Bob Weir, M-A alum and founding member, guitarist, and vocalist of the Grateful Dead, passed away on Jan. 10. The global community of Deadheads—the extraordinarily passionate fans of the Grateful Dead—mourned Weir’s loss and honored his legacy of inventive yet familiar music.
Emerging in 1965, the Grateful Dead pioneered new sounds, blending rock, folk music, and psychedelia. Their improvisational style and uniquely varied setlists, with each of their concerts featuring different songs in a different order, planted them at the forefront of the jam band movement. The band was known for fostering a close community among fans, feeding off the passion of their eccentric, counterculture cult following as they continuously toured the U.S. for over 60 years.
Locally, thousands of Deadheads gathered to memorialize Weir outside of San Francisco City Hall on Jan. 17, decorating altars with red roses, a symbol of the band.
At M-A, students and teachers paid tribute to the musical icon by listening to Grateful Dead songs, wearing band merchandise, playing hacky sack (a game popularized by Deadheads while waiting outside concert venues), and even performing the Grateful Dead’s music themselves.
At a regular rehearsal night with his band, AP Environmental Science teacher Lance Powell and his friends paid homage to the Grateful Dead. “We played Grateful Dead songs all night long, just kind of as a tribute. And it’s so fun. It just kind of keeps on giving. And the way the music is set up, we can play it differently every time, and it’s very jam-oriented.”
In addition to their groundbreaking musical sound, the local roots of the Grateful Dead and Weir himself bring pride to M-A Deadheads. Weir and co-founder Jerry Garcia met for the first time at the now closed Dana Morgan’s Music Shop in Palo Alto. The band had their breakout performance at Magoo’s Pizza Parlor, now Bar Loretta, on Santa Cruz Avenue in downtown Menlo Park. Most notably, Weir attended M-A.
Weir grew up in Atherton with his adoptive parents, frequently moving schools, including to M-A for his junior year in the fall of 1965. “I think he was absent on picture day,” Powell said. “And so I don’t know that he was the strongest student. And actually, I’m sure it was undiagnosed, but he’s got dyslexia. But at the time, he probably was going through school feeling stupid because he was having a hard time with reading.”
Though Weir did not seem particularly invested in school, his presence inspires current M-A Deadheads.
“I think it’s so cool that M-A has produced so many music legends,” senior Zoe Yob said. “Not only some members of Fleetwood Mac, but just that the Grateful Dead is from Menlo Park. I feel like it gives so much pride to our community. It’s great.”
“I do think it kind of adds a little bit of nostalgia. That’s pretty cool that he went here and he was on this campus as a kid,” AP Calculus teacher Steven Kryger said.
The Bay Area connections expanded beyond Menlo Park to San Francisco, where the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood became the communal home for the band and a site of pilgrimage for Deadheads. This free-spiritedness defined a local culture that attracted many M-A teachers to the Bay Area.
“I think it says a lot about what San Francisco is and can be, and has given birth to. It reminds me of the old San Francisco before it became Silicon Valley techie. It reminds me of its origins. What drew me to San Francisco originally, actually,” Creative Writing teacher Maria Angelone said.
Raw, live music was what drew most young people to the band. Kryger attended his first Grateful Dead concert after college. “I just got hooked on the vibe of the live jam band show, and Dead was just a whole other experience.” He cites the improvisational aspect of the band’s music as the source of his dedicated passion. “They communicate on stage, and they go in a certain direction, and they just allow it. It’s how they’re feeling on that given night, how they want to express themselves.”
“I love the experience of being in a Dead show and letting the music just move through me. That’s what I really love,” Angelone said.
Like properly obsessed Deadheads, multiple M-A teachers, including Angelone, Kryger, and Powell have attended tens of, if not over a hundred, Grateful Dead concerts each. “When I was really in my heyday of attending shows, they would do two, three, four nights. I would go to every show. People are like, ‘Why would you go?’ It’s a completely different show. It’s a completely different set of songs,” Kryger said.
This novelty and mystique captured the imagination of Powell when he was a high school sophomore in Minnesota, later inspiring him to drive 12 hours to concerts between college classes and then follow the band around the country after graduation.
“That’s where I got the bug for travel,” Powell said. “And like, there’s a whole world outside of the Midwest that I need to explore. I built my confidence doing that too, because I’d go to shows by myself, and I’d hitchhike and I’d meet all these interesting people. And then the fun part would be like, I’d meet him this year, and then we say goodbye, and then a couple years later, we’re at a show. It’s like, ‘Wait a second, I know you people.’ The music just keeps bringing people back together again.”
Weir was instrumental in creating the rich sound of the band. “Bob Weir was always solid, and he could sing, and the way he came in with rhythm guitar, I think a lot of people really respect that, because with Grateful Dead there’s all these things happening, and the music’s all interweaving,” Powell added. “And Bob Weir was like the rhythm, just a really distinct rhythm sound that totally worked for that setting.”
Greatly inspired by the Grateful Dead, Powell is in multiple bands, and he appreciates Weir’s drive. “He knew he wasn’t the best musician, I remember seeing an interview,” Powell said. “It didn’t matter. He’s like, ‘I gotta have the music. I gotta do it.’ Find somebody else that’s played that many shows ever in the history of Earth.”
Within a band carrying so much unique legacy, Weir proved to be the glue that held the music together and appealed to earlier generations. Now, young people are continuing the legacy, too.
Introduced to the Grateful Dead by his dad, junior Sam Huddleston has been to his fair share of concerts. “I’ve seen them at the Sphere like six times, me and [junior] Cole [Genauer]. I’ve seen them in Mexico three times, Hollywood, Shoreline, Chase Center, Giants Stadium,” Huddleston said.
Huddleston and his friends also play hacky sack every lunch, inspired by prior Deadheads to recreate the feeling of community found in the game. “[The Grateful Dead] is just a symbol in my life for happiness, I guess, so I can always turn it on and it brings joy,” he said.
Yob also reminisced on her childhood full of fandom, lovingly passed down by her dad, who attended M-A when the Grateful Dead was very popular. In fact, her first dog was named Bear after the band’s Jerry Bear symbol.
One of Yob’s favorite songs is “I Will Take You Home.” “It was made by Brent Midland, and it was for his little daughter,” Yob said. “[My dad] still always plays the song whenever we’re together. It’s just about a dad and how he’ll never leave his daughter.”
Weir often spoke of a 300-year legacy of the Grateful Dead’s music, hoping to impact audiences beyond the lives of the original band members.
Powell attended Weir’s last shows in Golden Gate Park. “His three nights in a row sold out, 60,000 plus people in the park. So many people, and most of them weren’t even alive when Jerry Garcia was alive. And so now I’m older, but there’s kids there, right? It’s multi-generational. It’s always kind of been like that,” Powell said. “The spirit of the Grateful Dead is alive and well all over the place, and even though Bob Weir just died, the music continues on, and that’s kind of the exciting part.”
