Mark-T <
mark-t2@lycos.com> wrote:
On March 28, Band Beyond Youall wrote:
WSJ has a regular feature, a series of interviews with
random celebrities. The latest was Bob Weir.
Behind a pay wall, unfortunately -
The only part not paywalled:
WEEKEND CONFIDENTIAL
For the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir, ‘Retirement Is Not an Option’
At 74, the guitar legend has a new band, with a stage musical and an
orchestral concert in the works
An interesting note in the article - Weir employs time signatures unusual
in western music; e.g. "The Other One"
Did that song ever strike you as an exotic rhythm? Not me -
Mark
Weekend Confidential: Bob Weir ---
For the veteran Grateful Dead guitarist, 'retiring
is not an option.'
Paul, Alan . Wall Street Journal , Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New
York, N.Y]. 26 Mar 2022: C.6.
Bob Weir says that he has always had "horrendous stage fright." It's a startling thing to hear, because he has
performed thousands of shows in front of millions of people since 1965,
when he became a founding member of the Grateful Dead at just 17 years old. "Those last few steps onto stage are like walking into a torture chamber
every single time," he says.
At 74, Mr. Weir still overcomes his fear the same way he always has:
leaving his ego behind and giving himself over
to the songs he plays and sings. "The music gets me past myself as soon as
it starts, because what I'm doing is
not about me; it is about the characters that have found their way into our world through me," he says. "I give my
body to those characters so that they can tell their stories. The more I
give myself to them, the less I'm there to
experience the stage fright, and it goes away."
It all seems to work, because Mr. Weir is busier now than he has ever been, juggling multiple projects including a
memoir, an opera and a stage musical about Negro League baseball icon
Satchel Paige. He is currently on the road
with Bobby Weir and Wolf Bros, a group that began in 2018 when he had a
dream that he should form a band with
drummer Jay Lane and bassist Don Was. The name Wolf Bros appeared in the
same dream.
"I take my dreams seriously so I rolled over in bed in the morning, called
Don and asked him if he'd like to form this
band," says Mr. Weir. The group has expanded into a 10-piece juggernaut and recently released their first album,
"Live in Colorado." It features intriguing arrangements of Grateful Dead classics and other songs Mr. Weir has
written and performed. The band will be playing April 2 and 3 at New York's Radio City Music Hall for two special
shows celebrating the 50th anniversary of Mr. Weir's debut solo album,
"Ace."
Mr. Was, who fronted the band Was (Not Was), is probably best known as a producer for the likes of the Rolling
Stones, Bonnie Raitt and Bob Dylan. He says that playing with Mr. Weir has
been a singular musical adventure. "I
wish we played 350 shows a year because being in a band with Bob has been tremendous," says Mr. Was. "There is
not another guitarist in the world who plays like him. He never plays the
same thing remotely the same way twice
in a row and will alternate between being as raw as John Lee Hooker to as sophisticated as Andres Segovia from
one phrase to another."
Rock guitarists often view being a soloist as the pinnacle of their
profession, but Mr. Weir has dedicated his
musical life to the craft of rhythm playing, which he describes as "putting
my shoulder to the wheel." Rather than using consistent, repetitive chords
to build a groove, his style is based on counterpoint and riffs. The
approach
was profoundly influenced by jazz pianists, particularly McCoy Tyner of the John Coltrane quartet, and it became
essential to the Grateful Dead's sound, helping lead guitarist Jerry Garcia reach flights of fretboard fancy.
Mr. Weir's quirky approach to guitar extends to his songwriting. He wrote "Sugar Magnolia," one of the Grateful Dead's most accessible and popular
songs, but many of his other compositions, like "The Other One," employ
time signatures that are unusual in Western music. Mr. Weir says he took inspiration from the "explosion of Northern Indian classical music in
American popular culture" in the 1960s, after the Beatles studied with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of Transcendental Meditation.
Other musicians followed suit, including the Grateful Dead. Mr. Weir not
only got the meditation mantra he's used
ever since from an aide to the Maharishi, he also immersed himself in the
music of Ali Akbar Khan and Ravi
Shankar. "To even begin to appreciate their music, you have to be able to
count in their time signatures," he says.
Beyond the Wolf Bros, Mr. Weir tours stadiums in the summer with Dead and Company, featuring Grateful Dead
drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart and guitarist John Mayer. He has
also discovered a new passion for
"painting" on his computer, which he attributes to the influence of his
close friend Robert Rauschenberg, the late
Pop artist. "Covid forced me to settle down and withdraw from performing
for a couple of years, and I disappeared
into Photoshop," says Mr. Weir. "I spent a bunch of time in my middle years dealing with Robert and I can't help but
think that somehow he imparted to me some sort of vision."
In October Mr. Weir will try another kind of experiment, when the Wolf Bros perform a concert of mostly Grateful
Dead music with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. "We're taking music
drawn from the folk traditions and bringing them to full classical orchestration," he says. "Bach was famous for
making enormous classical pieces out of folk tunes, which is more or less
what we're up to with Grateful Dead
songs." The band is currently trying out this ambitious fusion of classical
and improvisational traditions with a
small string section on the road.
Mr. Weir keeps himself fit and sharp with daily workouts and meditation.
He's always considered himself an
athlete and fondly recalls his days playing high-school football and his
many years mountain-biking around the
Marin headlands near his home. He's now become an unlikely workout icon, posting his daily exercise routines on
social media.
"It all boils down to how much gas I will have left in the tank after
playing for three hours," he says. "I need to work
out because my job demands it. It really serves the music and that's what
I'm here for. I don't do much in the way
of social media, but I hire people to do that and they've been documenting
me staying fit. I don't have time for it."
Time, Mr. Weir notes, is now his most precious commodity. "After putting in
a lifetime of work, stuff is opening up
to me that I just can't walk away from," he says. "Opportunities are
arriving that make life worth living so I got to go for them. Retiring is
not an option."
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