Phil Lesh, the classically trained violinist and jazz trumpeter who found his calling in reinventing the role of the rock bass guitar as a founding member of the Grateful Dead, died Friday at the age of 84.
Lesh’s death was announced on his Instagram account. Lesh was the oldest and one of the longest surviving members of the band that came to define the acid rock sound emanating from San Francisco in the 1960s.
“Phil Lesh, bassist and founding member of the Grateful Dead, passed away peacefully this morning. He was surrounded by family and filled with love. Phil brought immeasurable joy to those around him. and left a legacy of music and love,” the Instagram statement reads in part.
Watch the video above
Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh dies at age 84 (AP)
Read more: For almost two years, Jackie ‘O’ Henderson wondered whether to tell the world the truth.
The statement did not mention a specific cause of death, and attempts to contact representatives for further details were not immediately successful. Lesh has previously suffered from prostate and bladder cancer, and survived a liver transplant in 1998 due to a debilitating hepatitis C infection and years of heavy drinking.
Lesh’s death came two days after Mushicares named the Grateful Dead its Person of the Year. MusiCares, which supports music professionals in need of financial or other types of assistance, cites Lesh’s Unbroken Chain Foundation among other philanthropic efforts. The Dead will be honored at a benefit gala ahead of the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles in January.
Although Lesh kept a relatively low profile in public, rarely giving interviews or speaking to audiences, fans and band members noted that the thunderous lines on his six-string electric bass gave the lead guitarist a masterful performance. He was recognized as an important member of the Grateful Dead who provided counterpoint. It supported Jerry Garcia’s soaring solos and the band’s famous marathon jam.
“When the fills are happening, the band is happening,” Garcia once said.
Drummer Mickey Hart called him the group’s intellectual who brought the mindset and skills of a classical composer to a five-chord rock and roll band.
Lesh credited Garcia with teaching him how to play bass in the unconventional lead guitar style that became famous, mixing thunderous arpeggios with fragments of spontaneously composed orchestral passages. There is.
For your daily dose of 9honey, subscribe to our newsletter here.
All famous people who died in 2024
Fellow bassist Rob Wasserman once said that Lesh’s style set him apart from other bassists he knew. While most of the other members were content to keep time and deliver the occasional solo, Wasserman said Lesch was talented and confident enough to lead his fellow musicians through the melody of the song. said.
“He happens to play bass, but he’s more like a horn player, playing all the arpeggios and always playing counterpoint,” he said.
A classically trained violinist, Resch began her long musical journey with her third-grade lessons. He started playing the trumpet at age 14 and eventually won the second chair in California’s Oakland Symphony Orchestra while still a teenager.
But he largely put both instruments aside, driving a mail truck and working as a sound engineer for a small radio station in 1965, when Garcia scouted him to play bass for a fledgling rock band called the Warlocks.
When Lesh told Garcia he didn’t play bass, Garcia asked, “Didn’t you play violin?” When he said yes, Garcia told him, “Here you go.”
Armed with a cheap four-string instrument his girlfriend had bought him, Lesch took seven hours of lessons with Garcia, following Garcia’s advice to tune the instrument’s strings an octave lower than the bottom four strings of Garcia’s guitar. Ta. Garcia then released him, allowing Lesh to develop a spontaneous playing style that he would embrace for the rest of his life.
Read more: ‘Suddenly you’re in the greatest acting class of all time’: Soprano looks back on 25 years since she appeared on the hit show
Lesch developed a spontaneous playing style that would stick with him throughout his life. (AP)
Lesh and Garcia frequently traded leads, often spontaneously, but the band as a whole often began long, experimental, jazz-influenced jams during concerts. As a result, even famous Grateful Dead songs like “Truckin'” and “Sugar Magnolia” rarely sound the same twice in a row, allowing loyal fans to listen to them one after the other. This inspired me to go to the show.
“It’s always in flux. We pretty much just figure it out on the fly,” Lesh said with a laugh in a rare 2009 interview with The Associated Press. “You can’t articulate those things in the rehearsal room.”
Philip Chapman Resch was born March 15, 1940, in Berkeley, California, the only child of Frank Resch, an office equipment repairman, and his wife, Barbara.
He later said that his love of music started when he listened to New York Philharmonic broadcasts on his grandmother’s radio. One of his earliest memories was hearing the great German composer Bruno Walter conduct his orchestra in a performance of Brahms’s First Symphony.
The musical influences he often cited were not rock musicians, but composers like Bach and Edgardo Varese, and jazz greats like John Coltrane and Miles Davis.
By the time he arrived at San Mateo College, Lesch gravitated from classical music to cool jazz, eventually becoming the school’s first trumpet player in the big band and composer of several orchestral works performed by the group. .
Read more: Traveling with King Charles and Queen Camilla: What it’s really like to cover a royal tour
Lesh reinvented the role of rock’s bass guitar. (AP)
However, after graduating from college, he concluded that he did not have the lung capacity to become an elite player and quit playing the trumpet.
Shortly after he started playing bass, the Warlocks changed their name to the Grateful Dead, and Lesh began captivating audiences with his dexterity. A crowd gathered in what later became known as “The Phil Zone,” directly in front of his position on stage.
Although Lesh was never a prolific songwriter, he wrote and sometimes sang some of the band’s most beloved songs. These included the upbeat country rockers Pride of Cucamonga, the jazz-influenced Unbroken Chain, and the exquisitely beautiful Box of Rain.
Lesh composed the song on guitar as a gift for his dying father, and Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter heard the instrumental recording and contacted him the next day with a lyric sheet. I remembered that. He said the sheet contained “some of the most moving and heartfelt lyrics I’ve ever had the good fortune to sing.”
Bands often closed their concerts with this song.
After the group disbanded following Garcia’s death in 1995, Lesh often did not participate when the other surviving members gathered to perform.
Read more: Sitting on a platform 27 meters above the ground, Liannan took a deep breath and threw herself down.
Phil Lesh joined the band on tour in 2009 and 2015. (AP)
He joined the Grateful Dead on tour in 2009, and in 2015 performed several “Fare Thee Well” concerts to commemorate the band’s 50th anniversary and what Lesh said would be the last time he would play with another band. ” Participated in the concert again.
However, he continued to perform frequently, but with a rotating cast of musicians, whom he called Phil Lesh and Friends.
In later years, he typically held these performances at Terrapin Crossroads, a restaurant and nightclub he opened near his home in Northern California in 2012. The restaurant is named after the Grateful Dead song and album Terrapin Station.
Resch is survived by his wife Jill and sons Brian and Graham.
FOLLOW US ON WHATSAPP HERE: Stay up-to-date with all the latest on Celebrity, Lifestyle and Opinion via our WhatsApp channel. There are no comments, no algorithms, and no one can see your personal information.
