Phil Lesh, Bassist for the Grateful Dead, Dies at 84

variety.com:

Chris Morris Music Reporter Bassist Phil Lesh, whose dense, inventive playing powered the Grateful Dead and, following the 1995 death of guitarist Jerry Garcia, many of the San Francisco band’s touring reincarnations, died Friday.

He was 84. The news was posted on his official Instagram page with the message “Phil Lesh, bassist and founding member of The Grateful Dead, passed peacefully this morning.

He was surrounded by his family and full of love. Phil brought immense joy to everyone around him and leaves behind a legacy of music and love.

We request that you respect the Lesh family’s privacy at this time.” Lesh was a classically trained trumpeter who had studied with avant garde composer Luciano Berio and played with minimalist pioneer Steve Reich when he was recruited to play bass – an instrument he had never studied – at a 1965 show in a Menlo Park, CA, pizza parlor by the Warlocks, a group fronted by his friend Jerry Garcia. “I was so excited that I didn’t have to think about it…but I knew something great was happening, something bigger than everybody, bigger than me for sure,” Lesh told the Dead’s publicist and official historian Dennis McNally in the 2002 book “A Long Strange Trip.” It is difficult to envision the oft-sprawling, improvisational work of the Dead without the sophisticated contributions of Lesh, who — like his Bay Area colleague Jack Casady of Jefferson Airplane and his English contemporary Jack Bruce of Cream — essentially reinvented the role of the bassist in a rock band format, in a unit that began life playing covers of bluegrass, blues and country tunes. “What makes the Dead’s sound so distinct from any other kind of rock and roll may be Lesh’s bass,” Nick Paumgarten noted in a 2012 New Yorker.