Surviving Grateful Dead members pen tribute to Phil Lesh: “Today we lost a brother”

Tributes have been pouring in to the Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh, who passed away this morning at age 84, and now his former bandmates Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, and Bill Kreutzmann have issued a joint statement. They write:

Today we lost a brother. Our hearts and love go out to Jill Lesh, Brian and Grahame. Phil Lesh was irreplaceable. In one note from the Phil Zone, you could hear and feel the world being born. His bass flowed like a river would flow. It went where the muse took it. He was an explorer of inner and outer space who just happened to play bass. He was a circumnavigator of formerly unknown musical worlds. And more.

We can count on the fingers of one hand the people we can say had as profound an influence on our development – in every sense. And there have been even less people who did so continuously over the decades and will continue to for as long as we live. What a gift he was for us. We won’t say he will be missed, as in any given moment, nothing we do will be without the lessons he taught us – and the lessons that are yet to come, as the conversations will go on.

Phil loved the Dead Heads and always kept them in his heart and mind. The thing is… Phil was so much more than a virtuoso bass player, a composer, a family man, a cultural icon…

There will be a lot of tributes, and they will all say important things. But for us, we’ve spent a lifetime making music with Phil Lesh and the music has a way of saying it all. So listen to the Grateful Dead and, in that way, we’ll all take a little bit of Phil with us, forever.

For this is all a dream we dreamed one afternoon, long ago….

– Mickey, Billy and Bobby

Mickey, Billy, and Bobby also each posted their own statements. Mickey’s begins: “Phil Lesh changed my life. There are only a few people you meet in your lifetime that are special, important, who help you grow spiritually as well as musically.”

Billy said, “I’ve heard so many of you tell me that the Grateful Dead changed your life. Yeah, well… Phil Lesh changed mine.”

Bobby said, “Phil wasn’t particularly averse to ruffling a few feathers. We had our differences, of course, but it’s not platitudinous to say that that only made our work together more meaningful.”

Phish also honored Phil by opening tonight’s Albany show with “Box of Rain.”