Click the link to read the article on The New York Times website (Ben Sisario and Mark Walker). Here’s an excerpt:
January 10, 2026
Bob Weir, a guitarist and songwriter who was a founding member of the Grateful Dead, which rose from jug band origins to become the kings of psychedelic rock, selling millions of records and inspiring a small nation of loyal fans, has died. He was 78…The band, which was founded in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1965, blended rock, folk, blues and country, with mellow ease and a gift for improvisation that became its trademark. In a rock milieu that was still based on short songs and catchy hooks, the Grateful Dead created a niche for meandering, exploratory performances that each seemed to have their own personalities…The band became the pied pipers of the wider hippie movement, providing the soundtrack for 1960s dropouts and LSD dabblers…Even after hippie culture faded, the band retained a gigantic fan base — called Deadheads, a term worn with pride and later adapted for numerous other fandoms — which followed the group wherever it played, traded recordings of its concerts and set up mini-encampments, complete with craft bazaars, oceans of tie-dye and no small amount of drugs.
It was one of rock’s original subcultures. “Our audience is like people who like licorice,” the band’s lead guitarist and singer, Jerry Garcia, once said. “Not everybody likes licorice, but the people who like licorice really like licorice.”
In the band, Mr. Weir — who, like Mr. Garcia, had an early fascination with folk music — stood alongside strong musical personalities. Mr. Garcia was a wizard of improvisation, and gave the group its aesthetic and conceptual direction. Phil Lesh, its bassist, had training as a composer. Mickey Hart, a percussionist, had eclectic tastes and played a major part in introducing Western audiences to world music…But Mr. Weir also developed a reputation for inventive timing on the rhythm guitar, his chords alternately grounding and contending with the melodic chaos of Mr. Lesh and Mr. Garcia’s instruments. Although Mr. Garcia and Robert Hunter, the group’s lyricist, were the Dead’s primary composers, Mr. Weir was also a contributor to the writing of key songs like “Playing in the Band” and “Sugar Magnolia.”