Robert Weir
Robert Weir was born on October 16, 1947 in Atherton, California. His contributions to the Dead have included playing rhythm guitar, singing vocals, and songwriting.
Like other members of the Dead, Weir was a high school dropout. He became friends with the other members of the Grateful Dead while hanging out in the Stanford coffeehouse scene. This scene connected Weir with folk music and bluegrass, through his associations with Garcia and others.
Weir's influence on the band was felt most strongly in its nonspecific moral force and poetic ambiguity:
"Music is a hallucinogenic realm. When I'm singing and playing, even if we're not doing it well, I'm hallucinating. I'm visiting another realm - a parallel world or something. And when it really gets good, it's like there's a bright, electric-blue white light that just radiates through everything and everybody and I can see through people, and I can see three hundred degrees around me. I can see everybody's face. I can feel everybody's smile. I can hear everybody's heart. That's a place where I go all the time. And I like it there.
You have to sort of dodge or sidestep your own ego in order to get there. And you learn how to do that over the years if you're a musician. You have to leave all self-consciousness behind, because to get to that outer experience you just can't get that baggage through the door. You have to drop that stuff. And you go through that door naked-that's the only way you get there."
Weir is not the lead guitar in the Grateful Dead, but he is certainly more than just a rhythm player. Weir mixes combinations of arpeggios and few-note chords with quick little runs up and down scales to essentially shape the feeling of a song. Weir has very large hands which allow him to have a little more freedom with some of his fingers at times.
When Pig Pen died, the Dead dropped a number of tunes that were traditionally Pig Pen's opportunity to rant, rave and run amok.
After a number of years, songs such as Turn on Your Lovelight became Weir's songs, and Weir stepped up as the only Dead member who danced, screamed and often drooled. Weir and his longtime friend, John Barlow, have composed numerous songs together, including Looks Like Rain and Lazy Lightning. A distinct part of the first set is where Weir sticks in one of this token "Cowboy Tunes" which he sings.
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This page was last modified on 4/16/98
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