Grateful Dead co-founder guitarist Bob Weir dies at 78

American guitarist and songwriter Bob Weir, a founding member of the revolutionary psychedelic jam band Grateful Dead, has died at the age of 78, his family announced Saturday.

Weir was diagnosed with cancer in July and had beaten the disease, but “succumbed to underlying lung problems,” his family said in a statement on his personal website, without specifying where or when he died.

“For over sixty years, Bobby led the way,” the statement said. “Bobby will forever be a guiding force whose unique artistry reshaped American music.”

“His work did more than fill rooms with music; it was warm sunlight that filled the soul, building a community, a language and a sense of family that carry generations of fans with them.”

Formed in San Francisco by Weir, Jerry Garcia, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, Phil Lesh and Bill Kreutzmann, the Grateful Dead became one of the leading musical groups to emerge from the counterculture movement of the 1960s.

With their trademark improvisational, genre-blending style, the band became known for never performing the same show twice, gaining a rabid and diverse legion of fans and selling millions of records.

The band revolutionized fan engagement, as fans – known as “Deadheads” – recorded and traded tapes of the concerts in a communal camping environment that traveled from stage to stage, a trend that was later copied by fans of other bands.

The rockers disbanded in 1995, a few months after guitarist Garcia died at age 53, and a year after the group was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

However, Weir would continue to play intermittently with other live band members, most recently in the band Dead & Company, which also included guitarist and singer John Mayer.

“As we remember Bobby, it’s hard not to feel the echo of the way he lived,” the family said.

“A man who drifts and dreams, not worrying if the road will lead him home. A child of countless trees. A child of boundless seas,” the family said, citing the songs “Cassidy” and “Lost Sailor,” written by Weir and the late John Perry Barlow.

After Weir’s death, 79-year-old drummer Kreutzmann became the last living co-founder of the Grateful Dead.

Bassist Lesh died in October 2024 aged 84, while keyboardist McKernan died aged 27 in 1973.

Drummer Mickey Hart, 82, joined the band in 1967.

In 2024, the final year of Joe Biden’s presidency, Weir and other living members of the Grateful Dead received Kennedy Center Honors, among America’s highest artistic honors.

“The Grateful Dead has always been about community, creativity and exploration in music and performance,” Weir, Hart, Lesh and Kreutzmann said at the time.