The keyboard curse continues for the Grateful Dead:
Vince Welnick, the Grateful Dead’s last keyboard player and a veteran of other bands, including the Tubes and Missing Man Formation, died on Friday. His age was given in various sources as 51 or 55, and he lived in Forestville, Calif.
Dennis McNally, the Grateful Dead’s longtime publicist, confirmed his death but would not release the cause or the location. The Sonoma County coroner’s office said an autopsy would be performed.
With long, frizzy hair and tie-dyed clothes, Mr. Welnick clearly looked the part of a member of a band born in 1965 in San Francisco, then the cradle of the country’s emerging psychedelic counterculture. But he was largely unfamiliar with the Grateful Dead’s music when he joined in 1990. Years later he recalled that he was so nervous he could barely play at his first show, in Cleveland, but was quickly put at ease when the audience gave him a warm welcome.
The Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart recalled Mr. Welnick as not only a nimble keyboard player but also a fine background singer whose vocals added much to the group’s songs. “He had this real high harmony,” Mr. Hart said. “He could go where others couldn’t.”
Mr. Welnick grew up in Phoenix and moved to San Francisco in the early 1970’s with a band called the Beans, which soon renamed itself the Tubes. After the group temporarily disbanded in the mid-80’s, he worked with Todd Rundgren before joining the Grateful Dead.
He was the last in a long line of Grateful Dead keyboardists, several of whom died at early ages, leading some of the group’s fans to conclude that the position came with a curse. He replaced Brent Mydland, who died of a drug overdose in 1990.
He was a beauty. He will be missed.
Sazei
Sending him a credit card now.
zzyzx
Did you read the rant on VinceWelnick.com? It’s kind of depressing:
http://www.vincewelnick.com/index.php?module=pnForum&func=viewtopic&topic=315&start=0
Ryan S.
Sounds like tonights a good night to grab a cold one and listen to In The Dark.
Brian
Major loss.
And here’s another one. I always admired this guy. He wrote some great tunes, and seemed to be everywhere in rock & roll during the Seventies.
zzyzx
Actually it was Friday that was a good night to do that ;)
VAMark
If you’re going to listen to a Dead album without Vince, I’d pick a better one than “In the Dark.”
Vince was unlucky enough to be late to the party – by late 1990 Jerry was pretty much incapable of playing a complete show well so neither the band or the Deadheads got a chance to develop many good memories with him. And I’m sure Bobby was just thrilled to have to deal with a suicide attempt on his tourbus in ’95, which seems to be why the surviving members of the band froze him out the last 11 years.
As John Barlow observed about another victim of the keyboard curse, musicians as a group seem to be wired in a way for unhealthly choices.
capelza
I loved Garcia’s solo projects, especially his first solo album in 1972. I’ve replaced that thing in various formats over the years.
Bob Weir’s Ace alao has been a staple for decades.
I grew up in Humboldt County, California from the time I was 11, so I got to see these guys in their “glory days”.
BUT, there was always something off about the Dead itself for me. Not so much the music, Workingman’s Dead and for a few years after are fantastic. Okay, I was a pretty precocious kid musically, at 13 my wonderful grandmother took me to a Rolling Stones concert in Nov. 1969. It was the same concert tour as Altamont. I really wanted to go to that, but my grnadmother wisely put her foot down.
Well most of you kow what happened there and part of me has had a problem with the Dead ever since. The Hell’s Angels were and still are raging assholes. Silly reason perhaps, but the “scene” wasn’t so mellow at all.
The Deadheads don’t bother me all that much, I ignore them, but when Weir and was it Garcia or another GD member did the Gap commercials for Rolling Stone…I knew irony was dead.
I am so sorry to hear about this. He sounds like he was a great, great guy.
Z-man
I loved seeing those GAP ads up on the pillars at Shoreline. Phil as a model for anything is just classic.
I liked a couple of the songs Vince wrote with the Dead, “Long Way Home” and “Samba in the Rain” ring a bell for me. Don’t think any of his stuff ever made it to a studio recorded album, but who the hell really listens to studio recordings of the great bands if they can help it.
Joel
Billy Preston died recently as well. Keyboard curse? Whatever it is its extremely sad for music lovers. RIP.
Vercingetorix
Am I the only one out there that loved the Tubes? I’m too young to have seen them in their 70’s heyday but I listen to their first 5 albums all the time. Vince was a major figure in that band.