Beloved Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir gave an extensive interview with Rolling Stone that was published today, touching on all things Dead & Company for the conversation. The interview goes into mostly familiar territory, with Weir talking about his relationship with John Mayer, his plans for Dead & Company, a possible studio album and more.
In many of the Dead & Company posts that we’ve made, fans have quickly jumped in to debate “Trey Anastasio vs. John Mayer.” Anastasio famously played with the “Core Four” surviving Grateful Dead members, and three of them – Weir, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart – remain with the touring band of Dead & Company.
In the new interview, Weir compares the styles of both, with nothing but superlatives for each musician.
“I was doing preliminary get-togethers with Trey, kicking around the material. Trey is also a monster musician. If I had to make a broad categorization, John is a classicist by nature. Trey is more of an iconoclast. They’re both explorers, someone who’s happy to break tradition. Juxtaposing Trey’s take on the material with the insights John brings got me looking at all of the songs afresh.
I look forward to playing with Trey again, any old time. But I am really eager to get back out with John-boy and chase the music around, get to know each other. When that dream came to me, it was at about that point that I started to realize that I was feeling comfortable with knowing that John had moved, musically speaking – being able to intuit the songs. We were feeling each other out on a new level, several bars down the road.”
Weir also spoke about Dead & Company’s future by means of a premonition he once had on stage. “Suddenly I was 20 feet behind my own head, looking at this and kind of happy with the way the song was shaping up. I started looking around, and it was 20 years later. John’s hair had turned gray. Oteil’s had turned white. I looked back at the drummers, and it was a couple of new guys. I looked back at myself, the back of my head, and it was a new guy. It changed my entire perception of what it is we’re up to.”
He mentions Mayer’s specific contributions and how he’s a perfect fit for Dead & Company:
“First off, he gets what we’re up to. And he loves the idea. It appeals to his sense of fun and adventure. Then he brings his musical personality – all of the stuff he’s looked into. And he’s deep. He’s a monster musician, a studied musician. He knows the various ideas from which we draw. Or he’s eager to study them if he’s light in that area.
That’s the way we’ve been operating all along. Pigpen was heavy into blues. Jerry and I were good with the country stuff. Phil was good with modern classical music. On it goes.”
And Weir wraps up the interview by talking about the influence of Jerry Garcia on the music.
“Since Jerry checked out, he hasn’t departed in the least. I can still hear him crackling away somewhere behind me, above and off to the left, if you will. I can hear the crackle of his harmonic content, where he would live in a song. And I relate to that like I always did: ‘I’m going to take it here, then I’m going to take it that way.’ But that gets fed through what somebody else is doing now. And it’s wonderful to see these songs reinvigorated – regenerated with new life.
You can read more about this here. Dead & Company tour beings on June 10th in Charlotte, NC.