Phil Lesh
Best known for
Bass
Phil Lesh was the founding bassist of the Grateful Dead whose path into rock began through the early 1960s Bay Area folk-and-bluegrass coffeehouse scene — he met Jerry Garcia when Garcia was a working bluegrass banjo player at radio station KPFA. The Dead's acoustic excursions later threaded back to that string-band origin.
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- Born March 15, 1940 in Berkeley, California; died October 25, 2024 at age 84 in Stinson Beach, California.
- Founding bassist of the Grateful Dead (1965–1995); inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994 as a member of the band.
- Met Jerry Garcia at radio station KPFA in the early 1960s when Garcia was a working bluegrass banjo player; Lesh, then a classically trained trumpeter and avant-garde composition student of Luciano Berio, invited Garcia onto KPFA's "Midnight Special" show.
- Sang the high tenor part in the Dead's three-part harmonies through the early 1970s, including lead on "Box of Rain" (American Beauty, 1970).
- The Grateful Dead's bluegrass-adjacent acoustic excursions — most notably the 1980 "Reckoning" sessions and the trio of acoustic shows at the Warfield/Radio City — leaned on the same Garcia/Grisman/Rowan/Hartford string-band vocabulary that Old & In the Way drew from.
- After the Dead disbanded in 1995, led Phil Lesh and Friends, which routinely shared bills and personnel with players from the bluegrass and newgrass scene; toured with Bob Weir in Furthur 2009–2014.
- From 2012 to 2021 ran Terrapin Crossroads, a music venue and restaurant in San Rafael, California that hosted countless string-band and Americana sit-ins.
- Survived a 1998 liver transplant and became a public advocate for organ donation, ending most shows for the rest of his life with the "Donor Rap."