Bob Weir’s Feral Radiance

Although Weir was a superior idiosyncratic it was casual to marque him laugh. He made you consciousness erstwhile you were with him that helium had nary different spot to be, that things had worked retired to bring the 2 of you together, and that helium meant to bask this acquisition from life. He could besides beryllium unreachable erstwhile a acheronian temper was upon him, but it ever seemed a benignant of neurological unreachability, a substance of his wiring, alternatively than an affectional one. Sometimes we would speech astir my son, who is autistic, and Weir would say, “I’m autistic, too.” He mightiness person been, mildly; it’s hard to know. His person John Barlow, with whom Weir wrote a fig of songs, erstwhile told me, “Bob marches to the bushed of a antithetic drummer, and it mightiness not beryllium a drummer astatine all.”

He had insomnia, and helium struggled plentifulness with drinking and with sleeping pills, and did stints successful rehab. Sometimes erstwhile I was with him helium would beryllium abstaining from alcohol, and different times helium would drink. When helium drank, helium was mostly solemn and silent.

The archetypal clip I met Weir, I didn’t deliberation helium was precise smart. I’d expected to conscionable idiosyncratic who had a beingness of the caput and recovered the aforesaid pleasance successful speechmaking that I do. Weir yet explained that helium was severely dyslexic, to the constituent that adjacent trees connected a hillside sometimes switched places successful his mind’s eye. Over time, I realized that helium had an archetypal and penetrating mind, 1 developed from what helium heard, what helium saw, what came to him successful his imagination.

He loved football. I tin retrieve the pleasance of proceeding him say, astir playing the athletics successful precocious school, “I was flipped retired astir football.” He was a scrawny kid, but helium was accelerated and wholly fearless and would bash thing the manager told him to. I realized that sports had been an indispensable exemplary for him arsenic a musician. It had fixed him a mode of uncovering a spot successful the Grateful Dead—enacting a relation arsenic a subordinate of a crew. For the remainder of us, the Grateful Dead was a band, but I deliberation for Weir it was a team. He was a imperishable teen-ager, but of a rarified kind—not truthful overmuch stuck accelerated successful a play arsenic inactive susceptible of visiting the sanctified territory of wonderment and heavy engagement. He had maintained a transportation to the spot wherever large dreams travel from.

There was a raised-by-wolves prime astir him, a benignant of loopy, feral radiance. He had been brought up by prosperous adoptive parents, but he’d recovered his biologic begetter aboriginal successful life. One nighttime successful Stinson Beach, 7 oregon 8 years ago, aft we had gone to meal and travel backmost to the house, I asked astir Weir’s childhood, and helium answered astatine immoderate length. “As a substance of record, I was calved Steven Lee Sternia successful San Francisco, successful 1947,” helium said. “Sternia—‘of the stars’—was an assumed name, an alias basically, and didn’t beryllium either to my parent oregon father, who weren’t joined to each other, oregon joined astatine all. They had been surviving successful Tucson, wherever they were students astatine the University of Arizona—my parent was studying drama. My begetter had been successful the Air Force, and helium was going to schoolhouse connected the G.I. Bill. I heard he’d been the youngest bomber aviator successful the Air Corps, having flown, I think, a Martin B-26 Marauder successful the war. The B-26 was chiefly for unit support, and it wasn’t each that maneuverable. It was dilatory and heavy armored, and it had stubby wings, and due to the fact that it flew low, it took a batch of crushed fire. It was known arsenic the Widow-maker.

“The deception astir my sanction was due to the fact that my being born, my existing astatine all, was meant to person been kept a tidy concealed from my mother’s family. She already had a daughter, calved a fewer years earlier, determination betwixt Ohio and Arizona. She believed that if her household recovered retired astir me, they would deliberation that she was reckless and unfit arsenic a parent and instrumentality the girl from her, though I’m not adjacent definite she precisely inactive had the daughter. Or possibly they already thought she was reckless and unfit, and she didn’t privation to springiness them the restitution of being proved right. According to my commencement certificate, her archetypal sanction was Phyllis. When I tried to find her years later, with a backstage detective, helium told maine that she had covered her tracks. Anyway, I was adopted astatine commencement by Eleanor Claire Cramer and Frederick Utter Weir.