Phil Lesh was the Grateful Dead's bassist from beginning to end, from 1965 until the group's breakup in 1995. Born in Berkeley, California, on March 15, 1940, Philip Chapman Lesh studied violin and trumpet to become a composer, studying with Luciano Berio at the University of California. After working as a sound engineer at a radio station, he met Jerry Garcia, who invited him to join his band The Warlocks as bassist, without ever having played the instrument. The Grateful Dead went on to establish themselves as the ultimate band of the San Francisco psychedelic scene, with studio albums and, above all, hundreds of increasingly well-attended concerts across the country. A veritable phenomenon of the American counter-culture, it crossed the decades and continued to perpetuate its spirit until the death of its founding guitarist, Jerry Garcia, on August 9, 1995. The post-Grateful Dead era began with the formation of former members under the name The Other Ones from 1998 to 2002, with the participation of Bruce Hornsby, but another band was to occupy the musician full-time, Phil Lesh & Friends, who performed intensively at the turn of the 2000s and recorded a single studio album, There & Back Again (2002), with Warreny Haynes. In 2009, Lesh formed Furthur with Bob Weir, then in 2012 opened the San Rafael club Terrapin Crossroads, where he performed as The Terrapin Family Band with his sons Grahame and Brian Lesh, until the club closed in 2021. After serious health problems, including a liver transplant in 1998, prostate cancer in 2006 and bladder cancer in 2015, Phil Lesh died on October 25, 2024 at the age of 84.
