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\t\t\tI \n\tAt 77 \u2014 huddled inside A&R Studios, part of the historic Jim Henson studio lot that his bandmate John Mayer had recently purchased<\/a> \u2014 those memories were still fresh. Sure, he needed that glass of Coke during a break in the interview, a sugar boost after he admitted he was \u201cstarting to fade a little bit.\u201d But he was as sharp as ever, talking about stories that stretched back to the Sixties as if they\u2019d all happened last week. At the same time, he was juggling several events in the present to honor his band of 60 years, from the Kennedy Center<\/a> to the MusiCares celebration<\/a>, just before Dead & Company returned to the Sphere in Las Vegas for another residency<\/a>. But he was nonchalant about it all. \u201cI\u2019m the same guy,\u201d he said. \u201cI still have to get out of bed in the morning, and my back\u2019s cranky. Nothing much has changed.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThat was Bobby, avoiding praise and pride at all times. He joined the Grateful Dead<\/a> when he was 16, so he was the baby of the family, a little brother figure to Jerry Garcia (the band had to promise Weir\u2019s mother that he was still attending school). And even decades later, after several of his bandmates were gone (Bob preferred the term \u201cchecked out\u201d), he still had a youthful, impish charm about him. If he felt any pressure about carrying on the band\u2019s legacy, he never let any of us see it. That\u2019s why our hearts are aching over his death<\/a> at 78. The Kid, as the Merry Pranksters called him, has left us.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n \n\tWeir died on Saturday, the 10th anniversary<\/a> of David Bowie\u2019s death (there\u2019s not all that much musical crossover between the glam legend and the Grateful Dead, but you\u2019d better believe my beloved Dead redditors made this excellent graphic<\/a>). Many of us were busy remembering Bowie, but I\u2019ll admit that I woke up thinking about Weir. I was oiling some cutting boards in my kitchen and listening to \u201cJack Straw,\u201d as one does on a Saturday, thinking about how quiet he\u2019d been lately. He didn\u2019t perform his annual New Year\u2019s Eve shows with his band the Wolf Bros in Florida, hadn\u2019t posted any recent workout videos<\/a>. And he had no tour dates on the books. I hoped he was doing OK. Hours later, when I received the news, I realized it was Saturday night. Of course it was.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tI had been chasing Weir down for an interview for years. I envisioned us working out, doing deadlifts together in the gym, or meditating on some distant mountaintop. But our time together at the Henson lot was better than that. I had recently befriended his daughter Chloe, a talented photographer<\/a> who spent countless nights documenting her father onstage. She was eager to introduce me to her dad and his lovely wife Natascha, who hung out in the studio with us during our interview. It gave me a sense of who Weir actually was. To him, the music always came second to family.<\/p>\n \n\tThough Weir had indulged in plenty of substances in his past \u2014 he once took LSD every Saturday for an entire year \u2014 he was healthier than most rock stars, and had overcome past scares<\/a>. As Rolling Stone contributor David Browne wrote in his 2015 book So Many Roads<\/a> (a bible for any serious Deadhead), Weir was on a macrobiotic diet back in the Haight-Ashbury days. He could be seen eating seaweed in the kitchen of the Dead\u2019s famous house in the neighborhood, chewing incredibly slowly. And when the band\u2019s home was raided by the cops<\/a> in 1967, he was busy upstairs, practicing yoga.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n \n\tWeir was also incredibly funny. He used phrases<\/a> like \u201cHe\u2019s more fun than a frog in a glass of milk\u201d and once drove around with a duck in his arms and a glass of champagne, as seen in the wacky video for 1987\u2019s \u201cHell in a Bucket<\/a>.\u201d He was also excellent at one-liners. During that \u201967 drug raid, when he was escorted out of the house in handcuffs, he yelled, \u201cAs they say, just spell the name right!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tWeir was often called \u201cThe Other One<\/a>,\u201d the rhythm guitarist who molded perfectly around Garcia and bassist Phil Lesh<\/a>, grounding the melody while allowing for cosmic exploration. \u201cHe\u2019s an extraordinary original player,\u201d Garcia once said. \u201cIn a world full of people who sound like each other, he\u2019s really got a style that\u2019s totally unique. I don\u2019t know anybody else that plays the guitar the way he does.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tTo Bob Dylan, whom the Dead toured with in 1987, Weir was \u201ca very unorthodox rhythm player. Has his own style, not unlike Joni Mitchell but from a different place. Plays strange, augmented chords and half chords at unpredictable intervals that somehow match up with Jerry Garcia \u2014 who plays like Charlie Christian and Doc Watson at the same time.\u201d Or, as Weir simply told Rolling Stone<\/a> in 2015, \u201cSome people were born with perfect pitch. I was born with perfect time.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIt was no secret that Weir was also the most handsome member of the Grateful Dead, responsible for bringing women around. \u201cThere\u2019s beautiful Bobby, surrounded by the ugly brothers,\u201d Dead songwriter John Perry Barlow joked in the excellent 2015 documentary The Other One: The Long Strange Trip of Bob Weir. \u201cIf you\u2019re gonna go to bed with somebody from the band, is it gonna be Pigpen?!\u201d Garcia used to joke that this is why they put up with all of Weir\u2019s shenanigans, and that probably includes his often-discussed denim shorts phase of the Eighties. (He chalked that look up to the heat: \u201cIt\u2019s always July under the lights,\u201d he said.)\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tDescribing Weir as \u201cThe Other One\u201d stopped making sense after Garcia\u2019s death in 1995. Whether in the Wolf Bros., RatDog, or any Dead offshoots like the Other Ones, the Dead, Furthur, and Dead & Company, he became the keeper of the flame for the 30 years that followed (alongside drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, and Lesh before he died in 2024). Weir practically lived on the road, touring nonstop since 1965, ensuring the Dead\u2019s music lived on.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cOne of the things that I hope that I\u2019m remembered for is bringing our culture and other cultures together \u2014 by virtue or by example of,\u201d he told me. \u201cI\u2019m hoping that people of varying persuasions will find something they can agree on in the music that I\u2019ve offered, and find each other through it.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n \n\tDuring our time together, Weir told me he was finally making headway on the memoir he\u2019d been working on for years, fittingly titled It\u2019s Always July Under the Lights. I wonder how much he completed, and if we\u2019ll ever get to read it \u2014 a look inside his weird and wonderful brain, one last time. \u201cI look forward to dying,\u201d he said proudly. \u201cI tend to think of death as the last and best reward for a life well-lived. That\u2019s it. I\u2019ve still got a lot on my plate, and I won\u2019t be ready to go for a while.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIt\u2019s the kind of quote that startles you when you re-read it, almost like he knew he was nearing the end. But that\u2019s not really what stays with me when I revisit our chat, hours after he\u2019s checked out. What I come back to are those Birkenstocks, and how he told me he\u2019d recently abandoned them to run barefoot on rocky roads outside his home. In touch with the earth, in motion, forever. \u201cI think that\u2019s a great way to get grounded,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a practice that\u2019s amounting to something for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\tn the end, I always thought about his Birkenstocks. I\u2019d often glance over at them during our interview<\/a>, both of our pairs positioned next to each other on the studio floor, below the couch where we sat. Those are Bob Weir<\/a>\u2019s Birkenstocks! I thought. But he didn\u2019t pay attention to the sandals, which had become his signature look in his later years. He was busy playing ball with my questions the best he could, stroking his beard and sipping on a glass of Coke. He gently opened up to me, the ice clinking around as he dug into his box of memories. I had no idea he\u2019d be gone in less than a year.<\/p>\n