From LSD-fueled beginnings to a misunderstood HuffPost quote, a High Times–style look at Bob Weir’s nuanced relationship with cannabis, the Grateful Dead, and the culture they helped shape.
With singer, songwriter, guitarist, and concert legend Bob Weir’s passing into the next plane of existence on January 10, the last OG frontman of the legendary Grateful Dead (GD) has faded from the still-prosperous jamband scene he helped create, joining fellow GD singer and guitarist Jerry Garcia, who died in 1995, and bassist and singer Phil Lesh, who passed in 2024.
Mere months prior to his death, Weir capped off sixty years of a creative career spent playing psychedelic improvisational music with his final band, Dead & Company, whose farewell concerts were fittingly performed in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park on August 1, 2, and 3, 2025.
For the last thirty years, the same length of time the original Grateful Dead existed, Bob Weir did his part to preserve the band’s remarkable catalog through live performances. That body of work stands as a postmodern entry in the Great American Songbook.
In recent weeks, much prose has been dedicated to Bob Weir’s life and legacy. As a High Times–style eulogy, this piece focuses first on Weir’s complicated and often misunderstood relationship with psychoactive substances such as cannabis and LSD, dating back to the 1960s.
Before becoming the Grateful Dead in 1965, the band was originally called The Warlocks. During those early days, Bob Weir was a committed weed smoker, according to GD drummer Bill Kreutzmann. In his Instagram tribute to Weir, Kreutzmann described their early exploits, which included pulling pranks and smoking joints in the alley behind a music store where the young band rehearsed. The pair also tripped together on STP, a powerful and unstable psychedelic common in those hazy early countercultural …
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Author: Mark Miller / High Times
