SAN FRANCISCO (AP) \u2014 Thousands of mourners gathered Saturday at San Francisco\u2019s Civic Center to celebrate the life of Bob Weir, the legendary guitarist and founding member of the Grateful Dead who died last week at age 78.<\/p>\n
Musicians Joan Baez and John Mayer spoke on a makeshift stage in front of the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium after four Buddhist monks opened the event with a prayer in Tibetan. Fans carried long-stemmed red roses, placing some at an altar filled with photos and candles. They wrote notes on colored paper, professing their love and thanking him for the journey. <\/p>\n
Several asked him to say hello to fellow singer and guitarist Jerry Garcia and bass guitarist Phil Lesh, also founding members who preceded him in death. Garcia died in 1995; Lesh died in 2024. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m here to celebrate Bob Weir,\u201d said Ruthie Garcia, who is no relation to Jerry, a fan since 1989. \u201cCelebrating him and helping him go home.\u201d <\/p>\n
Saturday\u2019s celebration brought plenty of fans with long dreadlocks and wearing tie-dye clothing, some using walkers. But there were also young couples, men in their 20s and a father who brought his 6-year-old son in order to pass on to the next generation a love of live music and the tight-knit Deadhead community. <\/p>\n
The Bay Area native joined the Grateful Dead \u2014 originally the Warlocks \u2014 in 1965 in San Francisco at just 17 years old. He wrote or co-wrote and sang lead vocals on Dead classics including \u201cSugar Magnolia,\u201d \u201cOne More Saturday Night\u201d and \u201cMexicali Blues.\u201d He was generally considered less shaggy looking than the other band members, although he adopted a long beard like Garcia\u2019s later in life. <\/p>\n
The Dead played music that pulled in blues, jazz, country, folk and psychedelia in long improvisational jams. Their concerts attracted avid Deadheads who followed them on tours. The band played on decades after Garcia\u2019s death, morphing into Dead & Company with John Mayer. <\/p>\n
Darla Sagos, who caught an early flight out of Seattle Saturday morning to make the public mourning, said she suspected something was up when there were no new gigs announced after Dead & Company played three nights in San Francisco last summer. It was unusual, as his calendar often showed where he would be playing next. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe were hoping that everything was OK and that we were going to get more music from him,\u201d she said. \u201cBut we will continue the music, with all of us and everyone that\u2019s going to be playing it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sagos and her husband, Adam Sagos, have a one-year-old grandson who will grow up knowing the music. <\/p>\n
A statement on Weir\u2019s Instagram account announced his passing Jan. 10. It said he beat cancer, but he succumbed to underlying lung issues. He is survived by his wife and two daughters, who were at Saturday\u2019s event.<\/p>\n
His death was sudden and unexpected, said daughter Monet Weir, but he had always wished for the music and the legacy of the Dead to outlast him. <\/p>\n
American music, he believed, could unite, she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe show must go on,\u201d Monet Weir said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN FRANCISCO (AP) \u2014 Thousands of mourners gathered Saturday at San Francisco\u2019s Civic Center to celebrate the life…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138312,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[29795,27902,5167,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-138311","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco","8":"tag-ap-entertainment","9":"tag-ap-u-s-news","10":"tag-associated-press","11":"tag-san-francisco","12":"tag-san-francisco-headlines","13":"tag-san-francisco-news","14":"tag-sf","15":"tag-sf-headlines","16":"tag-sf-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}