{"id":419248,"date":"2026-01-20T18:58:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T18:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/419248\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T18:58:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T18:58:11","slug":"the-late-bob-weir-once-recalled-jerry-garcia-booting-him-from-the-grateful-dead-in-1968","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/419248\/","title":{"rendered":"The Late Bob Weir Once Recalled Jerry Garcia Booting Him From the Grateful Dead in 1968"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Grateful Dead\u2019s long, strange trip nearly ended early when Jerry Garcia booted Bob Weir from the band.<\/p>\n

Weir \u2014 who recently died at age 78, 30 years after Garcia\u2019s death at 53 \u2014 recalled that Garcia felt Weir\u2019s shortcomings on the rhythm guitar \u201chog-tied\u201d the band\u2019s music, according to PrimeTimer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Getty Images<\/p>\n

The 1968 ouster also included the band\u2019s keyboard player, Ron \u201cPigpen\u201d McKernan, and lasted for a \u201cfew months,\u201d Weir recalled.<\/p>\n

In a 1992 Grateful Dead Guide blog post, the late Rock & Roll Hall of Famer wrote that the band\u2019s fellow founding members Garcia and Phil Lesh felt Weir and McKernan weren\u2019t keeping up musically.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were the junior musicians in the band, and Jerry and Phil in particular thought that we were sort of holding things back,\u201d Weir wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe music wasn\u2019t able to get as free because it was hog-tied by our playing abilities, which was kind of true.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Getty Images<\/p>\n

According to Weir, he sent himself to the woodshed and concentrated on improving his skills.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t the best time of my life,\u201d he wrote in a 2011 blog post on the Dead site. \u201cI kept working on guitar and singing. I was thinking about [joining another band], but I figured first things first \u2014 I oughta woodshed a bunch.\u201d<\/p>\n

Weir recalled that Garcia and Lesh were headed toward fusion jazz, and he and Pigpen weren\u2019t quite there.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was complicated and required a great deal of facility on the instruments. So they played without us for a couple of months,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

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Getty Images<\/p>\n

According to the blog post, Garcia asked band manager Rock Scully to fire Weir and Pigpen. Scully felt they were kicked out as a warning.<\/p>\n

\u201cGarcia knew what he was doing,\u201d Scully wrote. \u201cHe was just scaring their asses, rattling their cages. They took a couple of weeks off. Weir went and got some more electric guitar training.\u201d<\/p>\n

Happily for Deadheads everywhere, Garcia welcomed the two back, and Weir went on to help write the group\u2019s \u201cSugar Magnolia\u201d and \u201cPlaying in the Band\u201d and sing the tongue-twisting travelogue in the Dead\u2019s signature hit, \u201cTruckin\u2019\u201d.<\/p>\n

This story The Late Bob Weir Once Recalled Jerry Garcia Booting Him From the Grateful Dead in 1968<\/a> first appeared on National Enquirer<\/a>. Add National Enquirer as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Grateful Dead\u2019s long, strange trip nearly ended early when Jerry Garcia booted Bob Weir from the band.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":419249,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[40853,88,2934,40240,40241,216,51042,200472,200471],"class_list":["post-419248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-bob-weir","tag-entertainment","tag-getty-images","tag-grateful-dead","tag-jerry-garcia","tag-music","tag-phil-lesh","tag-rock-scully","tag-ron-pigpen-mckernan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}