On Saturday (Jan. 17th), thousands of fans gathered to honor late Grateful Dead founder Bob Weir at a memorial ceremony in San Francisco. Weir passed away on January 10 at the age of 78 due to “underlying lung issues” following a battle with cancer.
Alongside fans, Weir’s memorial was attended by Nancy Pelosi, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, and several of Weir’s musical peers including Mickey Hart, Joan Baez, and John Mayer – who played with Weir in the Grateful Dead offshoot Dead & Company.
During the ceremony, Mayer covered the Grateful Dead classic “Ripple” and delivered an emotional eulogy, fighting back tears as he paid tribute to his friend.
“Over the course of a decade, we came to trust each other,” Mayer said, in part. “He taught me, among many other things, to trust in the moment, and I’d like to think I taught him a little bit to rely on a plan, not as a substitute for the divine moments, but as a way to lure them in a little closer. I guess maybe what I was really doing was showing him he could rely on me. Bob took a chance on me. He staked his entire reputation on my joining a band with him. He gave me musical community, he gave me this community.”
“He lent me his songbook, invited me into the worlds he’d constructed, and taught me what the songs meant and what it meant to perform them,” Mayer continued. “In return, I gave him everything I had night after night, year after year.”
Acknowledging the collective sense of loss felt by Grateful dead fans, Mayer added: “I know right now it’s easy to feel as if time is speeding up and taking so much from us all, but I would remind you, as I have tried to remind myself this past week, of just how many nights we all lived so fully in each second, hanging on to every word of Bobby’s, following the music around twists and turns through forests and over majestic vistas, taking in the magnificent interviews and wondering how we all got so lucky to have been found by this music and invited into this dream together.”
The musician concluded his speech by paraphrasing a Leon Russel lyric he felt Weir would’ve liked to share with the audience: “But now I’m so much better, so if my words don’t come together, listen to the melody because my love is in there hiding.”
“And so we will all keep listening together. 300 years, Bobby, now that’s a plan I can get behind,” Mayer said. “Thank you, Maestro. You changed my life. I will love you forever. Thank you.”
