Bill Kreutzmann Remembers Bobby Weir: “Every Day Felt Like a Great American Adventure”

Photo Credit: Rosie McGee

Bill Kreutzmann: 

Jerry Garcia had already been playing music with Bob Weir in a jug band when he called me up to form a rock band with them. That’s how I first met Bob. We called ourselves the Warlocks, playing our first real shows at a pizza parlor in Menlo Park and, long story short (but with a few steps in between)… we became the Grateful Dead.

Together, we embarked on a journey without a destination. We didn’t set out to change the world, or to become big stars, or to have our own counterculture — we didn’t know any of those things were actually possible and we wouldn’t have been very interested in them even if we did. Well, not too much, anyway. Just enough to dream.

We were a “group” in the sense that we were five friends trying to have the most amount of fun we could think of as often as we could. That meant playing music and all the other things: taking acid, getting high, goofing around.

During those first rehearsals, which were in the back of a music shop, Bob and I would smoke joints in the back alley, before, during, and after — we had to be careful because it was still taboo back then.

Also, Bob and I were the younger guys in the band, so we liked to do weird shit. By that I mean, we just liked to play pranks and be silly and not take ourselves too seriously.

Right when things really started clicking and the band was getting noticed, there was a period when I lived with Phil Lesh on Belvedere Street and Weir lived with Garcia just a couple blocks over on Ashbury. That part of San Francisco, the Haight-Ashbury district, was getting enough national notoriety that buses full of tourists would stop in front of the Ashbury house and take pictures: “To your left is the home of the Grateful Dead.”

Bob and I used to enjoy throwing water balloons at each other so one day we started throwing them at the tourist buses. That didn’t end well, but it’s making me smile all these years later thinking about it, because it was a time when every day felt like a great American adventure.

We used to listen to every new record that came out anywhere. We would go over to Phil’s place, but Bob and I would sit next to each other and we’d listen intently to the music, trying to figure out “How did they do that?” That was a really big thing we used to do together. It was basically like our religion.

Sometimes we’d take STP and sit there and turn the lights down low and the back of the amplifier would glow like a cathedral as we’d listen to the music.

Nothing was more important than having fun and nothing was more fun than playing music. Especially once audiences started coming and we could look out and see a sea of people dancing. Once that happened, it was all we wanted to do. We didn’t want to stop. That was our first real goal — to just keep going.

And so for sixty years, the music never stopped. This was true for all of us, together and apart, but when Bob was off the road, all he wanted to do was get back on it. And in the meantime, he would stop by any bar or club where there was someone playing that would let him sit in. He seemed to always be on some stage, somewhere.

Offstage, we were everything you’d expect from lifelong friends and bandmates. We fought together (both on the same side and opposing), we celebrated together (both personal and professional milestones), and we watched each other, both near and far, as we went from teenagers to old men and all the stops in between.

I once heard Bobby refer to himself as “the greatest rhythm guitar player in the world” and it made me chuckle lightheartedly at my brother’s boastfulness. The thing is… he was probably right.

Time has proven that nobody will ever be able to replace Jerry Garcia — or Phil Lesh — and time will prove the same for Bob Weir.

They were the biggest influence on my own playing, more than any drummer, and they will continue to be the biggest influence on whatever I do next.

Their inspiration will continue to take on many forms, as is the very nature of inspiration, but just as those three brothers of mine took inspiration from others and made something new and original out of it, it’s now time for tomorrow’s artists and visionaries to do the same. Keep going forward. Take the inspiration and do something new.

There are so many people who can rightfully say that their life would not have been the same without Bob Weir. That’s been true for me since I was 17. And through it all, the high times and the low tides, my love for him will not, indeed can not, fade away.

In the end, what more was there for him to do? He played it all… and never the same way, twice. I think he had finally said everything he had to say and now he’s on to the next thing. I just hope he was able to bring his guitar with him or otherwise he’ll go crazy.

“Sleep in the stars.

Don’t you cry.

Dry your eyes on the wind.”

And get there safely, old friend.

Love you forever,

Billy