Phil Lesh's obituary

It is significant that Phil Lesh, who has died aged 84, claimed that one of his earliest memories was being stunned by Brahms' Symphony No. 1. Lesh rose to fame as a bassist with the Grateful Dead, but his classical training and broad musical tastes ensured that his playing extended far beyond the traditional narrow confines of the bass guitar in rock music.

The Grateful Dead, formed in San Francisco in 1965, pioneered their own brand of improvisational music, and Lesh's playing was imaginative enough to allow them to roam freely from country through rock, blues and sprawling jams. Even their most ardent fans admit that their concerts can be a hit-and-miss affair, as the band waits for inspiration. But when it did, the results were unforgettable.

Their live performances are preserved on numerous official recordings and countless bootleg tapes, but Live/Dead (1969) and the box-set So Many Roads (1965–1995) exemplify the band's expansion at length, with Lesh's extended role as Dark Star the former being a trademark moment. His eloquent, antagonistic basslines were as distinctive and important to the band's sound as Jerry Garcia's lead guitar.

Lesh helped write several of the Dead's most famous songs. Her most personal piece is Box of Rain (from the 1970 album American Beauty), a melancholy song for her dead father in which she sings lead vocals with lyrics by Robert Hunter. But he also had songwriting credits on the Dead's On-the-Road Odyssey Truckin' and Cumberland Blues.

He co-wrote and sang on Unbroken Chain and Pride of Cucamonga from the album From the Mars Hotel (1974), put a funk-like stamp on Passengers from Terrapin Station and was one of the masterminds behind St. Stephen. An early favorite in Grateful Dead concert.

Born in Berkeley, California, Phil was the son of Frank, an amateur musician who owned a small business, and his wife Barbara (née Chapman). He was often looked after by his maternal grandmother, Jewell “Bobby” Chapman, a music lover who kept the radio tuned to classical stations. As Phil wrote in his autobiography Searching for the Sound: My Life with the Grateful Dead (2005): “I was awakened to the power of music early in life through the magic of radio broadcasting and hearing my father play from memory, his favorite tunes on the piano.” Lesh. Began studying violin and played with Berklee's Young People's Symphony Orchestra.

He switched to trumpet at age 14, then transferred from El Cerrito High School to Berklee High School to study harmony. He became interested in free jazz and the classical avant garde and attended UC Berkeley with brief stints at San Francisco State College and San Mateo College.

However, he dropped out again in favor of studying with Italian experimental composer Luciano Berio at Mills College in Oakland (among his classmates was the future star of minimalism, Steve Rich). Lesh produced several of his own compositions and attempted to co-write some with Reich.

In 1965 he met Garcia, at the time better known as a bluegrass banjo player than an electric guitarist, and who was performing with his band The Warlocks at a pizza parlor in Menlo Park in San Francisco's Bay Area. Lesh would recall how “music can convey an aesthetic and emotional meaning with that kind of directness and simplicity that surpasses even the greatest operatic or symphonic works”.

The story goes that Garcia immediately informed Lesh that he was the band's new bass player, to which Lesh replied: “Why not?” Soon after, the group changed its name to the Grateful Dead. Perhaps discouraged because he had never played the bass before, Lesh approached the instrument with the same attitude as other 1960s innovators such as Cream's Jack Bruce, the Who's John Entwistle, and Jefferson Airplane's Jack Cassady.

The Dead's colorful career ended with Garcia's death in 1995, a year after being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But the band members often participated in projects outside the band and continued to do so.

In 1975 Lesh teamed up with electronics specialist Ned Lagin and various California-based musicians on the experimental album Seastones. In 1998 he joined fellow Dead survivors Bob Weir and Mickey Hart, and one-time Dead keyboard player Bruce Hornsby in Another One, who later renamed themselves Dead.

That same year Lesh, who suffered from chronic hepatitis C, underwent a liver transplant. After fully recovering, he worked with his own outfit, Phil Lesh and friends. It enjoyed a brief incarnation in 1994 when it featured Garcia, but from 1999 became a rotating group of musicians that included members of Phish, Little Feat, the Allman Brothers Band and Jefferson Airplane.

From 1999 to 2003, a version of the band called the Phil Lesh Quintet became its most permanent incarnation, and they recorded several live albums and the studio album There and Back Again (2002). In 2008 the group was augmented by Weir and Hart for a concert in support of Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

The group also performed at Terrapin Crossroads, a restaurant and music venue opened by Lesh in San Rafael, California in 2012, where Lesh's sons Graham and Brian, both musicians, often played with the house band. In 2009 Lesh and Weir reunited in Furthur, a sextet that plays music in the spirit or soul of the Grateful Dead.

Lesh reunited with Weir, Hart, and Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann for three concerts at Soldier Field Stadium in Chicago in 2015, celebrating 50 years of the Grateful Dead's Bill Fare Thee Well:

In 2006 Lesh underwent surgery for prostate cancer, the disease that killed his father. In 2015, he revealed that he underwent surgery for bladder cancer.

He is survived by his wife Jill, with whom he formed the Unbreakable Chain Foundation to support music, education and environmental charities, Graham and Brian, and a grandson.