Phil Lesh

Phil Lesh was the co-founder and longtime bass player in the Grateful Dead, the game-changing San Francisco band that blended rock, country and folk with psychedelized improvisations and rewrote many of the rules of rock & roll. As both a musician and champion of experimental music, Lesh played a key role in the band’s style and development. 

Phillip Chapman Lesh was born on March 15, 1940. Unlike the other members of the Dead, who came from vernacular styles like blues and bluegrass, Lesh was steeped in classical and avant-garde music from an early age. Starting at eight, he played violin and trumpet and studied modern composition at Mills College in Oakland with avant-garde Italian composer Luciano Berio. He also famously worked for the San Francisco post office.

In 1965, Lesh’s world changed when he met Jerry Garcia, then a member of the Warlocks, who specialized largely in covers of blues and R&B songs. Intrigued by Garcia, Lesh took him up on his offer to play bass in the band that would soon change its name to the Grateful Dead.

From then until Garcia’s death in 1995, Lesh wasn’t merely the Dead’s bassist. His love of experimental music helped prod the band into free-form jams that became their trademark, and he rejected the conventional approach to bass (holding down the rhythm and allowing others to solo) in favor of a style that treated his instrument as much as a lead instrument as Garcia’s guitar. His notes, sometimes played on a six-string bass, poked and prodded the songs into unexpected places. Although rarely a lead singer, the famously irascible Lesh co-wrote (with Robert Hunter) and sang one of the band’s most emotional songs, “Box of Rain,” from 1970’s American Beauty.

Following Garcia’s death, Lesh stopped performing for a period and endured a liver transplant. But he was soon back on stage: with his fellow bandmates in various permutations (the Dead, the Other Ones, Furthur) and with Phil Lesh & Friends. The latter band, which had a revolving-door membership of players from both the rock and jazz worlds, kept the Dead’s improvisational spirit alive.

Lesh died on Oct. 25, 2024 at age 84. —David Browne