Los Angeles — Phil Lesh, an 84-year-old classically trained violinist and jazz trumpeter who discovered his real calling as a founding member of the Grateful Dead by reimagining the position of rock bass guitar, died Friday.

Lesh’s death was confirmed via his Instagram account. Lesh was the eldest and one of the most enduring members of the band that helped define the acid rock sound originating from San Francisco in the 1960s.

“Phil Lesh, the bassist and founding member of the Grateful Dead, died peacefully this morning. He was surrounded by his family and filled with affection. According to the Instagram message, Phil gave enormous delight to everyone around him and left a legacy of music and love.

The message did not specify the cause of death, and attempts to contact spokespeople for more information were not immediately successful. Lesh had already survived prostate and bladder cancer, as well as a liver transplant in 1998 due to the devastating effects of a hepatitis C infection and years of excessive drinking.

Lesh died two days after MusiCares named the Grateful Dead their Persons of the Year. MusiCares, which assists music professionals needing financial or other support, mentioned Lesh’s Unbroken Chain Foundation, among other charity projects. The Dead will be honored in January at a fundraiser dinner in Los Angeles before the Grammy Awards.

Although he kept a low public profile, rarely giving interviews or speaking in front of an audience, fans and fellow band members recognized Lesh as an important member of the Grateful Dead, whose thundering lines on the six-string electric bass provided a brilliant counterpoint to lead guitarist Jerry Garcia’s soaring solos and anchored the band’s famous marathon jam sessions.

Phil Lesh, Founding Member Of Grateful Dead And Influential Bassist, Dies At 84

“When Phil’s happening, the band’s happening,” Garcia famously said.

Drummer Mickey Hart described him as the group’s intellectual, bringing a classical composer’s attitude and skills to a five-chord rock ‘n’ roll outfit.

Lesh credited Garcia for training him to play the bass in the unconventional lead-guitar style for which he would become famous, combining thundering arpeggios with fragments of spontaneously arranged symphonic passages.

A fellow bass player, Rob Wasserman, once stated that Lesh’s style distinguished him from every other bassist he knew. While most others were willing to keep time and play the occasional solo, Wasserman said Lesh was good and confident enough to lead his bandmates through a song’s melody.

“He happens to play bass but he’s more like a horn player, doing all those arpeggios — and he has that counterpoint going all the time,” he told me.

Lesh began his long musical journey as a classically trained violinist, taking third-grade lessons. He began playing the trumpet at 14 and rose to second chair in California’s Oakland Symphony Orchestra while still in his teens.

In 1965, however, he had mostly abandoned both instruments and was working as a sound engineer for a tiny radio station when Garcia approached him to play bass in The Warlocks, a young rock band.

When Lesh informed Garcia that he didn’t play bass, the musician inquired, “Didn’t you used to play violin?” When he responded yes, Garcia said, “There you go, man.”

Lesh sat down for a seven-hour lesson with Garcia, armed with a cheap four-string instrument purchased by his girlfriend, and followed the latter’s advice to tune his instrument’s strings an octave lower than Garcia’s guitar’s four bottom strings. Then Garcia let him go, allowing Lesh to establish the spontaneous playing style he would keep for the rest of his life.

Lesh and Garcia frequently exchanged leads, sometimes spontaneously, and the band as a whole frequently broke into long experimental, jazz-influenced jams during concerts. As a result, even well-known Grateful Dead tunes like “Truckin'” or “Sugar Magnolia” rarely sounded the same twice in a row, which drew faithful fans back to each show.

“It’s always fluid, we just pretty much figure it out on the fly,” Lesh said, chuckling, in a rare 2009 interview with The Associated Press. “You can’t set those things in stone in the rehearsal room.”

Phillip Chapman Lesh was born on March 15, 1940, in Berkeley, California, as the sole child of Frank Lesh, an office equipment repairman, and his wife, Barbara.

In later years, he claimed that listening to New York Philharmonic broadcasts on his grandmother’s radio sparked his interest in music. One of his earliest memories was listening to the famous German composer Bruno Walter conduct the orchestra through Brahms’ First Symphony.

He frequently listed composers such as Bach and Edgard Varèse and jazz legends such as John Coltrane and Miles Davis as his musical influences.

By the time he arrived at the College of San Mateo, Lesh had transitioned from classical music to cool jazz. He eventually became the first trumpet player in the school’s big band and composed several orchestral compositions for the ensemble to perform.

However, after graduation, he gave up the trumpet, determining that he lacked the lung force to be an excellent musician.

Soon after Lesh began playing bass, The Warlocks changed their name to the Grateful Dead, and Lesh began to captivate audiences with his agility. Crowds congregated in what became known as “The Phil Zone” just before his stage location.

Phil Lesh, Founding Member Of Grateful Dead And Influential Bassist, Dies At 84

Although Lesh was never a prolific songwriter, he did compose music for and occasionally sang some of the band’s most popular songs. These included the lively country song “Pride of Cucamonga,” the jazz-influenced “Unbroken Chain,” and the hauntingly beautiful “Box of Rain.”

Lesh wrote the latter on guitar as a gift for his dying father. He said that after hearing the instrumental recording, Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter contacted him the next day with a lyric sheet. That sheet, he claimed, included “some of the most moving and heartfelt lyrics I’ve ever had the good fortune to sing.”

The song was frequently played at the end of the band’s shows.

After the group disbanded following Garcia’s death in 1995, Lesh frequently skipped performances with the other members.

He participated in a 2009 Grateful Dead tour and again in 2015 for a handful of “Fare Thee Well” shows commemorating both the band’s 50th anniversary and Lesh’s final performance with the others.

However, he continued to perform frequently with a revolving band of musicians he dubbed Phil Lesh and Friends.

In later years, he mainly performed at Terrapin Crossroads, a restaurant and nightclub he founded near his Northern California home in 2012 and named after the Grateful Dead song and album “Terrapin Station.”

Lesh is survived by his wife, Jill, and two kids, Brian and Grahame.

SOURCE | AP