"He was only 16 when the band that would ultimately become the Grateful Dead was founded. Moreover, Weir was implausibly fresh-faced and boyishly handsome, particularly compared to some of his bandmates. Jerry Garcia's photo was used in one of Richard Nixon's campaign broadcasts, a symbol of all that was wrong with US youth. Keyboard player Ron Pigpen McKernan, by all accounts sweet-natured, nevertheless gave off the air of a man who would strangle you with his bare hands as soon as look at you."
"His relationship with Garcia and bass player Phil Lesh five and seven years older than him, respectively is regularly characterised as that of a junior sibling: at one juncture in 1968, the pair contrived to have Weir dismissed from the band on the grounds that his playing wasn't good enough. It never happened Weir simply kept turning up to gigs and the matter was eventually dropped but it's hard to see how the Grateful Dead would have worked without him."
Bob Weir was sixteen when the group that became the Grateful Dead was founded and earned the nickname the Kid for his youthful, boyish appearance. He appears in a 1967 photograph leaving the band's Haight-Ashbury residence in handcuffs after a drug bust. Garcia and Phil Lesh were older and at one point tried to have Weir dismissed in 1968, but he persisted. The band's improvisational strength grew from an uncanny psychic bond formed while playing together on LSD at Ken Kesey's acid tests in 1965–66. Weir's rhythm-guitar style, less flashy than Garcia's solos or Lesh's classical-influenced bass, was essential to the group's sound.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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