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Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart writes a tribute to Phil Lesh

“His sound is indelibly embedded in my memory, as is Jerry's sound… and always will be,” the drummer writes about deceased bandmates

Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart penned a tribute to his longtime bandmate Phil Lesh after the group's founding bassist died Friday at age 84.

“Phil Lesh changed my life. “There are only a few people you meet in your life who are special and important and who help you grow both spiritually and musically,” Hart wrote. Like Bob Weir, Hart credited Lesh with introducing the members of the Grateful Dead to music that would inspire the band's legendary improvisational style.

“He got me interested in world music and gave me my first Alla Rakha record when we lived on Belvedere Street. He forever changed what I thought was possible musically. “Phil was first and foremost an improvisationalist and taught me all of it,” Hart wrote.

“Phil was larger than life, standing in the middle of the band and in my ears, filling my brain with waves of bass. Over the years we have all been on the third rail together and created something that cannot be put into words. Phil was a master of a style he invented, he was unique, an original, no one sounded like him, no one. He had wisdom, was older and showed us the way.”

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The surviving members of the Grateful Dead – Hart, Weir and Bill Kreutzmann – also issued a joint statement honoring Lesh. “Phil Lesh was irreplaceable,” the band wrote. “In one note from the Phil Zone you could hear and feel the world being born. His bass flowed like a river. It went where the muse took it. He was an explorer of inner and outer space who happened to play bass. He was a circumnavigator through previously unknown musical worlds. And more.”

Hart’s tribute continued: “He later became, first and foremost, a family man. There is no one who loved his wife and sons more than Phil, and no one was more dedicated to the Grateful Dead.” His sound is indelibly etched in my memory, as is Jerry's sound… and always will be.

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