Revisit The Last Song From Bob Weir’s Final Show [Video]

Grief sucks. With Bob Weir gone, we’re left with the boxes of memories from the life he devoted to live music. After co-founding the Grateful Dead at the age of 17, Weir spent the next 60 years in service to the song and the stage (and the fans). He played right up until the very end, winning a valiant and unpublicized fight against cancer but ultimately dying from underlying lung issues. As we grieve the loss of this pillar of the jam scene who made so much of what we do here at Live For Live Music possible, we’re looking back at the last show Bob Weir played.

Bobby’s final show could not have been a larger or more meaningful celebration. On what would have been guitarist Jerry Garcia‘s 83rd birthday, Weir celebrated the Grateful Dead’s 60th anniversary on the band’s home turf in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. The three-night run featured Dead & Company, the post-Jerry offshoot led by Bobby and Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart alongside superstar John Mayer, bassist Oteil Burbridge, keyboardist Jeff Chimenti, and drummer Jay Lane (who replaced original Grateful Dead and Dead & Company drummer Bill Kreutzmann two years prior).

Though the spotlight was ostensibly on Bobby, Mickey, and the Dead, the jam band pioneers chose to share the stage with the next generation of artists. Bluegrass progeny Billy Strings, alt-country singer-songwriter-turned-jam-adjacent-convert Johnny Blue Skies (formerly known as Sturgill Simpson), and Phish guitarist/onetime Jerry Garcia ringer Trey Anastasio each took a turn opening one of the three shows. Additionally, each bandleader joined Dead & Company for a sentimental sit-in, as did Grahame Lesh, son of co-founding Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh, who passed away the previous fall.

Related: GD60 Sit-Ins: Watch Billy, Sturgill, Trey, & Grahame Join Dead & Co In Golden Gate Park [Videos/Audio]

With the recent loss of one of the Core Four surviving members still so fresh in everyone’s mind, and the remaining members’ advancing age, there was an unavoidable air of finality to the GD60 hoorah. But rather than limping over the finish line like many other legacy acts of their generation, the Grateful Dead (to use the catch-all term for the entire organization) chose to pull up the next generation with them. The underlying message of the weekend became that this tradition doesn’t die with these four, or three, now two men, that the spirit lives on, even if they’re playing different songs.

So on the final night of the Grateful Dead 60 celebration, Trey honored Jerry with “Mission in the Rain” during his opening set, he joined Dead & Co for “Scarlet Begonias” > “Fire on the Mountain”, and Grahame came out with Phil’s “Big Brown” bass to do Robbie Robertson‘s “Broken Arrow”. Though Bobby’s voice sounded strained throughout the weekend (we now know why), there was an air of undeterred perseverance as Weir and Hart played on into their 70s and 80s, anointing the next generation(s) throughout the weekend. And Bobby summed this all up best with the last song of his last show, “Touch of Grey”. Though Deadheads have long scorned the band’s only Top 10 hit, the refrain of eternal perseverance, “We will get by / We will survive,” can be a source of comfort today, even for the most jaded among us.

Watch Bob Weir close his last show with “Touch of Grey” in Golden Gate Park. Revisit Live For Live Music‘s full-show coverage here, and read tributes to Bobby from Billy Strings, Trey Anastasio, Warren Haynes, Joe Russo, and more here.

Dead & Company — “Touch Of Grey” — San Francisco, CA — 8/3/25

[Video: Todd Norris]

Rest in peace, Bobby.

Cause it’s a place you’ve never been
Maybe a place you’ve never seen now
You can hear them callin’ on the wind
Driftin’ and dreamin’, driftin’ and dreamin’.