After Grateful Dead’s principal songwriter Jerry Garcia died in 1995, the band decided to end their musical journey. Although there have been several reunions since then, the surviving members have continued working on individual projects. During a recent interview with CBS Sunday Morning, the band’s co-founder Bob Weir reflected on the period after Garcia’s death.
“He left some unfinished business, and we were partners,” Weir said, sharing that he wanted to continue from where Garcia had left off. “I’m gonna do my best to tidy some stuff up for him. He was a dear friend of mine. That’s what you do for your friends.”
Then, the interviewer pointed out that Bob Weir also sings Garcia’s songs. The musician replied, “Yeah, those songs need to live, and they need to live and breathe and grow because they are living critters.” Recalling one of his dreams, Bob said, “Not long ago, Jerry came to me in a dream; he does this from time to time. He wanted to introduce me to a song, and it was a jazz ballad that I think we were going to sing a duet on.”
The musician continued, “He invited the song into the room, and in the dream, it was like an enormous ethereal kind of English sheepdog. It came in and sniffed me; I batted around her a little bit. We [went] back and forth a little bit. We immediately got established a little rapport there. And then, we settled in, and we started singing it.”
As it seems, Grateful Dead had many projects in mind, which would have been actualized if Jerry Garcia were still alive. Bob Weir hinted that he has plans to wrap up Garcia’s unfinished work and introduce them to the audience in the coming days.
