitive in any way. He acted as an undertoning lead guitarist. His low notes flowed together with the high notes of Jerry Garcia’s, the band’s lead guitarist, playing. The lack of conventional bass made his playing somewhat of an acquired taste, and an ear that isn’t used to the Grateful Dead’s music might find it a little unnatural at first.
His style was thought of as experimental, and the Grateful Dead performed lots of improvised music, which his playing complimented. The Grateful Dead also had two drummers for most of their existence. The two drummers took over the timekeeping role, which allowed Lesh to play the bass guitar in the way he did.
He was a member of the Grateful Dead from its founding in 1965 to its disbanding in 1995.
After the Grateful Dead, he played with multiple other offshoot bands. He formed his band called Phil Lesh and Friends in 1998. The other bands he performed with were The Other Ones, The Dead, and a band that he and Bob Weir formed in 2009 called Furthur.
He also opened a music venue called Terrapin Crossroads in San Rafael, California in 2012. His bands and his family played at the venue regularly until it closed in 2021.
Lesh was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994 with the rest of the Grateful Dead. Rolling Stone Magazine ranked him as the 11th best bassist of all time. He started touring less as he grew older, but continued to perform.
He had been subject to a liver transplant as a result of Hepatitis C and had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. He underwent a bladder cancer surgery in 2015, and had a back surgery in 2019.
Phil Lesh was a great bass player, and a man who lived and breathed music from a very young age. People that understand music as well as he did are becoming a scarcity on this earth. He will be missed.
