The Grateful Dead community suffered a great loss on June 2 when their keyboard player from 1990 to 1995, Vince Welnick took his life. Vince was an incredibly talented musician that filled some huge shoes for the Grateful Dead after Brent Midland passed in 1990. Not only did Vince fill those shoes, but he brought his own creative touch to the music. Songs like Samba in the Rain and Long Way To Go Home were some of my favorite jams of the 90’s era Grateful Dead. He added alot to the Dead’s sound both instumentally and vocally.
I feel especially close to Vince because he was the only keyboard player I got to see with the Dead (the only shows I was lucky enough to participate in were 3-4-94 and 3-5-94). I remember seeing him behind those keys over on the right side of the stage just wailing like some musical God. In fact, I think that the creative energy that Vince brought to the Dead made it possible for them to make it through those last five years. It was a very hit and miss era for the Dead. Many shows, especially the 1995 shows bring a tear to my eye to hear because Jerry was just off so much of the time. But there was still a silver lining. Just listen to that last show at soldier field (7-9-1995) or the two I mentioned above and you will hear a Grateful Dead that is on, thanks in large part to Vince Welnick. We will miss you brother Vinnie!
I’ve been wating a few days to chime in on this because I’ve had many mixed emotions about it. Vince’s webmaster posted this message on his website calling out the existing members of the Dead, shaming them for their treatment of Vince. About 6 months after Jerry Garcia checked out, Vince tried to take his life on the Rat Dog tour bus (here is a Relix interview from 2003 in which Vince talks about it), an incident which resulted in Vince’s excommunication from the Grateful Dead family. Vince was not invited to any of the family reunion shows or any of the various formations of the surviving members of the Grateful Dead. This took its toll on him as he deeply desired to be part of the scene. Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart, and Bill Kreutzmann should be ashamed of the way they treated their brother. Abandonment is painful and takes is a very hard pill to swallow. Sometimes when people deserve friendship the least, they need it the most. Vince suffered from clinical depression which is a very tragic and painful condition for people who have it as well as their loved ones. John Perry Barlow had a great Eulogy for Vince. Barlow made a comment about clinical depression which really moved me:
“Fighting clinical depression is inevitably a lonely struggle. What could be less conducive to compassion than a disease that make you whine? Laymen and loved ones tell you to get a grip. They make you feel ashamed to be sick. Even if they’re more enlightened about the disease, they can’t help but harbor a secret, naturally human, belief that you are suffering a failure of will rather than biochemistry. Meanwhile, the doctors consider little but the neuro-soup and turn you into a shambling medical experiment, testing pharmaceutical nostrums on you that are as blunt as the mind is subtle, though just as unpredictable. But, for you, life just trudges on. It remains, despite whatever visible signs of well-being - wonderful spouse, great kids, well-located house, etc. - a purgatory of uselessness, barren of joy and meaning. Love, incoming or out-going, becomes something you think, not feel.”
Its easy to discount people who commit suicide and cheapen their legacy, but its not fair. Nobody ever condemns a cancer patient for dying and nobody should condemn a mental illness patient for dying either.
With all that said, I will still go to Rat Dog and Phil and Friends shows. I will still purchase live Dead shows and I still have a great appreciation for all the joy and happiness that these guys have brought to me. The sum of the good that these guys have done in this world far far outways the bad. For myself and many other Deadheads, this music has helped us triumph through hard times in life. The problem that people have is that they hold the human members of the Dead to all of the hippy ideals of the 60s (love, peace, happiness, etc…) in a world where those ideals were never realized. There isn’t a person on this planet that hasn’t been an ass at times. Its not a black and white issue, you can’t just slap a good/bad guy label on people, we are so much more complicated beings than that.
So please download some Missing Man Formation and other music that Vince created and remember him for what he was: a musical geneous!
Here are some mp3s David Gans posted from the KPFA studios in 1999:
What’s Your Name?
Emperor’s Suit
A Day in the Life
Cosmic Charlie
Peace be with you Vince, say hi to Jerry for me!
If your a Johnny Cash fan, you’ll be excited to know that on July 4, the final Johnny Cash album, American V: A Hundred Highways, The Final Recordings will be released. Cash recorded this album just after June died during the three month period before his own death. You will hear the voice of a man that is at peace with life and ready to die. The previous album, American IV is hard to top, but I think he did it with V. Here is an excerpt from Cash’s myspace page where you can also stream cuts off the album:
I’ve heard most of the songs on the new 
On Thursday, the festival got kicked off by 
Friday ushered in some great performances from 
Saturday was a great day and I managed to stay out of the heat and still catch all of the best perfomances. 
By Sunday I was pretty much spent, but I still had enough energy to enjoy 
