Bob Weir’s 10 Best Songs

This past weekend brought the sad news that Bob Weir passed away, marking the departure of the last surviving Grateful Dead lead vocalist. As the youngest member of the band, Bobby wasn’t always taken as seriously as his bandmates and he earned himself the nickname The Other One, partially because it was the name of one of his best songs but also because he wasn’t Jerry Garcia. But any Bob Weir skepticism is long in the rearview; for decades, Weir has been a revered member of the American rock pantheon for good reason. He’s an irreplaceable piece of the Grateful Dead puzzle, and he’s a great songwriter who penned some of the band’s most iconic songs. He wrote some of their prettiest folk songs, sharpest pop songs, and most mind-bending psychedelic songs, and he also wrote one of their most epic suites. To help remember Bobby forever, here’s a list of his 10 best songs, and even these 10 best are just the tip of the Bob Weir iceberg.

Rest in peace, Bob Weir. Read on for the list…

10. “Looks Like Rain”

“Looks Like Rain” is one of a few songs on this list that was originally released on Bob Weir’s 1972 debut solo album Ace, which is really a Grateful Dead album in all but name (Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, and Keith and Donna Godchaux all play on it), and as lovely as the studio version is, this one really came to life at the Dead’s live shows. A recording from the Dead’s 4/8/72 London show made it onto the expanded edition of the Dead’s beloved Europe ’72, and it’s up there with the album’s most tear-jerking moments. It’s a love song, written with Weir’s longtime lyricist John Perry Barlow, and the emotion comes through in the delicate instrumentals as much as it does in Bobby’s softly-sung delivery.

9. “Greatest Story Ever Told”

Ace opener “Greatest Story Ever Told” was also released in an alternate form with the title “Pump Song” on Mickey Hart’s 1972 debut solo album Rolling Thunder and it was a Grateful Dead staple that the band had already been playing before either of those two albums were released. For Bobby, it’s one of his most energetic compositions, a hell of a way to kick off his solo debut and always a fun moment at live shows. Some songs are just built to get Deadheads singing and dancing, and this is one of them.

8. “Jack Straw”

Another Europe ’72 highlight, “Jack Straw” was penned by Bob Weir with Jerry Garcia’s lyricist partner Robert Hunter, and it’s become one of the Grateful Dead’s most iconic songs, even without a studio version ever being released. It’s a classic Grateful Dead storytelling song, with Bobby and Jerry trading off lead vocals as the song’s two main characters, Jack Straw and Shannon, two drifters navigating the American Southwest. The most beautiful moment, though, comes in the chorus, when the band deliver those trademark Grateful Dead harmonies that they perfected during the lead-up to the American Beauty and Workingman’s Dead albums.

7. “The Music Never Stopped”

As the Grateful Dead moved more into progressive rock and jazz fusion territory on 1975’s Blues for Allah, Bob Weir and John Barlow penned one of the album’s tightest pop songs with “The Music Never Stopped.” The studio version sounds sharp (Donna Godchaux’s powerhouse backing vocals included), and there’s a hop in the song’s step that always made it a live favorite. On top of all that, the sentiment of the title just kind of sums up the Grateful Dead themselves, and not just because of their 20-minute jams. Even with the passing of the last remaining Grateful Dead lead vocalist, the music still never stops.

6. “Playing In The Band”

Though “Playing In The Band” exists on Bob Weir’s solo album Ace and Mickey Hart’s solo album Rolling Thunder (under the name “The Main Ten”), the song is immortal because of the Grateful Dead’s live shows, where the seven-minute song was often extended to three times its original length. Like “The Music Never Stopped,” it’s one of the Dead’s meta songs, and the simple hook is so memorable that the stadiums of people they played to could all be in on it too. Because of that hook, it’s one of the strongest examples of how the Dead always earned those seemingly-endless jams. When you anchor a jam with a hook like this, you can go off in whatever direction you want.

5. “Estimated Prophet”

“Estimated Prophet” is late ’70s Dead in a nutshell: the 7/4 groove, the hint of funk, the abstract psychedelia of the lyrics, an enigmatic protagonist to latch onto, and a harmony-fueled “Califoooorniaaaa” in the chorus that captures the sunny mystique of the Bay Area band’s home state. As the opening song of the Grateful Dead’s 1977 album Terrapin Station, it lures you right in, and it’s also a highlight of the band’s legendary Cornell ’77 show. Sandwiched right in between arguably the best “Scarlet > Fire” of all time and a climactic “St. Stephen > Not Fade Away > St. Stephen > Morning Dew,” it found the Grateful Dead bringing a spellbinding aura to the show’s second set, with Bobby leading the way.

4. “The Other One”

Originally part of “That’s It for the Other One,” the multi-part suite that opens the Grateful Dead’s underrated 1968 album Anthem of the Sun, the Bob Weir-led section “The Faster We Go, the Rounder We Get” became a jammed-out live staple that took on the simplified title “The Other One.” And even if The Other One didn’t become one of Bobby’s nicknames, the song would deserve a spot on this list. Bobby’s refrain is one of the Grateful Dead’s most iconic, and it gave them an anchor for some of their liveliest jams over the years. It’s hard to pick a favorite version of this tune; there are so many out there to get lost in.

3. “Sugar Magnolia”

By the end of the ’60s, the Grateful Dead had already solidified their reputation as masters of psychedelia, but they’d yet to release an album that the casual listener / average rock fan could latch onto. That changed with two 1970 albums, Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty, and the latter was home to Bob Weir’s first perfect pop song, “Sugar Magnolia.” (Honorable mention goes out to “Truckin’,” a collaborative full-band effort that Bobby sang lead on.) Written with Robert Hunter, it’s a country rock song done only as the Grateful Dead could do, with that trademark Dead hop in its step and a kaleidoscopic journey through the wonders of nature and summer love.

2. “Cassidy”

The most purely beautiful moment of Ace is closing track “Cassidy,” and it might be the only song on Ace where the studio version is superior to the Grateful Dead’s various live versions. It’s a gentle folk rock song that captures the duality of birth and death (“Ah, child of boundless seas/What you are, what you’re meant to be… Fare thee well now/Let your life proceed by its own design”), and the harmonies from Bobby and Donna Godchaux are some of the most gorgeous harmonies in the extended Grateful Dead catalog. It’s as pretty as anything on Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty.

1. “Weather Report Suite”

Those who insist that the Grateful Dead weren’t a great studio band outside of Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty are overlooking some of their most truly epic in-studio moments: the progressive rock suites they released throughout the 1970s. There were the Jerry-led title track suites of Blues for Allah and Terrapin Station, but first there was Bob Weir’s “Weather Report Suite,” the nearly-13-minute epic that closes 1973’s Wake of the Flood, written with John Barlow and folk singer Eric Andersen. It starts out as gentle folk rock that isn’t miles away from Workingman’s Dead/American Beauty/Ace, with some nice organ, pedal steel, and angelic harmonies fleshing things out. Then new things start to come in. First gospel harmonies, and then it changes even more, when it switches from its lazy-Sunday first half to the more sinister-sounding “Let It Grow” portion. Keith Godchaux starts pounding on his piano, and Bobby delivers some of his most commanding pop songwriting. Then enters the triumphant horns and strings. This was a turning point for the Dead, an orchestral rock song cycle that rivaled Tommy and side B of Abbey Road, both in ambition and in how fun it is to listen to. It helped set the tone for some of the most exciting aspects of the Dead’s ’70s studio material, and it wouldn’t have happened without Bob Weir.

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SEE ALSO: Grateful Dead Studio Albums Ranked Worst to Best