The Grateful Dead salute late bassist Phil Lesh as their ‘brother’

The Grateful Dead hailed the band’s late bassist Phil Lesh as their “brother.”

In a joint statement from the iconic psychedelic band’s surviving members, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, tributes were paid to the musician on Friday morning (26.10.24), following the guitarist’s “peaceful” death at the age of 84.

Referring to Phil’s wife and children, the group said on Instagram: “We lost a brother today. Our hearts and love go out to Jill Lesh, Brian and Grahame. Phil Lesh was irreplaceable.”

Paying tribute to Phil’s guitar style, they added: “You could hear and feel the world being born in one note from the Phil Zone.

“His head flowed like a river. He went where his muse took him.

“He was just an inner and outer space explorer who played bass. “He was someone who circumnavigated previously unknown musical worlds. And more.”

He added that Phil’s bandmates could “count on the fingers of one hand” the people they could say “had an equally profound impact on our development in every sense.”

They added that in music “there are far fewer who have done this consistently over the decades” and “will continue to do so as long as we live”, and said Phil was a “gift” to the Dead.

The statement continued: “We will not say that he will be missed, for at any given moment nothing we do would be without the lessons he taught us and the lessons that are yet to come as the conversations continue. ”

Born in Berkeley, California, Phil met future Dead bandmate Jerry Garcia at a party in Menlo Park in 1962.

In 1965 Phil, Jerry, Bill, Bob and Ron ‘Pigpen’ McKernan played their first gigs under the name The Warlocks, and by the end of the year the band became known as The Grateful Dead – often referred to as The Dead by its legion of loyalists. ‘Dead Heads’ followers.

The band has released 13 studio albums as well as dozens of live albums; In 1967, Mickey Hart joined as drummer.

Pianist Ron died in 1973 and the band went through a variety of members, including keyboardist Brent Mydland, before disbanding in 1995 following Jerry’s death the same year at age 53.