Phil Lesh, Bassist Who Brought ‘Box of Rain’ to the Grateful Dead, Dies at 84🤘

[Old Joad]

Between sets one night in 1965, Jerry Garcia asked a lapsed trumpet player if he would consider learning how to play the bass. His band, the Warlocks, was looking for a new bass player—the guy they had been working with had to be told which notes to play. Even though the trumpet player, Phil Lesh, didn’t play the bass, Garcia believed he could find the notes.

What happened next happened fast.

Lesh took to the bass quickly, and the Warlocks became the Grateful Dead. Within two years, they had released their debut album, “The Grateful Dead” (1967). And by the summer of 1969, they were on stage at Woodstock, well on their way to becoming one of the most identifiable, successful and divisive bands of their generation.

Lesh—whose death, Friday, at the age of 84, was announced on his Instagram account (no cause was given)—helped write a few of the Dead’s most popular songs during the band’s 30-year run, including “St. Stephen” and “Truckin’.” But his greatest contribution was what his unique style of bass playing—developed outside of traditional training and influence—did to the band’s sound.

“What makes them essentially a dance band probably begins with the jazz classical bassist, Phil Lesh, and the Elvin Jones-influenced (drummer) Bill Kreutzmann,” Bob Dylan wrote in “The Philosophy of Modern Song” in 2022. “Lesh is one of the most skilled bassists you’ll ever hear in subtlety and invention.”

Lesh wanted to invent every night.

Unlike most of its contemporaries, the Dead’s work in the studio was just the starting gun, source material for improvised explorations and extended musical conversations between band members in concert. Lesh told Relix magazine that he approached the stage as if “everything is possible” and that “nothing that’s gone before has any relevance at all.”

“What you can do is prepare yourself to be open; open for the pipeline to open and the magic to flow down through us,” he told the magazine. “It means leaving yourself behind. It’s not a question of, Oh God, don’t let me f— up, or anything like that. It’s a question of: Here I am. Work me, Lord.”

[lɐʍd]

RIPPL

[craigb]

RIP