Grateful Dead Co-Founder Bob Weir Has Died at 78

Grateful Dead co-founder, guitarist and singer Bob Weir has died at the age of 78 after a battle with cancer and lung issues.

The news was shared in a statement made by Weir’s family.

They reveal that Weir was diagnosed in July 2025. Despite starting his treatment just weeks earlier, the guitarist played with the band’s most recent offshoot Dead and Company in August at a three-night series of shows celebrating the Grateful Dead’s 60th anniversary in their hometown of San Francisco.

Weir co-founded the Grateful Dead in 1965 after meeting fellow guitarist and singer Jerry Garcia at a music store on New Year’s Eve.”He said he had the key to the instrument room and asked if we wanted to jam,” Weir later recalled. “We played for hours and realized we had enough half-talent to start a jug band, which somehow became successful. A year later we had a rock and roll band, and the rest is pretty well documented.”

READ MORE: In Memoriam – The Rockers We Lost in 2025

Emerging as early leaders of San Francisco’s fertile ’60s psychedelic rock, the Grateful Dead challenged the accepted music industry paradigm by becoming better known for their expansive, always-changing live shows than for their recorded output.

An entire subculture full of “Deadheads” spent decades following the band from show to show and trading, with the band’s full approval, bootlegs of the their live shows. After Garcia’s 1995 death Weir and the remaining band members retired the Grateful Dead name, but he continued touring as the Dead and later, Dead & Company.

Weir’s death leaves drummer Bill Kreutzmann as the only surviving founding member of the Grateful Dead. Bassist Phil Lesh died in 2024, singer and keyboardist Ron “Pigpen” McKernan died in 1973. (Longtime drummer Mickey Hart joined the group in 1967.)

Statement From Bob Weir’d Family

You can read the official statement about Weir’s death below:

It is with profound sadness that we share the passing of Bobby Weir. He transitioned peacefully, surrounded by loved ones, after courageously beating cancer as only Bobby could. Unfortunately, he succumbed to underlying lung issues.
For over sixty years, Bobby took to the road. A guitarist, vocalist, storyteller, and founding member of the Grateful Dead. Bobby will forever be a guiding force whose unique artistry reshaped American music. His work did more than fill rooms with music; it was warm sunlight that filled the soul, building a community, a language, and a feeling of family that generations of fans carry with them. Every chord he played, every word he sang was an integral part of the stories he wove. There was an invitation: to feel, to question, to wander, and to belong.
Bobby’s final months reflected the same spirit that defined his life. Diagnosed in July, he began treatment only weeks before returning to his hometown stage for a three-night celebration of 60 years of music at Golden Gate Park. Those performances, emotional, soulful, and full of light, were not farewells, but gifts. Another act of resilience. An artist choosing, even then, to keep going by his own design. As we remember Bobby, it’s hard not to feel the echo of the way he lived. A man driftin’ and dreamin’, never worrying if the road would lead him home. A child of countless trees. A child of boundless seas.
There is no final curtain here, not really. Only the sense of someone setting off again. He often spoke of a three-hundred-year legacy, determined to ensure the songbook would endure long after him. May that dream live on through future generations of Dead Heads. And so we send him off the way he sent so many of us on our way: with a farewell that isn’t an ending, but a blessing. A reward for a life worth livin’.
His loving family, Natascha, Monet, and Chloe, request privacy during this difficult time and offer their gratitude for the outpouring of love, support, and remembrance. May we honor him not only in sorrow, but in how bravely we continue with open hearts, steady steps, and the music leading us home. Hang it up and see what tomorrow brings.

Below, we remember the rock and metal artists we lost last year.