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Quick Facts
- NAME: Bob Weir
- OCCUPATION: Environmental Activist, Guitarist
- BIRTH DATE: October 16, 1947 (Age: 65)
- EDUCATION: Menlo Atherton High School, Fountain Valley High School
- PLACE OF BIRTH: San Francisco, California
- Full Name: Robert Hall Weir
- AKA: Bob Weir
- ZODIAC SIGN: Libra
Best Known For
Bob Weir was a rhythm guitarist for the legendary rock band the Grateful Dead from 1964 to 1995 and later reunited to tour with former members as The Other Ones.
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Play NowBob Weir. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 10:54, May 25, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/bob-weir-20878671.
Bob Weir. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/bob-weir-20878671 [Accessed 25 May 2013].
"Bob Weir." 2013. The Biography Channel website. May 25 2013, 10:54 http://www.biography.com/people/bob-weir-20878671.
"Bob Weir," The Biography Channel website, 2013, http://www.biography.com/people/bob-weir-20878671 [accessed May 25, 2013].
"Bob Weir," The Biography Channel website, http://www.biography.com/people/bob-weir-20878671 (accessed May 25, 2013).
Bob Weir [Internet]. The Biography Channel website; 2013 [cited 2013 May 25] Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/bob-weir-20878671.
Bob Weir, http://www.biography.com/people/bob-weir-20878671 (last visited May 25, 2013).
Bob Weir. The Biography Channel website. 2013. Available at: http://www.biography.com/people/bob-weir-20878671. Accessed May 25, 2013.
Synopsis
Guitarist Bob Weir was born on October 16, 1947 in San Francisco, California. In 1964, he started a band that was eventually called the Grateful Dead, with Jerry Garcia and Ron McKernan. In 1972, Weir put out his first solo album. He also performed with other bands throughout his time with the Dead. After Garcia died in 1995, Weir toured with RatDog, and later reunited with former Dead members to tour.
Contents
Quotes
"Bicycles are almost as good as guitars for meeting girls."
"What I like best about music is when time goes away."
Early Life
Bob Weir was born October 16, 1947, in San Francisco, California. He was raised by wealthy adoptive parents in the suburban town of Atherton, California.
Weir started playing guitar at the age of 13. As a teen, Weir first attended Menlo Atherton High School, but his struggles with undiagnosed dyslexia and his poor academic performance led his exasperated parents to send him away to boarding school. There, at Fountain Valley High School, Weir met John Perry Barlow, who would later write lyrics for the Grateful Dead. After Weir was kicked out of Fountain Valley, he spent most of his time hanging out in Palo Alto, California, checking out the Bay Area folk-rock scene. He spent his days at a record store where Jerry Garcia gave guitar lessons, and his nights at a club called the Tangent. At the Tangent, Weir had the good fortune to see several rock legends in the making, including Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane and the familiar face from the music shop, Jerry Garcia.
Musical Career
In 1964, when Weir was just 17, Garcia convinced him and Ron "Pigpen" McKernan to start a folk-rock and blues band called Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions, with Weir as their rhythm guitarist. After first renaming the band the Warlocks, the band eventually settled on the name the Grateful Dead and expanded to include drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, bass guitarist Phil Lesh and several different keyboardists over the life of the group.
Although the Dead played nearly 100 shows yearly throughout the 1970s, Weir also participated in other musical projects during this time. In 1972 he put out his first solo album, called Ace. He also performed and recorded with other bands, including Kingfish, in the 1970s. In the early 1980s Weir toured with Bobby and the Midnites and contributed to recording two albums with the band. During this time he met recording session musician Brent Mydland, whom he would invite to join the Grateful Dead as a keyboardist in 1979.
Weir refocused primarily on playing with the Grateful Dead in the late 1980s and continued to tour with them extensively until Jerry Garcia’s death in 1995. After Garcia died, Weir started touring nonstop with RatDog, the band he had recently started with bassist Rob Wasserman. In 1998 Weir reunited with remaining members of the Grateful Dead under the band name The Other Ones. The Other Ones recorded a new album in 1999 and toured in 2000, the same year RatDog’s first album was released.
Weir would tour with former Grateful Dead band members again in 2009. The 2009 tour made Weir and Lesh nostalgic for the band’s old chemistry, leading them to combine members of the Dead and RatDog to form a new successful band called Furthur.
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Grateful Dead
View groupWith the 1960s came the psychedelic movement, a time when taking hallucinogenic drugs and listening to experimental music peaked within the countercultures of America and Great Britain. Among the movement's most famous musicians were the Grateful Dead, which mixed genres such as psychadelia, blues, folk, country, rock 'n' roll and jazz to create their incredibly unique rock sound. Known for changing set lists for each show, and for sometimes playing for more than four hours in one set, the Dead created songs like "Sugar Magnolia," "Casey Jones" and "Scarlet Begonias." While the group toured with various musicians until it disbanded in the late 1990s, its main members included Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh and Mickey Hart.
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View groupWhen musicians land big fame, there typically comes a moment of reinvention in which the "rock star" identity is born. This new persona often requires a new name, a way to differentiate between the private and public versions of themselves. Musical monikers take different forms, from the simple, last-name changes aimed at boosting celebrity appeal—like Steven Tyler—to the glamorized version of a childhood nickname—like Jay-Z. Musicians' nicknames and aliases tend to take on an identity all their own over time, often becoming as full of personality as the artists they represent.
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