It is significant that Phil Lesh, who has passed away at the age of 84, claimed that one of his earliest memories was hearing Brahms’ First Symphony and being shocked. Lesh came to fame as the bassist for the Grateful Dead, but was classically trained and performed in a wide range of fields. His musical tastes take his playing far beyond the traditional narrow confines of bass guitar in rock music.
Formed in San Francisco in 1965, the Grateful Dead pioneered their own brand of improvised music, and Lesh’s playing was imaginative, moving freely between expansive jams from rock, blues, and country. Ta. Even their most ardent fans acknowledged that the concerts could be haphazard affairs as the band waited for inspiration. But when it did, the results were unforgettable.
Their live performances are preserved on numerous official recordings and countless pirate tapes, but Live/Dead (1969) and the box set So Many Roads (1965-1995) are It provides an example of the band in action at length and includes a lengthy introduction by Lesh. The former’s Dark Star is a trademark moment. His eloquent, contrapuntal basslines were as distinctive and integral to the band’s sound as Jerry Garcia’s lead guitar.
Lesh helped compose some of the Dead’s most famous songs. His most personal work was “Box of Rain” (from the 1970 album American Beauty), a song for his dying father on which he sang lead vocals and Robert Hunter wrote the lyrics. It is a melancholy hymn. However, he is also credited as a composer on the Dead’s on-the-road journeys “Truckin”’ and “Cumberland Blues.”
He co-wrote and sang “Unbroken Chain” and “Pride of Cucamonga” on the album From the Mars Hotel (1974), and co-wrote and sang on the album “Passengers from Terrapin Station” (1977). ), and was one of the masterminds behind St. Stephen. An early favorite from a Grateful Dead concert.
Phil Lesh (right) and Jerry Garcia rehearse with the Grateful Dead in San Francisco in 1976. Photo: Ed Perlstein/Red Ferns
Phil was born in Berkeley, California, the son of Frank, an amateur musician who owned a small business, and his wife Barbara (née Chapman). He was well cared for by his maternal grandmother, Jewel “Bobby” Chapman, who was a music lover who kept the radio tuned to classical broadcasts. In his autobiography, In Search of Sound: My Life with the Grateful Dead (2005), Phil wrote: I’m playing his favorite song on the piano. ” Lesh began learning the violin and performed with the Young People’s Symphony Orchestra in Berkeley.
At age 14, he switched to trumpet and transferred from El Cerrito High School to Berkeley High School to study harmony. Interested in free jazz and the classical avant-garde, he studied briefly at San Francisco State University and the College of San Mateo before enrolling at the University of California, Berkeley.
However, he dropped out again, choosing to study with Italian experimental composer Luciano Berio at Mills College in Oakland (his classmates included future minimalist star Steve Reich). Loesch created some of his own works and experimented with composition with Reich.
The Grateful Dead in 1970. From left: Bill Kreutzmann, Ron Pigpen McKernan, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, Phil Lesh. Photo: IanDagnall Computing/AlamyIn 1965, he met Garcia, then better known as a bluegrass banjo player than an electric guitarist, who was performing with his band, the Warlocks, at a pizza parlor in Menlo Park in the San Francisco Bay Area. Lesch recalls being struck that “music with such directness and simplicity could provide aesthetic and emotional benefits comparable to the best operatic and symphonic works.”
Garcia immediately told Lesh that he was the band’s new bassist, to which Lesh responded, “Why?” Soon after, the group changed its name to the Grateful Dead. Perhaps because he had never played bass before, Lesh was uninhibited and played with other 1960s innovations such as Cream’s Jack Bruce, The Who’s John Entwistle, and Jefferson Airplane’s Jack Cassady. I approached this instrument with the same spirit as the others.
The Dead’s colorful career ended with Garcia’s death in 1995, a year after they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. However, band members frequently dabbled in projects outside of the band and continued to do so.
In 1975, Lesh created the experimental album Seastones with electronics specialist Ned Ragin and various California-based musicians. In 1998, he joined fellow Dead survivors Bob Weir and Mickey Hart, and former Dead keyboardist Bruce Hornsby, in The Other Ones, later renamed the Dead.
Phil Lesh, 2007. Photo: Matt Sayles/AP
That same year, Lesh, who suffered from chronic hepatitis C, underwent a liver transplant. He made a full recovery and then worked with his own team, Phil Lesh and friends. The band was born briefly in 1994 and featured Garcia, but from 1999 it became a rotating group of musicians that included members of Phish, Little Feat, the Allman Brothers Band, and Jefferson Airplane.
From 1999 to 2003, a version of the band called the Phil Lesh Quintet became its most enduring incarnation, releasing several live albums and a studio album, There and Back Again (2002). I recorded it. In 2008, the group was augmented by Weir and Hart for a concert supporting Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.
The group also performed at Terrapin Crossroads, a restaurant and music venue that Resh opened in San Rafael, California, in 2012, and Resh’s sons, musicians Graham and Brian, often performed with the house band. In 2009, Lesh and Weir reunited at Farseur to become a sextet that performs music by or in the spirit of the Grateful Dead.
Lesh reunited with Weir, Hart, and Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann in 2015 for a concert titled “Fare Thee Well: Celebrating 50 Years of the Grateful Dead” at Chicago’s Soldier Field Stadium. We held three concerts.
In 2006, Lesh underwent surgery for prostate cancer that killed his father. In 2015, he revealed that he underwent surgery for bladder cancer.
He is survived by his wife Jill, with whom he founded the Unbroken Chain Foundation, which supports music, education and environmental charities, Graham and Brian, and grandchildren.
Philip Chapman Lesh, musician, singer, composer, born March 15, 1940. Died on October 25, 2024
