By JOHN ROGERS

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Phil Lesh, a classically trained jazz violinist and trumpeter who found his true calling reinventing the role of the rock bass guitar as founding member of the Grateful Dead, died on Friday at the age of 84.

Lesh’s death was announced on his Instagram account. Lesh was the oldest and one of the longest-serving members of the band that came to define the acid rock sound emanating from San Francisco in the 1960s.

“Phil Lesh, bassist and founding member of The Grateful Dead, passed away peacefully this morning. He was surrounded by his family and full of love. Phil brought immense joy to all those around him and left behind a legacy of music and love.” statement on Instagram read in part.

The statement did not cite a specific cause of death and attempts to reach representatives for additional details were not immediately successful. Lesh had previously survived bouts with prostate cancer, bladder cancer and a 1998 liver transplant brought on by the debilitating effects of a hepatitis C infection and years of heavy drinking.

Although he kept a relatively low public profile, rarely giving interviews or speaking to the public, fans and bandmates recognized Lesh as an essential member of the Grateful Dead whose thundering lyrics on the six-string electric bass provided a brilliant counterpoint to the guitarist’s main. Jerry Garcia’s blistering solos anchored the band’s famous marathon jams.

“When Phil happens, the band happens,” Garcia once said.

Drummer Mickey Hart called him the intellectual of the group who brought the mindset and skills of a classical songwriter to a five-chord rock ‘n’ roll band.

Lesh credited Garcia with teaching him to play bass in the unorthodox lead guitar style he would become famous for, mixing thunderous arpeggios with bits of spontaneously composed orchestral passages.

Fellow bass player Rob Wasserman once said that Lesh’s style was unlike any other bassist he knew. While most others were content to keep time and take the occasional solo, Wasserman said, Lesh was good enough and confident enough to lead his fellow musicians through the melody of a song.

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

Lesh began his long musical odyssey as a classically trained violinist, beginning with lessons in the third grade. He took up the trumpet at 14, eventually earning second chair in the Oakland Symphony Orchestra in California as a teenager.

But he had largely put both instruments aside and was driving a mail truck and working as a sound engineer for a small radio station in 1965 when Garcia recruited him to play bass in an aging rock band called The Warlocks.

When Lesh told Garcia he didn’t play bass, the musician asked, “You don’t play violin?” When he said yes, Garcia told him, “There you go, man.”

Armed with an inexpensive four-string instrument his girlfriend bought him, Lesh sat down for a seven-hour lesson with Garcia, following the latter’s advice to tune his instrument’s strings an octave lower than the bottom four strings from Garcia’s guitar. Garcia then set him free, allowing him to develop the spontaneous style of playing he would embrace for the rest of his life.

Lesh and Garcia would often trade cues, often spontaneously, while the band as a whole would frequently make long experimental, jazz-influenced songs during concerts. The result was that even well-known Grateful Dead songs like “Truckin'” or “Sugar Magnolia” rarely played the same two shows in a row, which would inspire loyal fans to attend show after show.

“It’s always fluid, we figure it out as we go,” Lesh said with a chuckle during a rare 2009 interview with The Associated Press. “You can’t set that stuff in stone in the rehearsal room.”

Originally published: October 25, 2024 at 2:23 p.m