On October 30th, five days after the sudden passing of Phil Lesh, the surviving members of the Grateful Dead—Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, and Bill Kreutzmann—sat down with CBS News‘ Anthony Mason at San Francisco, CA’s Great American Music Hall for an interview due to air on CBS Mornings on December 18th.
The segment was initially due to feature Lesh and focus on the band being feted at the upcoming Kennedy Center Honors in Washington, D.C. in December, but following the bassist’s death, the conversation with Weir, Hart, and Kreutzmann became their first televised discussion of their late bandmate. While the full interview won’t air on CBS Mornings until next month, the network on Wednesday aired the first preview of the conversation with the living Dead.
Not only was Phil supposed to be included in this interview, the band explains in the preview clip, but Weir, Hart, Kreutzmann, and Lesh were planning to get together the following day to “kick some songs around” ahead of a potential reunion in 2026 in honor of the Grateful Dead’s 60th anniversary. The four longtime collaborators had not played together since 2015’s Fare Thee Well, which honored the band’s 50th.
Related: Grateful Dead Members Pay Respects To Phil Lesh
“I was hoping that we could play with him again one more time. So that, that was my sadness,” Kreutzmann explains, “Cause I know he wanted to play with us again too.” Now, however, those plans have unsurprisingly been cast in doubt.
As Weir explains, “We just don’t have enough to put a band together right now.”
Adds Kreutzmann, “Well, not the three of us. I mean, we’d have to have other musicians join us. … I was hopin’ that we could do it … for the 60th, would be fun.”
Weir continues, “We were gonna see where it goes. But we were just gonna play the four of us. And, and now there’s only three of us…”
“Right,” Kreutzmann adds. “Now it’s different.”
Later in the clip, Weir, Hart, and Kreutzmann discuss the impact Phil Lesh made on their lives and music.
“I owe so much to the stuff that Phil taught me or turned me on to,” Weir explains.
Adds Hart, “Phil turned me on to North Indian classical music…that was a major thing in my life.”
“He developed this language … that only we spoke, really,” Weir notes.
“And he taught us basically how to be free,” adds Kreutzmann. “How to play free and not have to play in any set, fixed way… He was a very unique bass player… It would help us be more improvisational.”
Watch the new preview of the CBS Mornings interview with the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann, and Mickey Hart on the loss of Phil Lesh. Tune in to CBS Mornings at 7–9 a.m. on the CBS or Paramount+.
In addition to the band’s Kennedy Center Honors in December, the Grateful Dead will be celebrated in January 2025 as the MusiCares Persons of the Year at a ceremony in Los Angeles.
Grateful Dead Members Mickey Hart, Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann Reflect On Phil Lesh – CBS Mornings