By Scott McLennan

Thanks in large part to the late Phil Lesh’s influence, the performances of the Grateful Dead developed a signature blend of composition and improvisation.

Phil Lesh at the 2019 Newport Folk Festival. Photo: Paul Robicheau

The origins of the Grateful Dead were five musicians from different musical neighborhoods who found a common ground by developing a communal language that encouraged give and take. Not only between the players, but among audience members too, and that demand for full engagement elevated the band’s concerts from events to be observed to experiences to be participated in.

Phil Lesh was key to this process and embodied that sense of wonder and exploration, not only his music but in the entirety of the way he carried himself.

Lesh’s family posted the news October 25 on social media that the legendary bassist had died at age 84.

Lesh was initially a student of classical and experimental music; he played trumpet before Grateful dead guitarist Jerry Garcia urged him to take up the bass.

Lesh rose to the challenge and became one of rock’s main innovators on the instrument. During the Grateful Dead’s supernova era of the late-’60s and early-’70s, Lesh’s adventurous work on bass was essential to the mind-expanding qualities of numbers such as “Dark Star” or “The Other One,” which routinely stretched on for 20 to 30 minutes in concert.

While often defined as a “rhythm instrument,” the bass assumed the mantle of “lead instrument” in Lesh’s hands. He could be spellbinding, weaving delicate and intricate webs of sound in a piece such as “Birdsong” or in his own beautiful composition, “Unbroken Chain.” He could also be thunderous and funky, dropping patented “Phil bombs” into the disco funk of “Shakedown Street” or within the rousing finale of the ballad “Morning Dew.”

Phil Lesh with Grateful Dead in 1986. Photo: Paul Robicheau

That being said, Lesh was not beyond hunkering down to lasso the beat on a cowboy campfire song such as “Me and My Uncle,” which was played as many times as any song by the Dead.

Lesh was not a great singer or a prolific songwriter. But there was a palpable euphoria in the crowd when Lesh stepped to the microphone on March 20, 1986, in Hampton, Virginia, to sing his signature number, “Box of Rain,” for the first time since 1973. The rarity of the performance certainly contributed to the collective mind snap that night in the arena but, beyond that, Lesh was tempting us to inquire — Why now? Why ponder these lyrics about the ephemeral nature of our lives? Why take risks and be vulnerable to failure? The truth is, Lesh really hadn’t gotten any better as a singer, though he did a lot more of it after that night, both in the Dead and post-Dead projects he stayed busy with.

Lesh brought an intellectual element to the music. Thanks in large part to his influence, the performances of the Grateful Dead developed a signature blend of composition and improvisation. By the mid-’70s, with the Blues for Allah and Terrapin Station albums, the Dead was breaking ground in areas where rock bands did not often tread. Yet Lesh and his bandmates still embraced the abandon and chaos that rock ’n’ roll — when done right — demands.

Following Garcia’s death in 1995, the music of the Grateful Dead followed circuitous and splintered pathways. Lesh would play off and on with the other surviving members of the Grateful Dead. But he also sought new ways into the music by collaborating with a variety of musicians, some obvious, such as Dead acolytes in Phish and the String Cheese Incident, others not so obvious, such as jazz artists John Scofield and Stanley Jordan. With his evolving Phil and Friends lineups, Lesh overcame the burden of being a “classic rock icon” by steadfastly remaining a musician on a mission.

Phil Lesh at the 2024 Newport Folk Festival. Photo: Paul Robicheau

No doubt he could have paid the bills playing “Truckin’” and “Sugar Magnolia” on a nostalgia circuit. But that certainly wasn’t the case in Lesh’s last Boston appearance in the summer of 2023. In that concert with a fresh assembly of “friends,” Lesh and crew methodically worked through the evening’s tunes in a manner that emboldened each player to take a few more chances with each passing number. Screw the hits, make the experience meaningful — and, under Lesh’s leadership, the band that night did just that.

In addition to being fully committed to the muse, Lesh was likewise eternally grateful for the second lease on life supplied by a 1998 liver transplant. Lesh made a personal plea at every show he played thereafter for people to consider becoming organ donors. Nightly, he honored the young man whose liver he received through a donation.

The “Fare Thee Well” concerts in Chicago in the summer of 2015 marked the last time that Lesh performed with all the remaining Grateful Dead members — Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, and Bill Kreutzmann. The group’s limited rehearsal time (the lineup also featured Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio and keyboard players Bruce Hornsby and Jeff Chimenti) inevitably placed some constraints on just how far out this ensemble would be able to go. But Lesh seemed pleased with what the assemblage pulled off to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the band that changed his life, and that he used to influence the lives of so many others.

Before the final encores of that final show, Lesh told the audience that he felt like he was at a crossroads, not at an ending.

“Take some tangents,” he said. “Move in a different direction.”

It was advice Lesh had long taken to heart as the high priest of his beloved Terrapin Nation of Deadheads — who loved him right back.

Scott McLennan covered music for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette from 1993 to 2008. He then contributed music reviews and features to the Boston Globe, Providence Journal, Portland Press Herald, and WGBH, as well as to the Arts Fuse. He also operated the NE Metal blog to provide in-depth coverage of the region’s heavy metal scene.