Phil Lesh, a classically trained violinist and jazz trumpeter who found his true calling reinventing the role of rock bass guitar as a founding member of the Gr
FILE - The Grateful Dead, from left, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, Bob Weir and Mickey Hart perform during a reunion concert in East Troy, Wis. on Aug. 3, 2002. Lesh, a founding member of the Grateful Dead, died Friday, Oct. 25, 2024, at age 84.
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 of prostate cancer, bladder cancer and a 1998 liver transplant necessitated by the debilitating effects of a hepatitis C infection and years of heavy drinking.
"He happens to play bass but he's more like a horn player, doing all those arpeggios — and he has that counterpoint going all the time," he said. Armed with a cheap four-string instrument his girlfriend bought him, Lesh sat down for a seven-hour lesson with Garcia, following the latter's advice that he tune his instrument's strings an octave lower than the four bottom strings on Garcia's guitar. Then Garcia turned him loose, allowing him to develop the spontaneous style of playing that he would embrace for the rest of his life.
He would say in later years that his love of music came from listening to broadcasts of the New York Philharmonic on his grandmother's radio. One of his earliest memories was hearing the great German composer Bruno Walter lead that orchestra through Brahms' First Symphony.
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