Phil Lesh (March 15, 1940 - October 25, 2024)
Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh's "intellectual, articulate and reflective" book, Searching for the Sound: My Life with the Grateful Dead (2005, Little, Brown) includes Lesh's description of the band's "forays into mind-altering substances" at a time when LSD was still legal and the Dead provided the soundtrack to those revivals of the ancient Eleusinian mysteries, dubbed by Joseph Campbell as Dionysian festivals, the Acid Tests.
"For me and my friends, these drugs (pot, acid, the other "ethogens [sic? entheogens?] were seen as tools -- tools to enhance awareness, to expand our horizons, to access other levels of mind, to manifest the numinous and sacred, tools that had been used for thousands of years by shamans, by oracles, in the ancient mystery schools, by all whose mission was to penetrate beyond the veil of illusion . . . These experiences were not embarked upon as escape from 'reality' -- they were explorations into the superreal."
After a funny anecdote in which drummer Mickey Hart had to reacquaint Lesh with his bass before a show where too many people had spiked the backstage apple juice with acid, the book details how Keith and Donna Godchaux and other late-comers to the band abused drugs and paid the price; also Jerry Garcia's decent into heroin, and Lesh's own alcoholism and cocaine abuse, both of which he regrets.
In 1998, Lesh underwent a liver transplant following a chronic hepatitis C infection; subsequently, he became an outspoken advocate for organ donor programs and when performing regularly encouraged members of the audience to become organ donors.
Following surgery for prostate cancer in 2006, Lesh founded the music venue Terrapin Crossroads in San Rafael, California in 2012, and served as part of its house band Phil Lesh and Friends. More surgeries for bladder cancer and back problems followed, but Lesh kept on playing. In March 2023, he celebrated his 83rd birthday and hundredth show as part of a four-night run at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, New York. In March 2024, he returned to celebrate his 84th and died later that year.In 2020, Rolling Stone ranked Lesh as the 11th Greatest Bassist of All Time. Bob Dylan wrote of his one-time backup band The Dead in his book The Philosophy of Modern Song, “What makes them essentially a dance band probably begins with the jazz classical bassist, Phil Lesh, and the Elvin Jones–influenced [drummer and pot fan] Bill Kreutzmann. Lesh is one of the most skilled bassists you’ll ever hear in subtlety and invention. And combined with Kreutzmann, this rhythm section is hard to beat…."
Lots of reels showed up after Lesh died wherein he talked about his long, strange trip (e.g. at The Grateful Dead's 1994 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, when he thanked all Deadheads worldwide). New York’s Empire State Building wore tie-die colors the night Lesh died, in tribute to his life and legacy, as it did on Jerry Garcia's 80th birthday in 2022.