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By John Rogers

LOS ANGELES — Phil Lesh, a classically trained violinist and jazz trumpeter who found his true calling reinventing the role of rock bass as a founding member of the Grateful Dead, died Friday at age 84.

Lesh’s death was announced on his Instagram account. Lesh was the oldest and one of the longest-serving members of the band that defined the acid rock sound emanating from San Francisco in the 1960s.

“Phil Lesh, bassist and founding member of The Grateful Dead, passed away peacefully this morning. He was surrounded by his family and full of love. Phil brought immense joy to everyone around him and leaves behind a legacy of music and love,” the Instagram statement read in part.

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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 with prostate cancer, bladder cancer, and a 1998 liver transplant necessitated by the debilitating effects of a hepatitis C infection and years of heavy drinking. .

Lesh’s death comes two days after MusicCares named the Grateful Dead people of the year. MusicCares, which helps music professionals in need of financial or other assistance, cited Lesh’s Unbroken Chain Foundation among other philanthropic initiatives. The dead will be honored in January at a benefit gala ahead of the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles.

Although he kept a relatively low public profile, rarely granting interviews or speaking to the public, fans and fellow band members recognized Lesh as a critical member of the Grateful Dead whose thundering lines on electric bass to six strings provided a brilliant counterpoint to the lead guitarist. Jerry Garcia’s soaring solos and anchor of the band’s famous marathon jams.

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“When Phil performs, the band performs,” Garcia once said.

Drummer Mickey Hart called him the group’s intellectual who brought the wit and skills of a classical composer to a five-chord rock ‘n’ roll band.

Lesh credited Garcia with teaching him to play bass in the unorthodox style of lead guitar for which he would become famous, mixing thunderous arpeggios with snippets of spontaneously composed orchestral passages.

Fellow bassist Rob Wasserman once said that Lesh’s style set him apart from every other bassist he knew. While most others were content to keep time and play occasional solos, Wasserman said Lesh was both good enough and confident enough to guide his fellow musicians through the melody of a song.

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“He happens to play bass, but he’s more like a horn player, doing all these arpeggios – and he has this counterpoint all the time,” he said.

Lesh began his long musical odyssey as a classically trained violinist, beginning with lessons in third grade. He took up the trumpet at age 14 and eventually earned second chair of the Oakland Symphony Orchestra of California while still a teenager.

But he had largely put both instruments aside and was driving a mail truck and working as a sound engineer for a small radio station in 1965 when Garcia recruited him to play bass in a fledgling rock band called The Warlocks.

When Lesh told Garcia he didn’t play bass, the musician asked, “You didn’t play violin?” When he said yes, Garcia told him, “Here you go, man.”

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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 to tune his instrument’s strings an octave lower as the lower four strings of Garcia’s guitar. Then Garcia set him free, allowing him to develop the spontaneous style of play he would adopt for the rest of his life.

Lesh and Garcia frequently traded leads, often spontaneously, while the band as a whole frequently launched into long, experimental jazz-influenced jams during concerts. The result was that even well-known Grateful Dead songs like “Truckin” or “Sugar Magnolia” rarely sounded the same two performances in a row, which would keep loyal fans attending show after show.

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“It’s always fluid, we figure it out on the fly,” Lesh said with a laugh in a rare 2009 interview with The Associated Press. “You can’t set these things in stone in the rehearsal room.”

Phillip Chapman Lesh was born March 15, 1940, in Berkeley, California, the only son of Frank Lesh, an office equipment repairer, and his wife Barbara.

He would later say 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 conduct this orchestra through Brahms’ First Symphony.

The musical influences he often cited were not rock musicians but composers like Bach and Edgard Varese, as well as jazz greats like John Coltrane and Miles Davis.

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Lesh had moved from classical music to cool jazz by the time he arrived at San Mateo College, eventually becoming the primary trumpeter in the school’s big band and the composer of several orchestral pieces performed by the band.

But he put the trumpet aside after college, concluding he didn’t have the lung power to become an elite player.

Shortly after taking up bass, The Warlocks renamed themselves the Grateful Dead and Lesh began to captivate audiences with his dexterity. Crowds gathered in what became known as “The Phil Zone,” right in front of his position on stage.

Although never a prolific songwriter, Lesh also composed music and occasionally sang some of the band’s most beloved songs. Among them were the upbeat country rock “Pride of Cucamonga,” the jazz-influenced “Unbroken Chain” and the beautiful “Box of Rain.”

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Lesh composed the latter on guitar as a gift for his dying father, and he recalled that Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter, after hearing the instrumental recording, approached him the next day with a lyric sheet. On that sheet, he said, were “some of the most moving and heartfelt lyrics I have ever had the chance to sing.”

The group often closed their concerts with the song.

After the group disbanded following Garcia’s death in 1995, Lesh often avoided joining the other surviving members when they gathered to perform.

He participated in a Grateful Dead tour in 2009 and again in 2015 for a handful of “Fare Thee Well” concerts marking both the band’s 50th anniversary and what Lesh said would be the last time he would perform with the others.

He did, however, continue to play frequently with a rotating group of musicians he called Phil Lesh and Friends.

In subsequent years, he usually gave these performances at “Terrapin Crossroads”, a restaurant and nightclub he opened near his home in Northern California in 2012, named after the song and album. from Grateful Dead “Terrapin Station”.

Lesh is survived by his wife, Jill, and sons Brian and Grahame.

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