Bob Weir, co-founder of the legendary American band Grateful Dead, dies at 78 | Entertainment in the United States

American guitarist Bob Weir, one of the founders of the legendary American rock band Grateful Dead, has died at the age of 78, according to a statement from his family published on his Instagram account this Saturday.

“He passed away in peace, surrounded by loved ones, after bravely overcoming cancer as only Bobby could. Unfortunately, he succumbed to underlying lung problems,” indicates the text, which does not specify when or where the artist died.

According to the message, Weir was diagnosed with cancer in July 2025 and began treatment a few weeks before returning to the stage in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park to celebrate the band’s 60th anniversary. “Those performances, emotional, moving and full of light, were not goodbyes but gifts. Another act of resilience. An artist choosing, even then, to continue by his own design,” adds the note, signed by his wife and two daughters.

Weir (San Francisco, 1947) was a guitarist, vocalist, narrator and founding member of the Grateful Dead, one of the most influential groups of the 1960s counterculture in the United States, which combined blues, jazz, rock and roll and bluegrass.

The Grateful Dead, whose followers call themselves Deadheads, They are one of the most prolific bands in rock history and their hits include songs like truckin, sugar magnolia and Friend of the devil.

Weir, who founded the band in 1965 with singer Jerry Garcia, bassist Phil Lush and drummer Bill Kreutzman, “often spoke of a three-hundred-year legacy, determined to ensure that the songbook would last beyond him,” the statement said.

The Grateful Dead disbanded in 1995 after Garcia’s death, but Weir continued to perform in the same psychedelic spirit that characterized her, including with The Dead, a band that included other former members, and released solo albums.

In 2015, Weir founded Dead & Company, a new group in which he enlisted former members of the Grateful Dead such as Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, Oteil Burbridge and Jeff Chimenti, along with guitarist John Mayer.