The surviving members of the Grateful Dead paid tribute to founding bassist Phil Lesh in a statement following his death Friday, “Today we lost a brother.”
“Phil Lesh was irreplaceable. In one note from the Phil Zone, you could hear and feel the world being born. His bass flowed like a river would flow. It went where the muse took it. He was an explorer of inner and outer space who just happened to play bass. He was a circumnavigator of formerly unknown musical worlds. And more,” Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann wrote on the Dead’s social media accounts.
“We can count on the fingers of one hand the people we can say had as profound an influence on our development – in every sense. And there have been even less people who did so continuously over the decades and will continue to for as long as we live. What a gift he was for us. We won’t say he will be missed, as in any given moment, nothing we do will be without the lessons he taught us – and the lessons that are yet to come, as the conversations will go on.”
Lesh died Friday at the age of 84; no cause of death was given. “He was surrounded by his family and full of love,” his family said in a statement. “Phil brought immense joy to everyone around him and leaves behind a legacy of music and love.”
Following the death of Jerry Garcia (whose family also paid tribute to Lesh Friday) in 1995, the band made sure the music never stopped by spinning off into various Dead-related entities, with Lesh participating in the Other Ones, Furthur, the Dead, and his own beloved Phil & Friends.
“Phil loved the Dead Heads and always kept them in his heart and mind. The thing is… Phil was so much more than a virtuoso bass player, a composer, a family man, a cultural icon…,” the surviving three original members added Friday.
“There will be a lot of tributes, and they will all say important things. But for us, we’ve spent a lifetime making music with Phil Lesh and the music has a way of saying it all. So listen to the Grateful Dead and, in that way, we’ll all take a little bit of Phil with us, forever.”
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